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“I hope I would have defended the Nazis at Nuremberg”
That’s what renowned barrister, and bestselling historian, Philippe Sands told us, but could you? With the 80th anniversary of the famous war trials upon us – and a new movie to boot – Dave Musgrove reflects on the perils of staging a trial the likes of which the world had never seen before
To have defended someone like Hans Frank, the governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland during WW2, charged with the murder of four million human beings, is a tough thing to imagine. Nevertheless, when I asked Philippe Sands – lawyer and writer – whether he would have defended the Nazis in the dock at the Nuremberg Trials, he told me “I hope so! I'm a believer that everyone is entitled to have their lawyer to defend their rights and their interests, irrespective of who they are or what they've done.” That was my final question to Sands after we’d recorded four episodes of an upcoming HistoryExtra podcast series on the Nuremberg Trials at the conclusion of the Second World War. I wanted to know where he’d stand on that question, because our conversation had reminded me how complicated some of the moral, as well as legal, questions were around the decision by the Allies to put a selection of leading Nazis on trial in November 1945. As a UK barrister, Sands is subject to the ‘cab-rank rule’, which obliges members of his profession to “take on any case provided that it is within their competence and they are available and appropriately remunerated”, but the idea of having to defend a Nazi war criminal, quite understandably, gave him pause for thought. Read more | Hitler's downfall and the end of the war and the Third Reich The trial of the century We shall all be given pause to reflect on the Nuremberg Trials as they hove back into public consciousness on their 80th anniversary. The trials ran from November 1945 through to October 1946. Twenty-four leading Nazis were indicted, though only 21 of them eventually stood trial in the courtroom proceedings. Neither Adolf Hitler nor the SS leader Heinrich Himmler were among them, as both had already taken their own lives. That left the biggest name in the dock as Hitler’s successor Hermann Göring, along with Hans Frank, Rudolf Hess, Admiral Karl Donitz and others. As with many big anniversaries, there will be media depictions, and so we have Russell Crowe playing Göring in the film 2025 film Nuremberg. Read more | Life in Nazi Germany We don’t see any of the lawyers who defended Göring and the other Nazis in the film, but rather we follow the efforts of the American chief prosecutor Robert H Jackson (played by Michael Shannon) to ensure that the crimes of the Nazis were exposed to the world. Plus, there is the fascinating side story of the US psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) who was tasked with assessing the mental state of the defendants. A trial unlike any other After watching the film I was drawn to reflect on how it compared to what I gleaned from Sands. Where it matches up is in its depiction of the wrangling over who should be put on trial and for what crimes. This was an international court with no precedent. The film also captures some of the urgency of the planning for the trial. Given that the Second World War only ended in Europe in May 1945, it was a very tight schedule to have the court up and running by November of the same year. Obviously there was a lot of thought given to the idea of a trial before the end of the war, though it was not a certainty that it would happen. Soviet leader Josef Stalin and US President Franklin D Roosevelt wanted a trial, but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill initially preferred the idea of summary justice. He wanted the Nazi leaders lined up and shot. He came round though, and at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin agreed there would be a trial for Nazi leaders. With the Allied commanders in accord, the lawyers could get to work. Read more | When and why did the US get involved in WW2? “It seems almost incredible that such an enterprise as the famous Nuremberg Trials were put together in so short period of time,” said Sands. “There are two really big issues they had to decide on. The first one is, who do you go for? And an early decision was taken to go for leaders. They wanted people who had planned, who'd been in government positions or who were serious industrialists. In the end, they chose 24 top political and financial leaders in Germany. “But the second issue, and this was even more complicated, was what were the crimes? As of February 1945, there was only one international crime, and that was war crime, which is the targeting of civilians in times of war.” Read more | Was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US in WW2 justified? The answer was that the Allies invented new crimes. “Crimes against humanity; crimes against peace, (which was waging illegal war), and then as a subhead of war crimes, [and] genocide, which makes its way in through the back door.” What the film gets right The film captures those deliberations well, along with the practicalities of actually running the trial, rebuilding the damaged courthouse, housing the prisoners, and gathering the international legal teams and global media in the shattered ruins of Nuremberg. It also, I think, demonstrates another point that Sands stressed to me, which is that the trial had to be fair, and had to be seen to be fair, under the glaring bulb of the press cameras. Though it was a form of victors’ justice, in that the Allies made the rules and ran the trial, Sands notes that “The defendants basically felt they got a fair trial. No one complained about the quality of the proceedings. No one complained about the behaviour of the judges.” A running theme of the film is the jeopardy that the Nazis might not be found guilty; that the Allies would be exposed to international ridicule. That was the risk of running a fair trial. Perhaps proof of that fairness is that some of the defendants were in fact acquitted. The film concludes, reasonably enough, with the hanging of those who were found guilty, but it omits to mention that some of those in the dock were sentenced to imprisonment and some were acquitted and walked free. The film also does well at showing the media interest in the trials, and particularly how the evidence presented by the prosecution of the crimes enacted in the concentration camps was brought to global attention via the court. The showing of film reel from the camps in the courtroom evinced global shock, as the true horror of the Nazi Final Solution was revealed to many observers around the world for the first time. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/hermann-goring-nuremberg-trials-ae99ebb.jpeg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Hermann Göring testifies in his own defense at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. Once a leading figure of the Nazi regime, Göring faced prosecution alongside other high-ranking officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the aftermath of the Second World War." title="hermann-goring-nuremberg-trials" /> Göring and Kelley One of the key themes of the film is the relationship between Göring and the psychiatrist Kelley. Russell Crowe’s portrayal of the Nazi leader is something to behold, and is pretty uncomfortable viewing in the first half of the film as the viewer is tempted to find some likeable elements to the character, through his dealings with Kelley. In the real trial, incidentally, the psychologist Dr Gustave Gilbert played a key role, as is depicted in Sands’ book East West Street. This isn’t something I discussed with Sands, but we did talk about the cross-examination of Göring by Robert Jackson. This scene is the dramatic highlight of the film, and it shows Crowe’s Göring getting the better of Shannon’s Jackson, only for Richard E Grant, playing the British lawyer David Maxwell Fyfe, to step in and rescue the situation. Sands told me that a relevant must-read is the account written by the American journalist Janet Flanner. Read more | The 1943 battle of Kursk: was it the biggest tank battle in history? “From Janet Flanner, we get the most extraordinary account of the cross-examination by Robert Jackson of Herman Göring. She observed that Göring runs rings around Jackson, and the reason was that Jackson was essentially an appellate lawyer. He didn’t know how to cross examine,” says Sands. “Flanner writes an excoriating account of Jackson’s performance as a cross examiner. She describes how eventually he had to stop. And a British lawyer, David Maxwell Fyfe, who knows how to cross examine, comes on and destroys Göring in short order. These accounts, absolutely brilliantly written, give you the full flavour of what’s going on in the courtroom.” Nazi Germany | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | Everything you need to know about Nazi Germany, guided by historian, author and broadcaster Laurence Rees. Explore the course now As courtroom drama scenes go, Nuremberg’s Goering cross-examination is not quite up there with Jack Nicholson barking ‘You can’t handle the truth’ at Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, but Crowe’s moment in the dock is nevertheless a memorable one. The film ends with a moralising message about how we need to take heed of the lessons of Nuremberg. I wasn’t convinced by the conclusion – it felt a bit forced to me. But the legacy of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-46 is certainly something we should take note of. "Nuremberg was a revolutionary moment” says Sands. “It was the first time in human history that countries came together and said the power of the state, the sovereign, the king, president or prime minister, is not absolute; you cannot anymore treat your own nationals or the nationals of other countries as you wish. You can’t kill and disappear individuals; you can’t kill and disappear groups. You are subject to constraints, not imposed by your own legal order, but by international law." The rule of international law depends on lawyers prepared to defend those charged with having broken it. So it makes perfect sense that Sands, as a vocal defender of the international legal system that owes so much to Nuremberg, should hope that he would have been prepared to act for the Nazis in the dock there. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
He is the foil to the outlaw Robin Hood, the embodiment of rapacious greed and government corruption in medieval England – but was the Sheriff of Nottingham a real man?
Yorkshire, July 1225. A sheriff is authorised by the king to “seek and take and behead Robert of Wetherby, outlaw and evil-doer of our land”. He tracks down Wetherby and, a few months later, grabs him. The sheriff’s accounts record a sum of 28 shillings for the cost of the pursuit – and two shillings “for a chain” to hang him. For some historians and folklorists, the headless corpse dangling in the air was that of the original Robin Hood. But what of the man who caught him? The 2025 Robin Hood series from MGM+ features Sean Bean as the Sheriff of Nottingham, Hood’s primary antagonist in the most popular tellings of the legend. Here, he is portrayed as a measured and principled officer, loyally performing his royal duties – an antithesis of Alan Rickman’s sheriff in the 1991 Hollywood film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. From the very start of the Robin Hood legend, it has been built on fictional entertainment; however, there may well be elements of it that are rooted in fact. The Sheriff of Nottingham was one of the facts – sort of. Was the Sheriff of Nottingham a real position? Yes, there were real sheriffs of Nottingham, but not one specific sheriff to match the character of the Robin Hood myth. The first Sheriffs of Nottingham were William Sadler and Thomas Lyng, appointed together in 1449. Most Robin Hood films and TV series are set well before this, during the reign of King Richard the Lionheart. MGM+’s 2025 series tells us that it is set in 1189 – the year Richard comes to the throne. At the start of the series, Henry II (Richard’s father) is still very much alive, much to ire of his queen, the long-suffering Eleanor of Aquitaine (played by Gladiator II alumna Connie Nielsen). Before the mid-15th century, there was the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests, a position established in 1068 by William the Conqueror. The Royal Forests did, of course, cover Sherwood Forest. It is easy to see how this official title would become readily abbreviated into the Sheriff of Nottingham, especially to fit into the Robin Hood stories as they developed, which was almost certainly from the early 13th-century onwards. Whether those stories originated in Sherwood Forest and Nottingham, that’s another matter that cannot be proven one way or the other. Who was the real Sheriff of Nottingham? The inspiration for the Sheriff of Nottingham depends on when the story is set. The most familiar modern timing for the story is during the reign of Richard the Lionheart (1189–99). We see this in Robin of Sherwood (1984–6), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and the Robin Hood films of 2010 and 2018. As most of those stories have it, Richard’s younger brother, Prince John – living up to his pantomime villain image – tries to usurp the throne while Richard is on the Third Crusade (and, subsequently, in captivity). Until the king returns to England, the country suffers from corrupt officials, personified by the sheriffs and judges who prospered under John’s attempts to rule. Hence there is the need for a hero – Robin Hood – to right the wrongs inflicted upon the people until Richard restores equilibrium and justice. Read more | Robin Hood: how the legendary figure has been portrayed across the centuries So who was the Sheriff of Nottingham during this period? It’s still tricky, because there was more than one sheriff during the time of Richard’s absence and John’s rule; according to some accounts, there were as many as four. As in much of the Robin Hood myth, the information is not complete, and there were frequent periods of vacancy before the post was refilled. Elsewhere, other offices such as Constable of Chester could become associated with the shrievalty [the office of a sheriff], and the turmoil of John’s rebellion against Richard added to the confusion. There is therefore not just one person who can be fixed on as the sheriff of the Robin Hood stories. One figure is William Brewer, whom the Public Records Office places in office as the High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests from Easter 1194. While earning a reputation as a harsh enforcer of laws and taxes – and hence a possible candidate for the original sheriff of the Robin Hood legends – he was appointed by Richard until his dismissal in 1199. In other official posts, petitions were made for his removal on account of his greed. Another candidate is Ralph Murdac, in post in 1189, who sided with John during the revolt, and was thus in the opposite camp to Robin. Ralph is therefore ‘the’ sheriff of the Robin Hood stories if we adhere to the chronology; but as so often is the case with Robin Hood on screen, the sheriff has no name, simply being called by his title. This idea of the Robin Hood story taking place in the 1190s was first set out by the Scottish chronicler John Major in 1521 – some three centuries after the legend was spreading. Even then, he wrote, it was “according to my estimate”. Sir Walter Scott’s wildly successful and influential novel Ivanhoe (1819) cemented this period as being the time of Robin Hood in popular imagination. If we go later into John’s reign (1199–1216), as perhaps we should, then there are yet more possibilities for other wicked Sheriffs of Nottingham. Philip Marc, sheriff from 1209 to 1224, fits the bill nicely. His behaviour was so notorious that in 1215, Magna Carta demanded his removal from office. He was symptomatic of the injustices of John’s reign. What links the Sheriff of Nottingham with Robin Hood? It is interesting that our first surviving written texts of the Robin Hood story emanate from the second half of the 15th century, when the new position of Sheriff of Nottingham came into being. By this time, the position of High Sheriff had been reduced in power and influence across the country. It was a very different state of affairs to the 12th and 13th centuries, when he was the chief instrument of royal government in the shires. But the huge popularity of the Robin Hood stories has made the Sheriff of Nottingham by far the most famous of all of England’s sheriffs. Read more | Who was Schinderhannes and why is he known as the ‘German Robin Hood’? And besides, who the actual sheriff was matters less in the Robin Hood stories than what he represented: the corruption of justice and righteous rule. Sheriffs had plenty of opportunity to abuse power. They collected revenues and taxes, prepared and presided over courts, arrested criminals and detained them in custody, and, crucially, oversaw forestry laws, which meant dealing with poaching. These provided ample occasions for bribery, profiteering and extortion. Often this was at the behest of the king. Was the Sheriff of Nottingham related to Henry II of England? Though the Sheriff of Nottingham held a lot of power, there is no evidence that he was related to the kings of England. MGM+’s 2025 Robin Hood makes much of Sean Bean’s Sheriff of Nottingham being cousin to Henry II (and a descendant of William the Conqueror), fitting into a wider narrative of strife between the Norman aristocracy and the Saxons they had supplanted in the wake of the Norman Conquest some 130 years earlier. Read more | What's the most accurate Robin Hood film? Taking into account the available crossover time spans of the series and the earliest potential timings of the Robin Hood story, the answer here is: no. The sheriff’s link to the king is a matter of artistic licence, introducing a dynamic that pits the sheriff’s loyalty to his cousin against the pressures of Eleanor of Aquitaine. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians and ranked by you, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week
The Srebrenica massacre: the worst atrocity committed on European soil since the Second World War
Over the course of four days in July 1995, Bosnian-Serb forces murdered more than 8,000 men and boys – in a United Nations-protected ‘safe area’. Legally recognised as an act of genocide, the Srebrenica massacre is the worst act of mass killing committed on European soil since the Second World War. What drove the perpetrators to carry out such a terrible crime? And how did the international community allow it to happen?
Before the Bosnian War broke out, Srebrenica was just a small secluded town in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. Very few people outside of the Balkans had even heard of it. But all that changed over the course of a few short days in July 1995 – and for the most terrible of reasons. Srebrenica had been changing fast in the months before it became the focus of the world’s attention. By 1995, it had morphed into a large refugee camp surrounded by hostile forces. Some 40,000 people had been forced to flee there as a consequence of the violent break-up of the country of which Bosnia was part: Yugoslavia. Displaced by a vicious Serb-led ethnic cleansing campaign, those refugees largely consisted of the rural, Bosnian Muslim (or Bosniak) population of eastern Bosnia. War had come to Bosnia in late March 1992, a year or so after two other republics – Croatia, very violently, and Slovenia, much less so – had seceded from the multi-ethnic Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Shaken by the violence in Croatia between the Croat majority and Serb minority, the international community was soon even more appalled by events in Bosnia. “Almost overnight the republic broke apart,” one UN official on the ground noted. Large swathes of territory in the east, north and north-west were ethnically cleansed by Serb paramilitary forces, supported by the Serb-dominated regular Yugoslav Army. After six weeks, by late May 1992, Serb forces controlled 60 per cent of the territory of Bosnia, even though their ethnic kin made up only just over 30 per cent of the population, as against 43 per cent Bosniaks and 17 per cent Croats. Those Bosniaks unable to flee abroad found themselves crammed into a landlocked central rump. The capital, Sarajevo, was besieged. In the west, an enclave around Bihać still held out. So did several pockets in the east, centred on Goražde, Žepa and Srebrenica. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/2NE5810-667225d.jpg" width="1772" height="1198" alt="A man holds up his family’s last stick of corn while sheltering in Srebrenica in March 1993. A major Serb offensive towards the town the previous month triggered a humanitarian crisis (Image by Alamy)" title="A man holds up his family’s last stick of corn while sheltering in Srebrenica in March 1993. A major Serb offensive towards the town the previous month triggered a humanitarian crisis (Image by Alamy)" /> The violence in Croatia had alerted the international community to the need for intervention on behalf of the civilian population. In January 1992, a UN Protection Force had deployed to monitor a UN-negotiated ceasefire in Croatia. After the war spread to Bosnia, it extended operations to the new battleground. The countries contributing troops to the UN Protection Force were, however, extremely hesitant about getting embroiled in the war. They believed that they faced a conflict driven by “ancient ethnic hatreds” over which they would struggle, at the cost of a massive effort and high casualties, to get control. They limited themselves to attempting to deliver humanitarian aid, deter hostilities through their presence and offer their good offices to the warring parties to negotiate a peace accord. All three activities proved highly frustrating. Military weakness and a deep sense of injustice made the Bosniak government intransigent and fearful of ending up with front lines that solidified into permanent borders. The Serbs, now fighting in Bosnia under the guise of an independent Bosnian Serb Republic with a Bosnian Serb Army, felt their ethnic ‘liberation’ project was incomplete, especially with the pesky enclaves in their rear areas. Not only did Bosniak forces launch armed foraging expeditions from them, but their government rejected any and all suggestions to evacuate or trade the territory. On the sidelines hovered the revanchist Croats who also harboured ill-disguised expansionist designs on Bosnia. Read more | How the Holocaust began Lightly armed and with their governments ever fearful of getting caught up in hostilities, the cautious UN Protection Force troops had little deterrent effect. Aid delivery depended on the whims of the warring parties and was constantly sabotaged. And absent the threat of external armed intervention, successive peace plans came to nought. Bosnian Serb forces gradually whittled down the Bosniak enclaves. In February 1993, they launched a major offensive towards Srebrenica. In the middle of winter, with no food and medical supplies getting through and under daily shelling, a humanitarian disaster quickly unfolded for the tens of thousands of people who were pushed into a smaller and smaller area. Fearing eastern Bosnia was about to be ethnically cleansed, the UN Protection Force commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina, French general Philippe Morillon, made his way to Srebrenica. On 12 March, surrounded by a sea of desperate women and children, he announced from the balcony of the post office in Srebrenica: “You are now under the protection of the UN forces… I will never abandon you.” A week later he managed to get the first aid convoy to reach the town since November 1992. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/2NBD7XK-261f8d3.jpg" width="1772" height="1182" alt="In March 1993 the French general Philippe Morillon told the people of Srebrenica: “You are now under the protection of the UN forces. I will never abandon you" title="In March 1993 the French general Philippe Morillon told the people of Srebrenica: “You are now under the protection of the UN forces. I will never abandon you" /> Morillon’s very public commitment ratcheted up the pressure on a hesitant UN Security Council to come up with some kind of plan to protect the besieged Bosniak population. When the Serbs resumed their attack, the council declared Srebrenica a “safe area” on 16 April 1993. The UN Resolution bought Srebrenica a respite. A small unit of Canadian peacekeepers (later replaced by a Dutch battalion) now entered the enclave and, intermittently and never in sufficient quantities, humanitarian aid trickled in. The situation satisfied no one. The Serbs had let Morillon and the Canadians in because they expected the safe area to be demilitarised and eventually evacuated, helped by the appalling living conditions in the enclave (to which Serb control over the influx of humanitarian aid greatly contributed). The Bosniak government refused to contemplate either disarmament or evacuation because doing so made it complicit in the ethnic cleansing of its own people. The Dutch UN troops – undersupplied, underarmed and under-appreciated by Serbs and Bosniaks alike – were caught in the highly uncomfortable middle. An uneasy stalemate ensued. Slowly, however, the political and military balance began to change. The recalcitrant Serbs found themselves defending very long frontlines, trying to hold on against Bosniak and Croat forces that were arming with covert international (primarily US) help. After two years of deadlock, in a bid to rationalise frontlines – and with it, strengthen their negotiating position – the Serbs finally decided to clean up the map and seize the eastern enclaves. The campaign was a carefully planned undertaking. On 8 March 1995, the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Radovan Karadžić, signed a directive ordering his army to prepare an operation to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica and Žepa”. In late June, they began a PR offensive to legitimise impending action. On 24 June, Karadžić’s army commander, General Ratko Mladić, complained about the failed demilitarisation and continued raiding by Bosniak forces from Srebrenica. If nothing was done, Mladić would be forced to take matters into his own hands. Three days later his spokesman took the international press, including The New York Times, to the village of Višnjica, raided the day before. No international reaction followed. Five days later, the final touches were put to the military plan of attack. On 6 July, the Bosnian Serb army opened fire on the ‘safe area’. The Serbs skilfully exploited the UN’s fear of escalation and indecision. They kept their ultimate objective in doubt for as long as possible. Initially proceeding slowly on a limited front with limited forces, they made it appear that they wanted to make a point (once again) about the failed demilitarisation and were not intending to take the whole enclave by force. The lightly armed 400-or-so Dutch troops had limited means to resist anyway. Their main heavy weapon of last resort was calling in Nato airpower support. However, this weapon was largely neutralised by political hesitation to employ it in sufficient quantity after the Serbs took a number of Dutch soldiers hostage from exposed observation points in the opening days. By the evening of 9 July, Serb forces had inched their way forward to the outskirts of Srebrenica town. They were poised to take the enclave. The next day Nato aircraft took on standby positions over the Adriatic. The Serbs paused. When the planes ran out of fuel and returned to base, they advanced. Dutch troops in their white-painted peacekeeping vehicles then tried to block them by directing small arms fire over the heads of the attacking forces. By now, the day was ending and the Serbs paused again. A night of feverish activity ensued on the UN side. The Serb objective was clear. Surely, large scale air support was warranted to save the safe area? But what about the possibility of Serb artillery opening up on the defenceless, already panicking population in the enclave in retaliation? What would happen to the Dutch UN soldiers being held hostage? Did not the whole of the UN Protection Force now risk getting embroiled in all-out war with the Serbs? Eventually a decision was taken for a show of (some) force. A substantial strike package of aircraft took to the air in the early morning, but due to hesitation and confusion in communications, they returned to base by late morning, unused. The Serbs advanced again. As Srebrenica was about to fall, a hastily scrambled pair of F-16s appeared overhead and dropped two bombs. The Serbs issued a swift ultimatum threatening to shell the population and kill the hostages. Further air attacks were called off. The ‘safe area’ had fallen. The Dutch now faced the question of what to do with the 40,000 refugees in their care. The majority fled to the main Dutch base at Potočari, several kilometres north of Srebrenica. In the high heat of summer, lacking food, water supplies and sanitation facilities, the next stage in the humanitarian tragedy unfolded. The peacekeepers let several thousand into their compound, an old battery factory, but could not really care for them properly. Many more thousands had to be kept outside the wire, unwillingly, unprotected and fearful of their fate. Overwhelmed, the Dutch commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Thom Karremans, sought help from the Serbs. In the evening of 11 July, he met twice with General Mladić. The obvious way forward was to organise an orderly evacuation of the refugees. Mladić gladly obliged. In a sign that a carefully prepared operation was getting into gear, only a few hours after Serb soldiers arrived in Potočari in the late morning on 12 July, a fleet of some 60 buses turned up to transport the Bosniak refugees out. Mladić also appeared in person (and was filmed) assuring the refugees they were safe: “Don’t be afraid, just take it easy… No one will harm you.” At three in the afternoon, the first bus left for Bosnian government held territory. Read more | Yugoslavia: why shared Slavic identity couldn’t save an idealised nation from fracture and bloodshed Worrying signs soon became noticeable, however. The Dutch who had planned to accompany the transports to ensure the safety of the deportees were largely prevented from doing so. They also noticed that relatively few men had fled to Potočari. Those who had were separated from the women and children and prevented from getting on the buses. Serb military personnel actively searched for what they claimed were ‘war criminals’, a category that seemed to comprise all men, old, young, even disabled. Dutch soldiers witnessed incidental executions of men taking place around the compound and observed larger groups of men – later estimated to have been some 1,700 in number – being transported to nearby Serb-held Bratunac. The deportation from Potočari was complete by 7pm the next day, 13 July. Some 23,000 people, virtually all women and children, arrived in Kladanj and Tuzla. There the absence of the men was also noticed. What had happened to them? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/5962-BOSNIA-MAP-Battlefield-Design-13a7487.jpg" width="1759" height="1173" alt="A green, yellow, orange and pink map showing Bosnia-Herzegovina's controlled areas in 1994" title="Our map shows Bosnia-Herzegovina in summer 1994. By now, the Serbs had forced the Bosniak population into a central rump, flanked by isolated enclaves including Srebrenica (Map illustration by Paul Hewitt – Battlefield Design)" /> Fifteen thousand Bosniak men had in fact decided to flee the enclave in a desperate attempt to reach Tuzla by traversing enemy-held territory. In the night of 11 and 12 July, they began the fateful trek from the north-west corner of the enclave. The Bosnian Serbs had not expected this and it took them some hours to notice. But when they did, their action was swift. Although the territory was generally thickly forested, the Bosniaks had to cross open ground around two roads on the way to safety. During the 12th, Bosnian Serb forces started deploying at close, regular intervals along these roads. By late afternoon the next day, they thought they had already captured some 6,000 men. The exhausted, dishevelled, deadly fearful prisoners were assembled in several places, including a football pitch in Nova Kasaba, a meadow in Sandići, a warehouse in Kravica and a school in Bratunac. Some were executed there, the majority were transported to execution sites further afield. That happened once the buses that had deported their women and children became available. Since the women were driven along the same road the men had to cross, some had seen their menfolk at the collection sites. Read more | Genocide: what can we learn from history? By the 16th, almost all the captured men, some 8,000 in total, were dead and buried. Despite all the signs, the realisation that something terrible had happened was not immediate. The Bosnian Serbs had completed the deportation and massacre in double-quick time because speed was of the essence to stymie any international reaction and possible intervention. The mere absence of the missing men seemed to prove little without the physical evidence of dead bodies. Still, US intelligence analysts began to scour spy plane and satellite imagery for evidence. An intrepid Christian Science Monitor reporter, David Rohde, surreptitiously made his way in mid-August to one possible site identified in photographs: the Nova Kasaba football field. He discovered the first shallow mass grave, with documents scattered around and a decomposed leg still sticking out of the recently disturbed soil. The story began to get out. The growing realisation that a terrible fate had befallen the missing men and boys from Srebrenica finally stiffened the resolve of the international community to force a settlement to the war. At the end of August, an Anglo-French-Dutch Rapid Reaction Force broke the three-year siege of Sarajevo and Nato aircraft began to extensively bomb Bosnian-Serb targets. The intervention brought all the warring parties to the negotiating table at Dayton in the US. An accord was signed on 21 November and the fighting in Bosnia ended. To date, more than 7,000 bodies have been exhumed and identified. Most now lie buried in a specially dedicated memorial cemetery in Potočari. The search for the remaining missing and their identification goes on to this day in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is undertaken by various international organisations with support of the Bosnian government. Some 50 of the men responsible for the genocide have been convicted by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Bosnian and Serbian courts. The most senior perpetrators, including Mladić and Karadžić, are serving life sentences. Why did the Bosnian Serbs commit so heinous a crime? The question of motive is not settled. Some think that General Mladić gave the order in a fit of pique, angry at being surprised by the Bosniak men’s attempted escape, and denied a formal surrender. Many more believe that somehow extreme violence is part and parcel of war and especially ethnic war. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-2160927551-b4536e1.jpg" width="1772" height="1181" alt="A woman dresses in a pale pink dress and headscarf sits on the grass among several stone graves. She looks upset and has her hand resting on one grave" title="A woman mourns a victim of the massacre at the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial, July 2024. Few Bosniaks have returned to their homes in the three decades since the killings (Image by Getty Images)" /> Neither theory seems completely plausible. The deliberation and organisation with which the genocide was executed suggest a high degree of design and intent. The speed and efficiency with which the Bosnian Serb forces switched to mass murder mode and the apparent absence of any principled objections by the officer corps involved further underlines this. In seeking a rationale for the genocide, in addition perhaps to a bureaucratic mindset of following orders, the better answer may be sought in an ideology, widely shared among the Serb military and politicians, that saw the world as divided between competing and antagonistic races. A supposedly naturally existing enmity was taken to justify extreme means to ‘defend’ one’s own race. In the case of Bosnia, that did not necessarily mean committing genocide in the sense of the complete physical elimination of the ethnic group seen as foreign and threatening. It did envisage, however, the group’s complete and permanent removal from the territory that the Serbs claimed as theirs, through extremely violent and systematic persecution and, if necessary, mass murder. What the Bosnian Serb leadership sought to achieve by killing the men was to make the “survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica” and the rest of eastern Bosnia impossible. By killing the Muslim men they sought to assure that the deported women and children would never return. That goal was to a large extent achieved. Few surviving Bosniaks have returned to their former homesteads. Srebrenica, and most of eastern Bosnia, is now part of the Republika Srpska, the republic promulgated at the beginning of the war to unify the Serbs in Bosnia. Its borders largely follow the frontlines of late 1995. Finally, why did the international community not properly protect the ‘safe area’ and stop the genocide? A major reason is that it mostly failed to recognise the conflict for what it was. It could not fathom the extent to which war crimes, up to and including genocide, were a deliberate and calculated means in the pursuit of an extremist political agenda. In this case, that agenda was to establish an ethnically pure territorial state – and in pursuit of that agenda the people of Bosnia would pay a terrible price. Jan Willem Honig is visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He is the author, together with Norbert Both, of Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime (Penguin, 1996) This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Spring-Heeled Jack: the fire-breathing phantom that terrorised Victorian England
A supernaturally athletic ghost is alleged to have menaced the towns and cities of 19th-century England. Able to spew fire from its mouth and jump extraordinary distances, this phantom confounded the police and press alike for decades
Tall and thin, with glowing red eyes, a monstrous face, sharp metallic claws and the power to breathe fire – this was, for several decades, the most common description of a supernatural entity that terrorised Victorian England. Who was Spring-Heeled Jack? Spring-Heeled Jack was the name given to a ‘phantom’ of urban legend that plagued fretful Victorians and delighted readers of penny dreadfuls. He was so named by the press for his seemingly supernatural ability to leap nine feet – or more – into the air to evade capture. Newspapers struggled to keep up with an influx of alleged sightings, which saw this phantom appear miles apart in quick succession. Police forces across the country were likewise bombarded with reports of the ghost, which could not be captured on account of its ability to leap away at extraordinary speeds and distances. And this earned it a moniker which was to become synonymous with the paranormal for nearly a century: Spring-Heeled Jack. When was Spring-Heeled Jack first seen? The earliest rumours of this ghostly entity emerged from rural villages south of London. In late 1837, villagers in Barnes reported that a white bull had attacked several people (mostly women) at night. Reaching East Sheen, it assumed the form of a white bear and was referred to by locals as the ‘Evil One’. Spring-Heeled Jack first took human form in January 1838, when he appeared wearing brass armour, claw gloves, and the spring-loaded shoes that were to become his hallmark. He was occasionally accompanied by other apparitions, and evaded capture by scaling walls and jumping away – to heights of up to nine feet. Gossip, rumour and occasional newspaper reporting quickly spread these alleged sightings of a fearsome, dangerous devil-man. Victorian Londoners were fascinated and horrified by this supernatural attacker that appeared to be closing in on the capital. In January 1838, the Lord Mayor of the City of London announced that he had received a letter from a ‘Peckham resident’, who alleged a group of people had been donning different disguises – including those of a ghost, the devil, and a bear – and frightening women as part of a dare. But this could hardly explain the apparition’s supernatural athleticism or its occasional targeting of male victims. If this was an attempt to assure the public that there was nothing supernatural to fear, it backfired. A report in The Times the next day marked the phantom’s entrance into the mainstream press. Referred to as “the suburban ghost”, “Steel Jack” and “Spring Jack”, among other names, the press had until now struggled to agree on nomenclature. By the end of the following week, however, the Penny Satirist had put in print the moniker which was finally going to stick: Spring-Heeled Jack. Soon, a “committee of gentlemen” had assembled to raise funds for a jackpot that would be rewarded to anyone able to capture Spring-Heeled Jack. But the question on everyone’s lips was the same: who, or what, was responsible for the hauntings? Read more | Living in fear: the dangers of Victorian London Was Spring-Heeled Jack real? Many Victorians genuinely believed that Spring-Heeled Jack was a demonic entity endowed with supernatural abilities. His reputation as a devious and violent ghost was sustained by word-of-mouth rumours, which spread within and between communities. While newspapers often approached sightings sceptically, witnesses and many of their neighbours were gripped by a genuine fear of the supernatural. But for many, there were less otherworldly explanations. One prevailing theory was that there was no singular demonic entity called Spring-Heeled Jack, but rather a conspiracy of eccentric aristocrats who had placed a wager on the number of victims they could frighten while wearing costumes. The Sun reported, apparently without any evidence, that a stake of £5,000 had been agreed on by “this gang of ghosts and hobgoblins”. This would explain how Spring-Heeled Jack appeared to be in multiple places at once. The Marquess of Waterford, a nobleman known for his rowdy and unruly behaviour, was also a popular suspect, despite there being no solid evidence to back up this claim. Even the fact that Spring-Heeled Jack’s escapades continued long after the Irish peer’s death in 1859 did little to dampen the rumour. Who were Spring Heeled Jack’s most famous victims? On the evening of 20 February 1838, Spring-Heeled Jack ventured into the capital for the first time. At about 8.45pm, 18-year-old Jane Alsop heard “violent ringing” at the gate in front of her family’s home in East London. Standing outside was an agitated man who claimed he was a policeman and implored the teenager to “bring me a light, for we have caught Spring-Heeled Jack here in the lane”. But when Jane fetched a candle and handed it to him, the visitor suddenly threw off his coat, “presented a most hideous and frightful appearance, and vomited forth a quantity of blue and white flame from his mouth”. Glaring at her with fiery red eyes, he then began tearing at her skin and clothing with metallic claws. Although she was ultimately rescued by her older sister, who grappled with the assailant and forced him to flee, the assault left Jane injured and in shock. Her subsequent testimony to the police garnered significant press coverage, catapulting Spring-Heeled Jack even further into public consciousness. Read more | 5 Georgian ghost hoaxes The supernatural fiend was apparently undeterred by an increasingly fervent public appeal for his capture. Only five days later, he reportedly terrified – but did not harm – a servant boy who had opened the door to his knocking. A few days later, one Lucy Scales was walking home with her sister when the pair spotted a tall, thin man standing in the alley ahead of them. As Lucy approached the cloaked figure, he spewed blue flames in her face, temporarily blinding her and sending her into violent fits. He then fled. Police investigators were by now exploring the possibility that the attacker’s fire-breathing abilities were in fact the product of a scientific contraption which used alcohol and sulphur, connected to a breathing tube, to produce flames when ignited. How the media reacted to Spring-Heeled Jack The newspapers of Victorian England were eager to capitalise on the attention being paid to Spring-Heeled Jack, though they rarely indulged the idea that he really was a ghost. After the attacks on Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales, reported sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack appeared in press coverage across the country. Many of these were based on unsubstantiated local rumours which the media might not have entertained had Spring-Heeled Jack not already gained such notoriety. Typically he appeared in the form that the two young women had witnessed – a tall man in a cloak who could transform suddenly into a monstrous figure. The Bristol Mercury somewhat sceptically reported an appearance of the “mischievous personage” in June 1838. When the phantom was sighted in Surrey, the Morning Post shrugged him off as an impersonator. Regional newspapers reported sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack throughout the next four decades, though his popularity was slowly waning. Even so, the more sensationalist newspapers continued to exploit reports of the phantom’s apparitions. The Illustrated Police News reported in 1877 that Spring-Heeled Jack had climbed a Roman ruin in Newport, Lincolnshire, and been shot at by angry locals – but escaped unharmed. It provided a dramatic illustration of the encounter for readers to gawk at. Was Spring-Heeled Jack caught? There was no arrest which put a stop to the supernatural phantom’s exploits, but a number of very human copycats were caught red-handed. These included a Londoner who, in March 1838 chased after women and children while wearing a mask with blue glazed paper attached to his mouth to imitate fire. In 1842, a man believed to be Spring-Heeled Jack, or one of his associates, was captured in the town of Eye, Surrey, but he soon disappeared from the police station in which he was being held. “Some suppose that by some chemical process Jack was converted into a spirit and so managed to make his escape,” the Ipswich Journal reported. Though sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack dwindled towards the end of the 19th century, he had become a fixture of Victorian popular culture – the subject of street ballads, at least four plays, and a bogeyman used to scare unruly children into obedience. In penny dreadful booklets, Spring-Heeled Jack was transformed from an evil spirit who terrorised women into a masked vigilante figure who used his supernatural powers to punish wrongdoers – an early kind of superhero. One of these serials, titled Spring-heel’d Jack: The Terror of London, was published weekly in 1863 and saw 40 instalments. Anticipating that readers would be suspicious of its titular character’s new-found heroism, the writer had Spring-Heeled Jack describe himself as “one who is not so black as he is painted”. But its title suggests the apparition still had a less-than-stellar reputation. The last widely reported sighting of Spring-Heeled Jack was in Liverpool in 1904, where he jumped between rooftops to the amazement of crowds of people. By this time, most alleged appearances were dismissed as attention-seeking imitators, and Jack the Ripper had dethroned him as England’s most terrifying character. But Spring-Heeled Jack nonetheless continued to lurk in the shadowy margins of English society – as one of the country’s first urban legends which had caused generations of people to glance nervously behind them as they travelled the dimly-lit alleyways of Victorian Britain. Spring-Heeled Jack is discussed further on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. Piers Mucklejohn is a freelance journalist
Don’t fear the fairies – but do allow a little enchantment into your life
In an age in which we are no longer mortally afraid of the supernatural, there's space to enjoy freely magic and ritual, Professor Ronald Hutton tells David Musgrove
Most of us, these days, do not believe in fairies. But maybe we should allow a little more enchantment into our lives – that is the Life Lesson from History that Professor Ronald Hutton would have us consider. In late December every year, on the winter solstice, I like to make a mini-pilgrimage to Avebury at dawn. Avebury is, of course, one of Britain’s most impressive prehistoric megalithic monuments – a huge Neolithic stone circle, surrounded by a massive bank and ditch, with two smaller stone circles inside. It’s so big, in fact, that inside the stone circle is an entire village and a pub (which are obviously substantially later in date than the megaliths). I’m not alone in heading to this huge henge for the solstice – many are drawn to it, and there is something of a carnival vibe. I get up at about 4am and generally make some of my friends get up as well (they thank me not for this). We drive for an hour in the dark and then go for a jog for a few miles from the stone circle, past the enormous and abundantly enigmatic Silbury Hill, up to the West Kennet Long Barrow, and then back along the avenue of standing stones that leads into the henge and circle. I try to plan it to arrive back in Avebury as dawn breaks, but I never get the timing right, and it’s invariably overcast anyway, so I’ve never witnessed an impressive spiritual sunrise moment. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/HEPKG2avebury-846ee37.jpg" width="5100" height="3400" alt="A large rock takes up half the image. In the background a long line of people gather together under the purple sky" title="Avebury in Wiltshire is home to Britain’s largest stone circle, which is so big that inside are an entire village and a pub (built much later) (Image by Alamy)" /> I thought about Avebury after I’d chatted to Professor Hutton, one of the leading experts on the history of belief, ritual and the supernatural. I invited him to talk about his life lessons from history and I was delighted when he promptly replied, with the following message: “Perhaps I could offer some thought on the conveniences of living in a modern disenchanted world, in which we no longer feel generally menaced by fairies, ghosts, demons or spirits, and people who do feel the presence of a spirit world or the divine can interact with it as a private matter and without being called to account for it by authorities.” I was keen to understand what he meant by the ‘modern disenchanted world’, and he explained that it was in essence a place where fairies are not at large to cause mischief, witches won’t make your children ill, and lettuce leaves are unlikely to harbour demons (I’ll come back to that last point). “ I hear a lot these days about the world having lost that thrilling sense of the supernatural: a real belief in dragons, fairies, witches and wizards, and a general sense of wonder in the world. And I understand that feeling, having spent quite a lot of my professional life studying beliefs in exactly these things, but my basic argument is it’s actually a real asset living in a disenchanted world,” Professor Hutton says. “First, because you don’t have to be afraid of the supernatural. And second, because most people don’t have to be afraid of the supernatural in you.” Back at Avebury, I’m guessing that quite a lot of the people turning up there on the winter solstice have not lost that sense of the supernatural. There are always crowds of people flowing around the stones, and more people stood crowning the top of the henge bank. It’s a busy place on the winter solstice. Among the stones, you’ll find people dressed in garb that you might describe as druidic, actively celebrating and communing, banging drums, singing, chanting, blowing horns and things that look suspiciously like didgeridoos. They appear to be practising what I imagine are pagan rites. I’ve never asked these celebrants what they’re doing, and I’ve never felt any need to either join in or intervene. I assume they are looking for something that isn’t readily available in the 21st century. I also guess that there are a lot of people who are spectators, looking in from the disenchanted world, sitting on the sidelines and hoping for entertainment over enlightenment. As far as I can tell, there is no sense of antagonism between these groups, and no obvious sign of anyone being challenged for their actions or beliefs, even if they might be somewhat unorthodox. This, says Hutton, is something we should celebrate, and use to our advantage. “People can actually be what they wish – express themselves – without their neighbours beating them up, dragging them into court, or in modern times, breaking their windows or posting horrid things through their letter boxes.” If we wish, we are afforded the best of both worlds. We can bewitch ourselves with ritual, legend, spirituality – but we don’t have to live in fear of being accused of sorcery. “It’s only safe to be a witch in a society that doesn’t believe you’re a witch,” points out Hutton. Read more | A medieval mystery: the green-coloured children found in an English village Policing the unknown Ronald Hutton has spent his academic life exploring these fears – what they meant, how they manifested, and crucially, how they were policed. “There was the constant nagging fear of orthodoxy needing to be policed, to get rid of heretics,” he explains. Such fears included “a real belief that if your child falls sick and the local doctor, if there is one, can’t work out what’s wrong with them – they’ve actually been bewitched by a neighbour.” Obviously it would be ridiculous to suggest that we don’t still live with fears today, but says Professor Hutton, they are of a different magnitude to what people had to contend with in the past. “Today we face all sorts of dangers in daily life – car crashes, muggers, drunken revellers, nutcases, hustlers.” But these, he says, are nothing compared to the terrifying reach of the unseen that haunted our ancestors. “If you went out at night in the countryside, you were in danger of being blighted by fairies or led astray by goblins. And there was also the issue of people being afraid of what you might do or believe in supernatural terms.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/2AHX04Edemons-ea8e85e.jpg" width="4724" height="3188" alt="A woodcut depicts gremlins, dragons and goblins. In the centre a warlock or wizard sits at a table" title="An early woodcut showing gremlins, dragons and goblins, summoned by a wizard or warlock. Magical creatures were once a source of fear in society (Image by Alamy)" /> And sometimes the fear went further still: not just suspicion of others, but fear of the world itself. “The lurking presence of demons in the air all around you. There’s an anecdote about a 14th-century nun who forgot to make the sign of the cross over a lettuce leaf in a salad. As a result, she swallowed a demon that was sitting invisibly upon it and was inflicted with all sorts of terrible digestive problems until she was exorcised.” That might sound a little absurd, I know, but that’s because we are today so far removed from the world view that these people had. I’m reminded of a HistoryExtra podcast conversation I had with the social historian Patrick Joyce, regarding his book about the vanished world of European peasants, Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World (Penguin, 2024). In his mind, that is a place most of us simply don’t understand at all. “Their world was full of spirits, but then the world was a kind of a thing in itself, a natural thing, in which they didn’t invoke spirits necessarily,” Professor Joyce told me. “If you behaved to the world as you felt the world should be behaved to, ie you respected the soil and the way in which it should be worked, you showed a solidarity with nature, and if you showed solidarity with nature, nature would show solidarity.” Joyce’s argument is that the rapid decline of peasantry in the 20th century has been overlooked and understudied. So it leaves us with an inability to understand properly how they saw things, and I guess what they were afraid of. A sense of control Back to Professor Hutton: “People in charge of society all over Europe began to lose their fear of these things from about 1660 onwards, but ordinary people, especially in the countryside, were burdened by them right up to the early 20th century.” So how did this change? What led us away from that weird world of magic and menace? According to Ronald Hutton, it’s a matter of pragmatism. Let’s take witches for instance. “One very good reason why witch-hunting came to an end in Europe is that Europeans realised there were no benefits. Communities that had witch hunts and put to death their neighbours as witches did not have healthier children, better weather, or better working farm equipment. On the contrary, they tended to be decimated, divided, and traumatised. It just wasn’t profitable.” If these fears didn’t produce positive results, the obvious question is why did they persist? What human need did they serve? Ronald Hutton is clear: they gave people a sense of agency. “You have someone to blame. The world seems a bit more manageable, because you can take action: hunt a witch; carry out an exorcism; hang up a rowan wood cross over your door to keep out bad luck.” And more deeply, they offered explanations for the inexplicable. “All over the world, people have wanted to blame somebody for things going remorselessly wrong. There are three entities on the hit list, and if you believe in one of these, you don’t tend to believe in the others. So societies dotted around worldwide tend to divide up between them.” First to blame, says Hutton, are angry or evil land spirits, fairies, demons. Secondly, “the human dead who’ve taken a dislike to you, vengeful ghosts, offended ancestors”. And the third, he explains, are evil human beings who’ve been working magic, in other words, witches. “But the point about all these three are there are remedies to all of them. So people feel less vulnerable and more empowered in the midst of what traditionally is an overwhelmingly powerful natural world, which nobody really understands.” Where it gets a little sobering though, is that the fear wasn’t just psychological – it could be fatal. Hutton recounts studies from American doctors in the 1940s, trying to understand why soldiers fighting in the Pacific were dying of minor wounds, apparently under the misapprehension that they had been seriously injured. These American medics looked at interwar medical records from doctors working in colonial possessions of imperial powers. They carried out autopsies on indigenous people in these colonies who believed they’d been fatally cursed, and observed why that might have happened. “Your system is bombarded by a constant tidal wave of adrenaline, which suppresses the immune system,” said Hutton, “and if you have a latent defect in a vital organ, the body breaks that open and people die.” So yes, it seems that believing in the supernatural could kill, under those circumstances. This is why, Hutton says, it’s such a gift that we no longer have to believe. “It’s so nice to have got rid of all that stuff.” A time for enchantment On the flip side of that though, if you do want a little magic in your life, that’s not a bad thing, according to the professor. “People often stabilise their lives in all sorts of societies by having what scholars slightly patronisingly call a ‘myth to live by’. A religion. A personal guardian spirit. A belief in certain aspects of the preternatural. These are not just comforting – they’re beneficial. They give confidence. They build character. They enable people to explore the world profitably in all sorts of ways. They work extremely well. I would be the last person to suggest that none of these entities actually exist. I’d never suggest that these belief systems are necessarily false. It’s just they’re not proven so we can take or leave them.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-2188133124chirstianity-478107c.jpg" width="3896" height="5564" alt="A drawn illustration shows the Virgin Mary, dressed in blue robes and holding baby Jesus. They are surrounded by a pink rose frame" title="The Virgin Mary and Child, surrounded by a pink rose, are depicted in this illustrated Vita Christi (Life of Christ) from the 15th century (Image by Getty Images)" /> Over recent decades people have been leaving, rather than taking, Christianity in the UK. Church of England attendance has been on the decline, though a recent survey does suggest a revival of late. But this is where the lesson from history comes in because now, maybe more than most other times in history, you can – if you wish – DIY your own religion. You can look to whatever spiritual or magical force you choose, and engage with it however you wish. There’s one time and place, where we might draw a parallel though: Roman London. If you travelled back in time to there, Hutton says, “you’d find yourself surrounded by an enormous range of deities, philosophies, and belief systems … with no formal structure to decide which are best. “And we’re simply reverting to that, with the tremendous multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity now – which Roman Britain had.” Read more | Prehistoric religion: a pagan riddle we will never solve? That might sound chaotic – but for Professor Hutton, it’s full of possibility. “Given that diversity and multiculturalism – whether people like it or not – has actually happened, people will get more used to it. And, with that wonderful adaptability of our species, find ways of turning it to their advantage. “I also take an immense comfort from the fact that I get complete radio silence from the supernatural with so much else to worry about in my professional and personal life. It’s great to be able to dispense with that. It’s great to be able to – if I am alone – go to bed alone in a particular room and not worry about anything else being there.” Ronald Hutton, I think, seems to be quite optimistic about the possibilities open to us if we do allow a little bit of room for the unknown in our disenchanted environment. “We can have the best of both worlds. The excitement of belief and possible encounters with supernatural worlds – without needing to be terrified of them as people often were in the past. And without needing to fear that our neighbours or the authorities will arrest us or beat us up because they think we have the wrong attitude to these things.” DIYing my beliefs I’ve never met a spirit, or a fairy, goblin or anything else out of the ordinary in the night. But I do love a good ghost story – Danny Robins’s Uncanny podcasts are my go-to when I’m not checking over HistoryExtra episodes. And I do love visiting prehistoric monuments, particularly at times of the year when I think people in the past have identified a certain liminal looseness in the boundary with the supernatural world. Having chatted to Ronald Hutton, I suspect this is all driven by an unmet need for that thrilling sense of the supernatural. So maybe next solstice, I shouldn’t run past, but rather stop and ask those folks celebrating around the stones at Avebury what they are actually doing. The beauty of being alive today, in Britain at least, is that they are at liberty to do whatever it is they think makes sense, and this quote from Hutton’s excellent book Pagan Britain (Yale University Press, 2013) sums it up nicely: “The relics of Britain’s pagan past offer a powerful challenge and stimulus to the modern imagination. They also have in common … an ability to defy full understanding and confident interpretation … One logical response to this trait is to encourage a multiplicity of interpretations, in which different people, and groups of them, reconstruct the pagan past subjectively, according to their own instincts and desires, within the limits of the available evidence.” Read more | Scotland's season of the witch Obviously I couldn’t finish my chat with Professor Hutton without asking him the question that I’m sure he gets asked any time anyone interviews him: what does he actually believe in? “If I have met a spirit, I haven’t been aware of the fact, so I have no personal experience of the divine or the supernatural. I have met an awful lot of people who have had these experiences, or at least believe they have them, and they sound pretty convincing to me. “So I have no overall frame of interpretation as to the nature of the cosmos. I find beliefs very exciting. I find some more attractive than others. Those that are more liberal and permissive and less prescriptive and repressive. But that’s a reflection of my personal politics. If you come down to the question: do I have religion? What do I believe in? I always in the end give the same answer, which is that, I never say.” This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
In 16th and 17th-century Scotland, many hundreds of ‘witches’ were put to death – 10 times the proportion executed in England. Martha McGill asks what drove the killings
In November 1590, a servant named Geillis Duncan from East Lothian was interrogated by her employer, David Seton. According to Newes from Scotland, a 1591 pamphlet that included a report of the case, Geillis used to sneak out of her master’s house at night. She also “took in hand to help all such as were troubled or grieved with any kind of sickness or infirmity” and performed “many matters most miraculous”. Suspicions aroused, Seton questioned Duncan about how she worked her cures. When she gave no answer, he tortured her with thumbscrews and by “binding or wrenching her head with a cord or rope”. Still she remained silent. Finally, Seton and others searched her for a ‘devil’s mark’ – a blemish or insensitive spot created by Satan – and found one on her throat. She broke down and confessed “that all her doings were done by the wicked allurements and enticements of the devil, and that she did them by witchcraft”. Witchcraft had been criminalised in 1563, and there had been a handful of prosecutions since. But Duncan’s confession kicked off something new – Scotland’s first large-scale witch-hunt. What’s striking about this panic over supposed black magic is just how much more intense and lethal it was than witch-hunting in other European countries – perhaps most notably England. Read more | Why was King James VI and I obsessed with witch hunts? Following her interrogation (involving torture), Geillis Duncan claimed to have participated in a night-time witches’ gathering, also known as a sabbat, at North Berwick kirk. She alleged that other locals were present, and as many as 70 people were ultimately accused. Their confessions detailed bizarre and alarming practices. Supposedly they had sailed across the sea in sieves, meeting at the kirk to dance and sing. The devil had preached from the pulpit, and they had kissed his buttocks. Some of the accused also claimed to have attacked King James VI, casting spells to harm him or raising storms to sink his ships. Newes from Scotland reported that the devil considered James VI “the greatest enemy he hath in the world” – a statement designed to flatter a monarch who believed himself divinely appointed. But James was also fearful of the devil’s designs on him, and involved himself directly in the interrogation of the accused witches. Blame began to make its way up the social scale, and the king’s own cousin, the Earl of Bothwell, was accused of heading a conspiracy against the monarch. Although he was eventually acquitted, Bothwell’s political career was ruined, and he was forced into exile. The last executions resulting from the North Berwick trials were in 1592, but the fallout from the witch-hunt endured far longer. The idea of the threat of witchcraft had been promulgated from the highest social echelons, and was further publicised in 1597 when James VI published Daemonologie, a book about the devil’s wiles. Mass witch-hunts swept Scotland again in 1628–30, 1649 and 1661–62. The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, a database recording known prosecutions, has identified 3,837 accused. Execution rates are difficult to establish but may have been in the region of two-thirds. By these metrics, Scotland’s execution rate per head of population may have been about five times the European average, and 10 times that in England. Who were the ‘witches’? Those accused of witchcraft were usually of middle age or older. Though rarely wealthy, they were not typically destitute. People from society’s middling ranks had the strongest economic ties to their neighbours, and were most likely to become embroiled in quarrels. Sometimes local healers or cunning folk were targeted, but most of the accused were not magical practitioners of any kind. Men were sometimes prosecuted for witchcraft. One of the victims of the North Berwick trials was a Haddington schoolmaster called John Fian. According to Newes from Scotland – the primary focus of which was Fian’s case – he confessed under torture to having served as the devil’s clerk at witches’ meetings. Other crimes ascribed to him by Newes from Scotland and the trial transcript included throwing cats into the sea to raise storms and magically lighting up a horse’s ears while travelling by night. Perhaps the oddest story told how Fian became obsessed with the sister of one of his pupils. When she rejected his attentions, he asked the boy to bring him three of the girl’s pubic hairs, promising in return to refrain from beating him in the classroom. The boy’s attempt to take the hairs awoke his sister, who complained to their mother. After a sound beating, the boy confessed the scheme. His crafty mother substituted the desired pubic hairs with three strands from a cow. When Fian eagerly brewed up a love spell, the cow reportedly came barging in, “leaping and dancing upon him, and following him forth… to what place so ever he went”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/G37Y28cmyk-9a5a776.jpg" width="3074" height="2048" alt="An illustration of man on a horse. A man bewitching a cow can be seen in the background. Gallows and a church are also visible." title="A woodcut in Newes from Scotland (1591), a pamphlet reporting the North Berwick witch trials, depicts John Fian enchanting a cow and adding torches to his horse’s ears." /> Fian was something of an outlier: about 85 per cent of those convicted of witchcraft in Scotland were female. Women were more likely to work in domestic spaces and to be blamed for domestic misfortunes. Misogyny was another factor. In the late 17th century, lecturers at Aberdeen University taught that women were more susceptible to demons because they “believe more easily, discern less, and are more driven by desires for revenge and pleasure”. Men who became witches, the lecturers added, were “often effeminate, timid, credulous, fickle, and disturbed in judgment like women”. The Scottish kirk was also a patriarchal institution. The Calvinist leader John Knox, who was probably involved in drafting the 1563 act that made witchcraft a capital offence, did have circles of female confidants. Yet he is better remembered for The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), in which he asserted that women were “weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish”. But Scotland was not any more misogynistic than other parts of Europe; indeed, women actually made up a higher proportion of those accused in England. Misogyny can’t explain the relative severity of witch-hunting north of the border. Capital punishment Legal frameworks provide a crucial starting point for understanding the differences between witch-hunting in England and Scotland. England’s 1563 and 1604 witchcraft acts prescribed different penalties according to the severity of the offence. By the terms of the Scottish act, any use of “witchcraft, sorcery and necromancy” was punishable by death. So, too, was consulting witches, though this was not enforced. Some convicted witches were given other sentences, such as banishment, but Scottish punishments remained harsher than those typically meted out south of the border. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/BAL234052cmyk-543dd44.jpg" width="3570" height="2378" alt="The devil speaks to witches in another woodcut from Newes from Scotland. By the time the North Berwick witch-hunt was over, some 70 people had been accused. (Photo by Bridgeman)" title="The devil speaks to witches in another woodcut from Newes from Scotland. By the time the North Berwick witch-hunt was over, some 70 people had been accused. (Photo by Bridgeman)" /> In addition, Scottish interrogators made more use of torture to extract confessions. This practice was illegal unless authorised by a warrant from the privy council, the main executive governmental body, but zealous ministers and lairds sometimes overlooked that prohibition. Physical torture of the kind used against Geillis Duncan seems to have been relatively uncommon, but sleep deprivation was probably widely employed. Another coercive interrogation method was witch-pricking, by which the accused was searched and pricked with pins to find a ‘devil’s mark’. Martha Semple (or Sempell), a “well-favoured and genteel” girl of 17 or 18 from Renfrewshire, was investigated for witchcraft in 1697. According to one record, she was twice searched for the devil’s mark, and “the pricker missed not to search the very soles of her feet and other more secret places, for when there was any difficulty to find the mark they did quite unclothe them”. In a society that prized women’s modesty, this ritual would have been deeply humiliating. Read more | The Pendle Witches: what happened in the infamous Lancashire witch trial? Trials also differed between England and Scotland. English judicial processes were largely centralised, and witch trials were typically held in county assize courts presided over by judges appointed by the crown. Before 1662, most accused witches in Scotland were tried in haphazard local courts overseen by commissioners who might have little or no legal training. Though the central court was relatively lenient, execution rates in local trials may have been higher than 90 per cent. Mary Cunningham was tried in Culross in 1644. Her advocate “gave in such defences as could not be answered by the procurator fiscal, who had no skill of law”. The commissioners admitted defeat, and petitioned the privy council to have her tried at the central court in Edinburgh instead. Mary was lucky. Most accused witches did not have the resources to hire a lawyer, and they were not permitted to speak in their own defence. Creating a godly state Particular political and religious contexts underpinned Scottish witch-hunts, which sometimes erupted during periods of economic hardship or political unrest when community tensions ran higher and the authorities were keen to appease God’s wrath. More broadly, they reflected a drive on the part of both church and state to transform Scotland into a godly nation. Following the 1560 Reformation, kirk sessions were established to enforce religious conformity and tackle sins such as blasphemy, swearing, drunkenness, profaning the Sabbath and illicit fornication. Ministers did not believe every accusation. In Ayr in 1633, Margaret McCall accused Agnes Dunschit of being “a rank witch who should be burnt quick”. McCall claimed that Dunschit had come to her house on a thundery night and told her to renounce her baptism. Yet the accuser could offer no proof, and the kirk – bearing in mind that McCall was “a drunkard and keeps a bad house” – ordered her to declare publicly that she had lied. Sometimes, however, ministers or local lairds did take accusations seriously. This was particularly likely if accusations covered a long period and were voiced by multiple people, or during periods of mass witch-hunting. Arrest and interrogation typically followed, at which point the nature of the accusations might evolve. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/GettyImages-918908272cmyk-22ae600.jpg" width="4994" height="3327" alt="A ship is wrecked in the sea, with people left stranded in the water. People watch from the shore and one has her arms raised." title="A ship is wrecked in a storm raised by a witch in a coloured woodcut of 1562. Women were far more likely to be accused of witchcraft than men" /> Neighbours commonly accused each other of acts of maleficium, or magical harm. In Kirkcaldy in 1633, Janet Allan testified that she had refused to give Alison Dick some sour bakes, after which the latter had declared that Allan’s children would beg and that tadpoles would nest in her husband’s hair. The husband was later lost at sea and their children were left destitute, leading Allan to suspect that Dick had cursed the family. The accused woman was executed a month later. In the eyes of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, witches targeted not just individuals but entire communities. Accused witches had entered into covenants with Satan, with the ultimate aim of dismantling godly society. As James VI explained it, witches used a variety of methods, but all worked towards “the enlarging of Satan’s tyranny”. Interrogators were often less concerned with investigating specific acts of maleficium and more with posing leading questions about diabolic pacts. Thus Janet Barker, tried in Edinburgh in 1643, confessed that the devil promised her a red petticoat and gown, so that “she should be as trimly clad as the best servant in Edinburgh”. She thereupon “condescended to be his servant for half a year”. Others detailed sexual encounters with Satan, who might take the form of a man or a beast. In 1662, Jonet Braidheid from Nairn described how the devil sucked the blood out of her mark and spat it out over her head to rebaptise her, then had sex with her. He was “as cold as spring well water” inside her. He paid her afterwards, but the money turned red. English scepticism The Scottish privy council wielded significant power over witch-hunts, being able to grant or refuse commissions for local trials. There was no comparable state authorisation in England. Even James VI lost much of his fervour for witch-hunting after he inherited the English throne and moved to London in 1603. English elites had been known to mock the barbaric, superstitious ways of the Scots, and James was perhaps cautious of appearing credulous to his English courtiers. Moreover, it seems that he became genuinely more sceptical. In the years following his move south, he personally investigated a handful of cases of demonic possession and, in deeming them fraudulent, saved the lives of several women accused of summoning the offending demons. Nor was the English church involved in witch-hunting to the same degree as the kirk in Scotland. The English Reformation was instigated by Henry VIII, whose motives were more political than ideological. The church remained highly centralised, and, though parish churches were important hubs, they did not develop the same powers of social control as kirk sessions. In Scotland, the Reformation was a relatively radical grassroots movement dedicated to refashioning the nation into a place of unrivalled godliness. It introduced a Presbyterian structure that placed significant power in the hands of local elders. The relatively limited role of English clergymen in witch-hunting, as well as the more effective prohibition of torture, meant that English witchcraft trials remained largely focused on maleficium – the act of causing harm – rather than the more explicitly religious crime of diabolism. Demonological ideas were explored in popular pamphlets but were rarely voiced in courtrooms. An exception came during the 1640s in the chaos of the Civil War, when the infamous ‘Witchfinder General’ Matthew Hopkins spearheaded England’s bloodiest witch-hunt. In general, though, accused witches in Scotland were blamed for more dramatic and far-reaching crimes against Christendom than their English counterparts. The phenomenon fades By the late 17th century, witchcraft prosecutions were declining across Europe, and elite attitudes in Britain reflected that trend. Consider the large-scale Scottish witch-hunt in 1661–62, which involved at least 600 accusations and likely hundreds of executions. The privy council granted commissions for waves of trials, but officials soon began to worry that matters were getting out of hand. In April 1662, the council issued a proclamation declaring that “a great many persons… have been apprehended and hurried to prisons, pricked, tortured and abused… by such persons as have no warrant or authority so to do.” The council was taking aim at ministers and other local elites who had overstepped their commissions or neglected to secure them. The privy council subsequently became more reluctant to grant commissions for local trials. A growing proportion of those accused of witchcraft were tried centrally or by trained judges from Edinburgh operating in circuit courts, and defence lawyers increasingly challenged the evidential basis for witchcraft, resulting in far higher acquittal rates. The council also made efforts to clamp down on the illicit use of torture. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/05/0882400-2cmyk-57d7ce4.jpg" width="1644" height="1096" alt="A black and white sketch of various instruments of torture, including a sword, some shackles and a pyre" title="Instruments of torture used in 16th-century European witch-trials. Though illegal without a warrant from the privy council, torture was sometimes used in Scotland to obtain confessions" /> The lawyer George Mackenzie, lord advocate 1677–86, exemplifies the growing scepticism of legal professionals. He wrote in 1678 that he did not doubt the reality of witches, but believed that many “poor ignorant creatures” had been unfairly prosecuted in Scotland. He attributed confessions to the use of torture, and recounted speaking with an impoverished woman who avowed that she had confessed because she expected to starve otherwise; having been accused of witchcraft, she imagined that “all men would beat her, and hound Dogs at her, and… therefore she desired to be out of the World”. Prosecutions petered out in the early 18th century; the last is usually considered to be that of Janet Horne in 1727. She was reputedly accused of riding her daughter, who took the form of a pony, to pay homage to the devil; both were reportedly tried by the local sheriff and found guilty. The daughter escaped, but Horne was burned to death in a barrel of pitch. However, the evidence is uncertain. If this episode did take place, it may have been a lynching rather than a formal trial, without authorisation from the central authorities. Witchcraft was decriminalised in 1736, bringing an end to what Walter Scott called a “dark chapter in human nature”. However, the witch-hunts remain a culturally relevant and emotive subject. As recently as 2022, the Scottish government and the Church of Scotland made formal apologies for their historical roles in witch-hunting. And the attitudes and concerns that drove these persecutions are still germane today. Witch-hunting grew out of specific religious, political and cultural contexts – but reflected an enduring human tendency to turn largely powerless victims into enemies of state and society. Martha McGill is a research associate at the University of Cambridge. She helped develop two games exploring historical perceptions of witchcraft. You can download them here This article is from the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why it was more dangerous to steal a loaf of bread than commit murder in medieval England
In medieval England, violence was a reality of everyday life — but theft? That was deliberate, unforgivable, and more likely to get you hanged. Criminology professor Manuel Eisner explains why
If you killed a man in 14th-century England, there was a good chance you’d get away with it. Not because the law was soft, or justice disorganised — in fact, homicide was a capital offence. But because the system, and the society around it, often preferred to look the other way. “The jury often reached a not guilty verdict simply because they thought, ‘This person doesn’t deserve to be hanged’”, explains Professor Manuel Eisner, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. Read more | Are your neighbours spying on you? In the 17th century they had the power to destroy your life “They thought, ‘He’s a respectable member of the community. He gives to the Church. He has apprentices who he trains. He does all kinds of things right. And here was this stupid conflict that ended up badly, and somebody died.’” Theft, however, was a different story. In the eyes of the court, and in the minds of the people, this was a much more calculated and unforgivable betrayal – a sign, according to Eisner, of moral rot. And for that, you could be hanged without hesitation. Violence was common – and often forgiven By today’s standards, murder was shockingly frequent in medieval England. Homicide rates, says Eisner, were “20 to 50 times more frequent than they are currently in England and Wales”. Yet despite the brutal frequency of killings, very few of them ended in punishment. “In principle, medieval law was harsh,” says Eisner. “The only penalty for homicide that you could possibly get was death by hanging.” Yet in practice, the system was far more lenient. “We know that 90 to 95 per cent of all cases that ended up being tried ended with a non-guilty verdict.” That verdict wasn’t always reached through genuine conviction in the defendant’s innocence. Sometimes, says Eisner, a not-guilty verdict would be used to subvert a punishment, even if someone was believed to be guilty. Many cases never reached trial at all. Numerous suspected killers simply disappeared: as soon as they were named, they would become outlaws, and so many found it preferable to leave everything behind and make a new life somewhere else. Read more | Why reporting a murder in medieval England could destroy your life For those who did stand trial, juries often opted for compassion over justice. In the context of a period in which violence could erupt over a spilled drink or a contested field boundary, a killing was often seen as an unfortunate accident: the tragic end to a dispute that got out of hand. Theft was unforgivable Murder might have been emotional, even justifiable. But theft? In contrast to violence, this was a crime that was judged to have been deliberate, devious, and, above all, evil. “Stealing something was considered primarily an evil crime because it required an intention to do harm,” says Eisner. It was a crime more often attributed to outsiders; lesser-known members of a community, or strangers. Those were the people juries didn’t feel compelled to protect, and that’s reflected in the death sentences. If you were caught stealing grain or clothing, your odds of being hanged were considerably higher than if you’d taken a life. Ultimately, premediated acts of crime were judged to be a more significant threat to society than random acts of violence. Read more | How bloody was medieval life? “Homicide was seen as something that just resulted from a conflict that escalates unintentionally,” Eisner explains. “Stealing was considered far more disruptive – it undermined the social fabric.” Even prison could kill you A punishment of execution wasn’t the only way in which medieval society could deliver an effective death sentence; being sent to a medieval prison could be enough to kill too. Conditions were filthy, crowded and disease-ridden, and people regularly died before they ever saw a trial. “Each year about six to 10 prisoners in London prisons died,” says Eisner. “If we translated this to the size of contemporary London, that would mean about a thousand people dying in prison in any given year.” Just being accused of a crime, let alone convicted, could prove fatal. In a world where calculated crime was more morally subversive than a spontaneous murder, it really might have been safer to kill someone and flee the scene, than to steal their bread.
The "outwardly respectable" man who had a body in his basement: how the Dr Crippen case shocked Britain
Hallie Rubenhold speaks to Ellie Cawthorne about the notorious Crippen murder case – and why we need to expose the enduring misogyny that blackened the victim’s name.
Ellie Cawthorne: In 1910, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen murdered his wife, Belle Elmore, before going on the run with his mistress, triggering an international manhunt. It was one of the biggest news stories of the day and became known as the ‘crime of the century’. What drew you to this case as a historian? Hallie Rubenhold: I believe that historical true crime can offer a lens through which we can look at a particular moment in time – and this case is no different. You have a huge amount of documentation – witness statements, police files, trial transcripts – revealing what people saw, what they experienced, what their daily lives were like. It’s like a core sample of what was happening in the world at a certain time, and it goes very deep. As a social historian, that’s priceless. Read more | Hallie Rubenhold: “To most people, the women killed by the Ripper are just corpses. I want to tell a different story” What can you tell us about the man at the centre of this case? Hawley Harvey Crippen was born in Coldwater, Michigan in 1862. In 19th-century America, it was easy to leave your past behind and become somebody else – and Crippen did that a lot. He trained as a doctor and specialised in homeopathic medicine, which was seen as a legitimate, progressive field at the time. At some point, though, Crippen gave up on being a respectable doctor and decided to work in patent medicine, which was a huge industry at the turn of the 20th century. You could open any newspaper and find adverts for nostrums or cure-alls that claimed to be able to resolve anything from rheumatism to acne. Crippen decided that this was how he would make his fortune – as a snake-oil salesman, essentially. From that point on, he fell deeper and deeper into medical fraud, which proved a slippery slope into fraud in general. Eventually he ended up in London, the white-collar fraud capital of the world at the time. During your research, you also explored the story of Crippen’s first wife, Charlotte Bell. What happened to her? Charlotte was a nurse, which is how she met Crippen. They married in 1887 but, less than five years later, while she was still in her early thirties, Charlotte died suddenly. It was claimed that she died of heart failure and “paralysis of the nervous system”. Her death certificate was signed by a friend of her husband, and within 72 hours Charlotte had been buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave. This all happened in the middle of winter, when the ground was frozen. Why the rush? Crippen was a proud man – why did he not bury her properly? After Charlotte’s mysterious death, Crippen met his second wife, Belle Elmore. How did their paths cross? Born to a poor Polish family in Brooklyn, Belle was originally called Kunegunde Mackamotzki. She went on to change her name several times during her life – to Connie, Concordia, Cora and then Belle. Names were essentially disposable at that time, and Belle got the measure of this point. It was quite an American way of looking at the world: you could be whoever you wanted, and you were what you made of yourself. When she met Crippen, Belle was living with another man. He was actually her employer but, in spite of this, he had got her pregnant. We can’t know whether this was a consensual relationship or not, but lots of servants at the time were victims of sexual violence. New York had strict anti-abortion laws, but Crippen worked for an abortionist nonetheless – and this is how they met. Read more | The long fight over abortion rights in the United States Later, Belle’s ovaries were removed on Crippen’s orders, even though nothing was wrong with her. Crippen did this because he didn’t want children, but Belle was devastated for the rest of her life. What was Belle like as a person? In the wake of her murder, Crippen did everything he could to blacken Belle’s character. He wanted to promote the idea that he had been pushed into murder by this terrible woman – but he must have loved her at some point. After learning that she couldn’t have children, Belle decided to pursue a career on the stage, which was incredibly progressive for a woman in the 1890s. When the couple moved to London, she threw herself into the music-hall scene. She was part of a circle of seriously famous music-hall performers, and became involved with a fascinat-ng group of women called the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. This was a social organisation and charity raising money for performers who had fallen on hard times. Here, Belle really found her métier. She was outspoken, colourful and well-loved by her friends, often attending parties and having people round to her house. Belle was an incredibly flamboyant woman, with an enormous wardrobe, and this was one of the criticisms later levelled against her. But people don’t realise that a lot of these clothes were stage outfits; performers at the time had to buy their own costumes. Yes, she liked jewellery, and Crippen bought her lots of it. But Crippen wore diamonds, too – he also enjoyed the trappings of wealth. Read more | “In times of political volatility, it’s more vital than ever that we tell women’s stories” | 3 historians on the state of women's history Another important character in this story is Crippen’s mistress, Ethel Le Neve. Who was she? Ethel Le Neve – or Ethel Neave, as she was born – was such a complex character. All of the people in this story are fascinating to me, but Ethel positively haunted me. Her story also offers an interesting insight into the changing landscape for women at the time. By the turn of the 20th century, women were working in shops, factories and domestic service, but Ethel went to secretarial college. Working in an office allowed working-class women like Ethel to enter the middle classes. Although they were paid much less than their male contemporaries, these women could earn (and spend) their own money. They could live apart from their parents, as Ethel did. It was an exciting, empowering time – and as a so-called ‘New Woman’, Ethel was right in the thick of it all. Read more | Challenging gender in the Victorian Age: the 'masculine' New Woman and 'effeminate' New Man Crippen initially hired Ethel as his secretary but, over time, she became his right-hand woman in all of his fraudulent schemes, and the pair became lovers. Their relationship lasted around six years; all the while, he was promising to marry her. He told Ethel that Belle was going to leave him for another man, but there’s no proof of that. Eventually, Ethel got pregnant; she, too, had an abortion, but this was a real tipping point. She started pushing Crippen for answers about the marriage – and he decided to take matters into his own hands. How did Crippen plan to kill his wife, Belle? First, he bought a sedative called hyoscine hydrobromide. Crippen’s plan was to make it look as if Belle died in her sleep, and then get a doctor friend to sign the death certificate. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Then, Bob’s your uncle – he could marry Ethel. But it didn’t quite work out like that. Crippen gave Belle too much hyoscine hydrobromide. Though it’s a sedative, at very high doses it can create the opposite effect – it makes you sick and act crazy, then stops your heart. Crippen gave Belle five grains, when one would have been sufficient. Belle probably started screaming, or there may have been a physical fight; in any case, by the time she died, there would have been evidence on her body revealing what had happened, and he couldn’t pass it off as a peaceful death in her sleep. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, Crippen had to get rid of a body. Read more | Victorian murder scandals: what six killings tell us about women's lives in the 19th century How did he try to cover up the murder? He had a real problem, because now he had to make up an excuse for his wife’s disappearance. And the members of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild were beginning to ask questions. Crippen decided to tell them that Belle had gone to America at late notice to visit a dying relative. But he kept changing the story – he was constantly pivoting. Without a shadow of a doubt, Ethel knew exactly what was going on in this cover-up. She always knew Crippen’s secrets – they were partners in crime, quite literally. After Belle was gone, Ethel moved into the Crippens’ house at Hilldrop Crescent in north London, and started calling herself Mrs Crippen. She also appropriated Belle’s enormous wardrobe of clothing, running around town in her furs. But what really gave her away was a distinctive diamond brooch called the Rising Sun. This brooch had belonged to Belle, and all of her friends were familiar with it. After Belle had ‘gone to America’, Crippen bought two tickets for a charity ball hosted by Belle’s friends. He took Ethel, his secretary, who was dressed in Belle’s clothes and wearing this Rising Sun brooch. The first time I read this, I couldn’t believe it. All of the people at the ball were performers with quite rackety lives, so the idea of someone having a mistress wasn’t that shocking. What was brazen was that these were Belle’s friends. It was rude, and it was obnoxious, like sticking two fingers up at everybody. Of course, it transpired that Belle hadn’t gone to America; in fact, she’d never left the house. The terrible way in which Crippen disposed of his wife’s body would really come back to haunt him in court. Remember, this was a man who understood anatomy. He removed all of Belle’s bones, as well as her head and sex organs, and disposed of them piecemeal. We don’t know where these ended up, but Hilldrop Crescent was close to a polluted canal and an abattoir. He then put the remaining viscera under the floor of his coal cellar, covered it with quicklime and assumed it would disintegrate. Ethel was always complaining that Belle and Crippen hadn’t kept a servant, and moaning about how much cleaning there was to do. But curiously, although she moved into Hilldrop Crescent in March, they didn’t recruit a servant until June. Mysteriously, lots of things were being burned, and huge amounts of rubbish were removed. The local dustmen later said that they’d never seen anything like it, and visitors reported that the house had a strange smell. So Ethel must have known what was in the basement. Was the shocking treatment of Belle’s body the reason why this domestic murder became known as the ‘crime of the century’? That was part of it. But this also happened in middle-class suburbia, where everybody was worrying about their sherry glasses and Christmas cards. The idea that Crippen was an outwardly respectable man, taking the tram to work every day in his bowler hat, while in private he had chopped up his wife’s body and hidden it in the basement of his tree-lined street, was grotesque and horrifying. The middle classes were shocked, because the Crippens could be their neighbours. No one was safe. How did Crippen’s crimes get uncovered? This is where the story takes a real turn. After being dismissed by the police several times, Belle’s friends at the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild finally convinced Scotland Yard to investigate. Inspector Walter Dew was assigned to the case and interviewed Crippen, which basically spooked him. So Crippen and Ethel decided to go on the run, dis- guised as father and son. He shaved off his moustache, while she cut her hair and dressed in boy’s clothing. They sailed to the Hook of Holland and travelled on to Antwerp and Brussels, where they hid out in a hotel for a while before boarding a ship called the Montrose and sailing to Quebec. By then, Dew had discovered what was in the basement of Hilldrop Crescent. Bulletins were issued all over the world: every port was watching out for the couple, and the newspapers were going absolutely mad. The whole world was looking for them. This story was unfolding in real time, like some kind of reality drama. People became completely wrapped up in it. Meanwhile, aboard the Montrose, Crippen and Ethel had caught the attention of the captain. He realised that something was amiss with this odd father-and-son duo, and used his Marconi wireless transmitter to contact Scotland Yard. Inspector Dew jumped on the Laurentic – one of the fastest ships in the world – to try to beat them to Quebec. This case really highlighted the explosive innovations in transport and communication happening at the time. Dew did beat Crippen and Ethel to Canada – and arrested them as soon as the Montrose came into port. They were brought back to Liverpool, where they were met with wild crowds as they got off the ship – throngs pushing and shoving and booing and hissing. People climbed in through the skylights at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court to witness the hearing. The trial was similarly sensational; even Winston Churchill went to watch. Crippen and Ethel were tried separately. Crippen was found guilty, based on toxicology – which was fairly new at the time – and pathology reports. Meanwhile, the murder charges against Ethel were dropped, and she was instead charged as an accomplice to murder. But she played up to an image of a poor, quivering girl who had known nothing – and was acquitted. There was no attempt to gather more evidence against her. For the rest of her life, Ethel remained completely unrepentant. She never once demonstrated remorse or expressed any sadness for Belle’s family or friends. Crippen was executed, but Ethel went on to lead an ordinary life – changing her name, disappearing into the ether and dying in the 1960s. Even her children never knew her previous identity. Read more| A brief history of capital punishment in Britain How has this case been misrepresented in the past, and why did you want to rectify that? I wanted to challenge the way the women involved have been portrayed – Belle, especially, who has been maligned and even blamed for her own murder. The first account of this case was written by Alexander Bell Filson Young in 1920. It’s important to remember what was going on at the time. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was passed in 1919, which meant that women could enter the professions. Women were bobbing their hair, wearing make-up, shortening their hemlines. Massive change was afoot, and a lot of people were perturbed. You can see this reflected in the way Filson Young writes about the trial: he demonises Belle Elmore as a horrible, shrewish woman who destroyed her husband’s life. According to his narrative, Ethel was a good girl, and Crippen was a good man, because he was respectable and educated. Belle Elmore was the monster who needed to be slain in order for them to be together. Every account that came out afterwards followed suit. Belle was a slut and a peacock, they said: she deserved to die. But this is just utter rubbish and unadulterated misogyny. There’s absolutely no proof that she was that way. And even if she were, in what world is it okay to say that a woman deserved to be murdered? More generally, we need to reconsider how we approach and discuss historical true crime, because we tend to take all of the prejudices of a previous era, frozen in aspic, and regurgitate them. But we should treat true crime as we would any other historical event – something that’s worthy of dissection and proper examination. Consider this my clarion call to historians to take historical true crime seriously. Hallie Rubenhold is an author, historian and broadcaster. She is the author of Story of a Murder: The Wives, the Mistress and Doctor Crippen (Doubleday, 2025). Her previous books include The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Doubleday, 2019) This article was first published in the April 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Tudor angels of death: the 16th-century obsession with female killers
Men committed most violent crimes in Tudor and Stuart England. But when women murdered, the press had a field day. Blessin Adams asks what drove society’s gleeful fascination with its “angels of death”
"Cruel and barbarous news from Cheapside," thundered the headline on 1676 pamphlet. Read on, it invited, to be horrified by the tale of an "unhuman mistress" who attempted to cook her appearance alive on a spit. Another news piece from 1637, which was entitled “Natures Cruell StepDames: or, Matchlesse Monsters of the Female Sex”, grimly recounted the “unnaturall murthering” of two innocent children by their mothers. Such gruesome titles might not look so very out of place on today’s newsstands and magazine racks. Like us, people in early modern Britain were fascinated by tales of true crime, murder and violent death. Pamphlets and broadside ballads describing the foul deeds of cold-blooded killers were hugely popular, and were sold on street corners, posted in public houses and even sung aloud to audiences – accompanied by surprisingly jolly tunes. True crime was big business – and, in the literary marketplace of the 16th and 17th centuries, stories of the most extraordinary and bloody acts sold the greatest number of copies. Such murder pamphlets do not provide a realistic representation of crime in the early modern period. Instead, they reflected their readership’s penchant for the crimes considered the most exciting or the most frightening – and, therefore, the most profitable. The bestselling and most prolific genre of murder news featured female killers: wives who murdered their unwanted husbands; ‘bastard-bearing’ mothers who killed their babies to escape social disgrace; wicked witches who cast fatal spells on their neighbours. Such cases were vastly overrepresented in the literature, perhaps giving readers a distorted view of the threat posed by women. Read more | Lady killers: what 5 murder cases can reveal about the lives of women in the 19th and 20th centuries At that time, men committed the majority of violent crimes and homicides. From tavern brawls to duels, male violence was ingrained in early modern society – so much so that it was deemed to be normal, even socially acceptable or desirable. Incidents in which that violence overspilled into the crime of murder were held to be deeply shocking but not entirely surprising. Women, on the other hand, rarely committed violent crimes, and they rarely killed. So when they did, they were considered monstrous and strange, and became objects of intense fascination, believed to pose a genuine threat to society. Nowhere is this bizarre moral standard more evident than in the reported cases of men and women who teamed up to commit gruesome acts of murder. In these accounts it is almost always the man who lands the killing blow. Yet, as the following case demonstrates – one that involves some shocking acts of violence – it is the woman who is later held accountable. Inhuman acts On Christmas Eve 1680, in Ratcliff, London, a seamstress named Leticia Wigington was in a furious temper. Her 13-year-old apprentice girl, Elizabeth Houlton, had transgressed in some small way, either by spoiling her work or by taking a few shillings, and so had to be punished. It was usual in this period for wayward wards to be physically corrected, however what was done to Elizabeth that night was an act of “inhuman barbarity” that went far beyond reasonable chastisement. Leticia summoned her lodger, John Sadler, and persuaded him to help her punish young Elizabeth. John not only agreed, but he also took charge of what was to follow. For almost an hour John carefully fashioned a whip called “a Cat with nine tails”. This was an instrument designed to tear open the victim’s skin as they were being flogged. They stripped Elizabeth and tied her up by her wrists with whip-cords. John then proceeded to beat her “for 3 or 4 hours”, while periodically “rubbing the wounds with salt”. Leticia held Elizabeth tightly, and at one point stuffed an apron down her throat to block her “lamentable cries”. Having fainted, Elizabeth was cut down and suffered for three days before dying of her wounds. Both John and Leticia were guilty of torturing and murdering Elizabeth. However, it was clear that John had taken the leading part in the crime: he had made the murder weapon, he had tied Elizabeth up, and he had administered the deathblows. Read more | From murder bottles to arsenic wallpaper: 5 hidden killers in Victorian Britain The true-crime presses, though, were not especially interested in John. In their reporting of the case he was relegated to the role of an accessory, while Leticia was named as the principal murderer. On one pamphlet claiming to publish Leticia’s confession, her name was emblazoned in large black letters across the front page: “Leticia Wigington of Ratclif... Condemned for whipping her Apprentice Girl to Death.” This was followed by the author’s unwavering conviction that all the evidence against her was “full, clear and undeniable”. In his analysis of the case, the author does not mention John at all. Another pamphlet reported that “Wigington... was indicted, and arraigned for whipping her apprentice girl to death... She having got one Sadler... to make a whip...” In another publication reporting on John’s trial, it was written that “She [Leticia] got the prisoner [John] to help give her correction.” In these reports, Leticia was the murderous subject while John was simply a mindless object – no more than an extension of the murder weapon. He was depicted as a background figure who was just following orders. Leticia was the cunning, cruel and calculating murderess who may as well have been wielding the whip in her own hand. Loud, bold and selfish Early modern society was strictly hierarchical and patriarchal. Both men and women were held to rigid codes of conduct, and anyone who breached the boundaries of acceptable behaviour was viewed as subversive, even dangerous. Women of all classes were expected to be subordinate citizens who owed absolute allegiance to the men in their lives: to their fathers, their masters and, especially, their husbands. A woman’s role in society was that of the caregiver and the nurturer: she must be meek, mild and silent. To this end, writers of conduct books instructed women on the virtues of obedience and humility: “A wife must yeeld a chaste, faithfull, matrimoniall subjection to her husband.” If a woman disobeyed the dictates regarding her gender – if she was loud, bold, selfish, sexually licentious or independent – then she was condemned for failing to play her part in the commonwealth. Such unruly behaviour undermined the very foundations of good society. When women killed, they were met with intense public hostility because they had, seemingly impossibly, transgressed the very laws of man, nature and God. Such women were seen as being unfeminine. Worse than that, they were inhuman. The true-crime presses were obsessed with such ‘inhuman’ acts, and sometimes went to extraordinary lengths to shift the blame of violent, male-led homicides onto their female accomplices. One such case was reported to have taken place near Romsey in Hampshire in 1686. William Ives was the landlord of a tavern called the Hatchet, where he lived with his wife, Esther, and their children. Theirs was not a faithful marriage: Esther was having an affair with the local cooper, a “Person of ill Fame” named John Noyse. It was salaciously reported that, in order to “make a freer way for their unlawful Lust”, the adulterous pair conspired to do away with William. On the night of 5 February, William stayed up late, until about one or two o’clock in the morning, getting blind drunk. At last, he staggered upstairs to bed and fell into a deep sleep. Sensing that their moment had arrived, John and Esther sneaked into his room with the intention to commit murder. Read more | Lady swindlers: 6 women who turned to lives of crime and became queens of the underworld As William lay in a stupor, he was strangled with such force that his neck was broken. A close examination of the body revealed that “much violence appeared to be done to the neck... either by strangling or twisting; insomuch that the blood had issued from him in abundance, and stained the pillow...” William had evidently fought back against his assailant with much vigour, and a great deal of blood was shed. A passing bell-man later testified that he heard a voice shouting “What dost thou do to me, Noyse?” John and Esther were arrested and later tried at the Lenten Assizes in Winchester on 24 February. In his defence, John blamed Esther, saying that she had provoked a violent quarrel with William, and that he had been obliged to intervene. Yet he did not deny that he was the one who had killed William – in- deed, he could not. Only he had the strength to hold William down, to fight with him, and to apply the necessary force to break his neck. It was also his name that the bell-man heard the victim shouting. John was clearly the murderer, Esther his accessory. The jury ruled that both John and Esther were equally guilty of the murder, and they were both sentenced to death. Yet when the case was later reported to the public, John and Esther’s roles had been completely reversed. One pamphlet headline dramatically pronounced “A most barbarous and bloody murther, committed by Esther Ives, with the assistance of John Noyse”. The true-crime presses acknowledged that it was John who had broken William’s neck. However, they held Esther responsible for the killing, because she was the contaminating presence who had, by the very nature of her sex, set into motion this series of murderous events. She was the adulteress who had betrayed her husband; she was the seducer who had besotted the cooper; and she was the instigator who had caused an argument that had resulted in murder. It was she who led John astray and forced his hand; therefore, it was she who was to blame. Persuasive powers It was commonly believed that women, from Eve to Lady Macbeth, had the power to seduce and cajole their menfolk, seemingly against their wills, into committing terrible crimes. “Tis said, there is scarce any notori- ous sin,” wrote one contemporary theologian, “but a woman hath a hand in it.” People in the early modern period were particularly enthralled by tales of “lighte and lascivious women” who used their charms to achieve their murderous ends. Such a case was reported in the year 1583, in the village of Cotheridge near Worcester. There lived an “honest” and “Godly” husbandman named Thomas Beast with his wife, who was simply named as Mrs Beast, and a “hansome Yonge” servant named Christopher Tomson. The familiar story goes that the older and more experienced Mrs Beast (that “harlot” and “wicked woman”) had taken control of the poor, innocent Christopher (that “sweet dallying freend” and “lusty yonker [youngster]”) by the power of her overwhelming sexuality. Read more | ‘She didn’t cry’: how this Tudor woman’s lack of emotion condemned her to death Wholly fed up with married life and the constraints a husband put on her blossoming affair, Mrs Beast decided to be rid of Thomas. She convinced Christopher that once Thomas was dead, they would be free to enjoy each other without censure. Christopher was reluctant, but after a great deal of sweet-talk he was eventually persuaded to do the deed. Having gotten her way, Mrs Beast sharpened a billhook and placed it into Christopher’s hand with the grim commandment “Be sure to hit him right.” Apparently left with no choice but to accept this charge, Christopher set off to find his master working in the fields. It was a cold and quick killing. When Thomas’s back was turned, Christopher struck him “in such cruel manner, [that] there he killed him”. Soon afterwards the illicit lovers were arrested and placed in prison to await trial. During this time, it was said that Mrs Beast sought Christopher out and plied him with compliments and love-tokens, perhaps hoping he would spare her life by taking full responsibility for the crime. Her actions were noted, and condemned as yet another women’s trick. In the end her flattery did her no good, as she and Christopher were both tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. The anonymous author of the true crime pamphlet reporting on these events did their best to enlarge Mrs Beast as a monstrous seductress, and to diminish Christopher as a victim who had been “besotted”, and by the “tirany of loove [sic] possessed” to act against his will. It was a common interpretation that reinforced the popular view that women were indeed dangerous forces of evil: “Oh most horrible and wicked womon, a woman, nay a devill.” Readers may be struck by how little has changed in the depiction of female killers in our news and true crime media today. When women kill, or are accused of murder, their crimes are almost always highly publicised and sensationalised. The spectres of ‘monstrous mothers’, ‘angels of death’ and ‘black widows’ continue to inspire fear and disgust, and we still refer to female killers as unnatural or as traitors to their sex. In much the same way as our early modern forebears, we expect women to be victims rather than perpetrators of fatal violence. Yet violence and murder are not the province of men alone, and while women are far less likely to commit acts of blood, it is entirely within their natures to do so. Blessin Adams is a historian, author and former police investigator. Her new book, Thou Savage Woman: Female Killers in Early Modern Britain (William Collins), is available now. This article was first published in the April 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Was Gilles de Rais really history’s first recorded serial killer?
The Baron of Retz and veteran of the Hundred Years’ War confessed to monstrous crimes of torturing and murdering children. Arrested in 1440, he was found guilty, and executed. So is there reason to believe he was innocent?
Sometimes referred to as one of history’s first recorded serial killers, Gilles de Rais, the Baron of Retz, was executed in October 1440 for the murders of at least 140 children. Whether he was actually guilty, however, remains a matter of debate. Who was Gilles de Rais? Born in c1404, Rais came into his title while still a child, making him one of the most powerful nobles in Brittany and among the wealthiest in all of France. And if a fortune built from the combined wealth of the House of Laval on his father’s side and House of Croan on his mother’s was not enough, he would also marry an extremely wealthy distant cousin. In his youth, he embarked on a military career and was thrust into fighting the English in the Hundred Years’ War. Building a reputation for himself, he served side-by-side with none other than Joan of Arc, including at her famous lifting of the siege of Orleans in 1429. Later that year, whilst still in his twenties, Rais was appointed Marshal of France by the newly crowned King Charles VII. In the aftermath of Joan of Arc’s execution, Rais stepped away from the army and returned to his estate in Brittany. He reportedly spent huge sums of money on maintaining his household, and as a patron to musicians and writers. His family feared that he was emptying the coffers so much that they sought help from the king, who passed a decree preventing Rais from selling his lands. What were Gilles de Rais’ crimes? It was also around this time that he supposedly committed his horrific crimes. He became fascinated with the occult and befriended a cleric named Prelati, who helped in Rais’ attempts in alchemy and the summoning of demons. More disturbingly, rumours began to swirl about missing children in his lands. Some had even been seen approaching the gates of his castle in order to beg for food or coins, never to be seen again. Upon investigation, Rais was arrested in September 1440, accused of – among other crimes, such as heresy and sodomy – the abduction, torture and murder of dozens of children; at least 140, according to his trial. He was brought before both an ecclesiastical and civil court, where he confessed and was sentenced to death, alongside two of his servants who assisted in his butchery. It was deemed that hanging would not be enough for the execution of someone so evil – as Rais swung from the gallows in Nantes, a fire was lit under his feet. Rais has gone down in infamy. His name is synonymous with other heinous killers of history and his story possibly inspired the murderous villain of the French folk story, Bluebeard, who according to dark legend had a predilection for slaughtering his wives. Great reputations Member exclusive | In our podcast series, expert historians discuss the contested reputations of key historical figures, charting the lives and afterlives of Cleopatra, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emmeline Pankhurst and more… Listen to all episodes now Yet it is possible to see similarities between the case of Rais and the witch hunts of the early modern period, which saw hundreds of innocent people killed. There was no physical evidence of Rais’ crimes, and he made his confession only after being threatened with torture. Was he the victim of a conspiracy by his enemies – including the Duke of Brittany, who was directly involved in the trial – so that they could seize his lands and riches? This theory has gained traction in the last few decades, leading to a mock retrial run by the writer Gilbert Prouteau in 1992, which found Rais not guilty. (It must be noted that no one participating in the trial thoroughly researched primary documents and the defense attorneys fabricated evidence for the event. Prouteau himself called the mock trial “an absolute joke.”) However, there is still widespread belief among medievalists that – even if the numbers of his victims were grossly exaggerated – Rais was indeed guilty of the murder of children. The sheer volume of testimonies presented against him was damning, and his reputation endures as history’s first recorded serial killer.