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The official website for BBC History Magazine, BBC History Revealed and BBC World Histories Magazine

Crime and Punishment Week

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

President John F Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally ride through the streets of Dallas, Texas, prior to the assassination of JFK, 22 November 1963. Included as an exhibit for the Warren Commission. (Photo by CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

The assassination of JFK: an eyewitness account

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?

Operators dealing with emergency calls at New Scotland Yard, London, c1956. (Photo by Reg Speller/Getty Images)

5 crimes that changed law enforcement in Britain