Crime and Punishment Week

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Q&A Did the Scottish mass-murdering cannibal Sawney Bean actually exist?

How was it administered and by whom was it carried out? (Image from Getty Images)

Q&A: What was the punishment of being ‘burnt in the hand’?

A 1628 engraving of the Spanish siege of the Dutch city of Breda

Was James VI and I murdered?

A photograph of Rudolph Hoess during his trial in Warsaw in 1947. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Second World War

Rudolf Höss & the men behind the mass murder at Auschwitz

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

The real history behind Victorian thriller ‘The Limehouse Golem’

John Bellingham Who Shot the Hon. Spencer Percival Print

The assassination of prime minister Spencer Perceval: what happened and was it a popular murder?

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 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

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