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“Impaled on a stake and left to die”: crime, punishment and law enforcement in ancient Egypt. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Roman soldiers on the detail of Trajan's Column

Why decimation was the most unfair punishment in the Roman Army

The Forty Elephants gang with an inset of Diamond Annie

Who were the real Forty Elephants? The true story of Mary Carr and the all-woman crime gang

A black and white illustration showing two men dressed in dark clothing and hats sitting in a rowing boat. One of them sits halfway in the boat, holding the oars. The other is leant over the front of the boat and is pulling the body of a woman out of the water. Behind them is a bridge with two large arches underneath it

He's the Victorian serial killer you've never heard of – and we may now know who he was. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A man in medieval attire hands another man an arrow

Was there a real Sheriff of Nottingham?

A sketch showing a woman surrounded by men. One man is putting a hood over her head and another is reading from a book next to her

These are four of the most brutal Victorian murders. Were women really the perpetrators?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A modern illustration shows a man dressed in a grey and red hooded outfit, knelt on the ground with a wooden bucket behind him and a lit lantern in front of him. He is shovelling a pile of poo

Think your job is bad? These 17 occupations from the past were much, much worse. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A woman on a medieval ducking stool

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

Illustration of a demon breathing fire with springs on his shoes jumping and scaring two women

Spring-Heeled Jack: the fire-breathing phantom that terrorised Victorian England

Illustration of soldiers in medieval armour killing peasant women

Why it was more dangerous to steal a loaf of bread than commit murder in medieval England

An 1872 illustration from the weekly newspaper Days’ Doings shows a shoplifter being apprehended (Photo by Look and Learn/Rosenberg Collection/Bridgeman Images)

Lady swindlers: 6 women who turned to lives of crime and became queens of the underworld. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

An outline of a woman sitting at a typewriter is placed over three newspaper clippings

From maniacal horses to bat-men on the moon: 14 strange newspaper headlines from history. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Composite image featuring a portrait of Winston Churchill over scenes of the Nuremberg Trials and soldiers carrying out wartime executions.

Second World War

Before the Nuremberg Trials, this was Winston Churchill’s shocking plan for Nazi war criminals

Gilles de Rais, accused of murdering at least 140 children in 15th-century France

Was Gilles de Rais really history’s first recorded serial killer?

The school for girls imprisoned at Tothill Fields in the late 1850s. A dedicated schoolmistress was employed to teach that institution’s large female population; in other prisons, the matron took lessons. (Engraving from Chronicle, via Alamy)

Reading, writing and retribution: inside Victorian prison schools. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

English author Agatha Christie, pictured at a dinner in 1957. By this time, she was one of the world’s best-selling writers, renowned for her detective fiction featuring characters such as Hercule Poirot.

A real Thursday Murder Club? How a team of crime fiction writers tried to save the genre (and solve crimes)

Hand-coloured engraving of someone being tortured on the wheel.

Stretched, crushed and impaled10 shocking torture methods from medieval history

A fairy in a green dress balances on the palm of a hand with a yellow background

Don’t fear the fairies – but do allow a little enchantment into your life. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A collage of a man in Nazi uniform in front of a large building

I've just been inside a Nazi monster's mansion – and what I found there was deeply haunting. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A seated person wearing an elaborate costume poses with one hand resting on their face. They wear a large, ornate headdress with wing‑like extensions and pearls, and a richly decorated outfit with detailed embroidery and an eagle motif on the chest.

"It wasn't very open about its queer connections": the hidden history of the National Trust. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Supplies train for the Russian transported during deportation to Siberia.

Nazino was Stalin’s worst labour gulag. Its inmates knew it by another name: Cannibal Island

Defendants at the Nuremberg Trials listen to proceedings in 1946. In the front row sit Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner; behind them are Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, and Fritz Sauckel. Together they represent the senior leadership of the Nazi regime held to account for its crimes.

Second World War

“I hope I would have defended the Nazis at Nuremberg”

Two women share a tender moment, c1902

Q&AHas it ever been a crime to be lesbian in England?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The princes in the Tower

Have we finally unmasked the killer of the Princes in the Tower?

Fake news and the Dreyfus affair: the media-fuelled scandal that divided France. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A collage of images showing a woman in a red and brown dress, with her arms around a small child to her left. Behind them is a large building, some ships and a crowd of people

Meet the incredible woman who saved Portugal's Jews. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Portrait of Coch Bach y Bala

Who was ‘The Welsh Houdini’?Coch Bach y Bala, the legendary prison escape artist. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A woman dressed in a grey top and a green and orange bandana holds a black and white photograph of a young man against her chin. She stands in front of a plain, yellow wall

The Srebrenica massacre: the worst atrocity committed on European soil since the Second World War. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Tudor angels of death: the 16th-century obsession with female killers. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Priest's Hole, formerly a medieval sewer, beneath the kitchen in Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire.

A perilous game of hide and seekThe history of priest holes and hunters