Crime and Punishment Week

Bill Nighy and Olivia Cooke in 'The Limehouse Golem'.

The real history behind Victorian thriller ‘The Limehouse Golem’

President John F Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally ride through the streets of Dallas

The assassination of JFK: an eyewitness account

A woman on a medieval ducking stool

Q&A Were ducking stools ever used as punishment for crimes other than witchcraft during the Middle Ages?

Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico's left-wing president who in 1940 legalised drugs. (Photo by Henry Guttmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The year Mexico legalised drugs

John Bellingham Who Shot the Hon. Spencer Percival Print

The assassination of prime minister Spencer Perceval: a popular murder?

Grace Humiston was nicknamed 'Mrs Sherlock Holmes' by the American press. (Image courtesy of Brad Ricca)

First World War

America’s ‘Mrs Holmes’: how one woman took on the cases the NYPD couldn’t solve

An illustration of Edward II. (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

The big debate: was Edward II really murdered?

Cesare Lombroso, described as the 'father of criminology'. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

The ‘born criminal’? Lombroso and the origins of modern criminology

An aerial view showing the courtroom during the Nuremberg Trials, November 1945. (Photo by Walter Sanders/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

Second World War

Forgotten trials: the other side of Nuremberg

An engraving from 'The Illustrated Police News', c1889, imagines Jack the Ripper

Your guide to Jack the Ripper

The ‘Princes in the Tower’: Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, disappeared in mysterious circumstances following the death of their father, King Edward IV. (The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

6 notorious unsolved crimes from history

An 1870s illustration of a typical London artisan terraced houses with washhouses, privies and yards leading on to an alley, all dominated by railway viaducts. (Photo by Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/Getty Images)

Victorian London’s East End: what can a foul murder tell us about life in the city?

King John hunting on horseback, 14th century. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Was King John murdered?

Four police officers, members of the Bow Street Horse Patrol, pose for a photograph with a horse.

The rise of the Great British ‘bobby’: a brief history of Britain’s police service

A Pompeii mural depicting a slave, in the Naples Museum. (Photo by Sites & Photos/Capture Ltd/ Alamy Stock Photo)

In Ancient Rome, what was the law of the twelve tables?