Crime and punishment - Getty Images

Crime and punishment

How historically accurate are film portrayals of Jesse James?.

Hallie Rubenhold. (Photo by Fran Monks)

The women killed by Jack the Ripper.

"For those of noble birth who were condemned to die, execution by beheading (which was considered the least brutal method of execution) was used until the 18th century," says criminologist and historian Lizzie Seal. This illustration depicts the execution of Charles I in January 1649. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A brief history of capital punishment in Britain

Jack Sheppard and his accomplice Blueskin rob a home without waking the owner, circa 1720. (Photo by Alamy)

Victorian murder scandal.

Rogues' gallery: Images of criminals incarcerated in prisons including Wormwood Scrubs and Newcastle City Gaol, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their crimes included stealing clothes, money, boots, and leather. Recent research into Victorian mugshot books – and increasing digital access to court and prison records – offers a different picture of Victorian criminality to the one painted by writers such as Charles Dickens, argues Heather Shore. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

Dark secrets of the Victorian Underworld: did hardened criminals stalk Britain's cities?.

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

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

Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850) was a British statesman who twice served as Conservative prime minister, between 1834–35 and 1841–46. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

5 facts about Sir Robert Peel.

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

Forgotten trials: the other side of Nuremberg.

Helen Duncan, a 20th-century medium and spiritualist, allegedly summoned spirits draped in ‘ectoplasm’ – organic matter emitted from her body. In the 1930s she was denounced as a fraud, and in 1944 prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcra Act, which forbade conjuring spirits. (Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum/University of London)

Conjuring up the dead: Helen Duncan and her ectoplasm spirits.

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

Your guide to Jack the Ripper

The Ripper of our nightmares: 5 theories about Jack the Ripper's identity

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

6 notorious unsolved crimes from history.

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

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

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

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

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

5 crimes that changed law enforcement in Britain.

Prince Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland and fifth son of King George III

The Duke of Cumberland and his valet: a bloody tale of attempted murder.

A crowd gathers to watch the witnesses arrive for the trial of John George Haigh, the 'acid bath murderer', in Lewes, East Sussex, July 1949. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Second World War

10 facts about crime on the home front in the Second World War

Britain’s secret wartime prison.

East End crime.

An illustration of a public execution at Newgate, London, late 18th century. (Photo by Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

The LibraryA deadly obsession in Victorian London.

History quiz – prison escapes and the princes in the Tower.

(BBC/Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd/Tiger Aspect/Robert Viglasky)

Peaky Blinders: behind the scenes with creator Steven Knight.

Illustration of electric chair

Q&AWho invented the electric chair?

A Black Market camera seller

Criminals of the Blitz: how the German bombings created a golden age of crime.

The Victorians’ grisly fascination with murder.

The Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Winchilsea in a duel at Battersea Fields. (Culture Club/Getty Images)

Pistols at dawn: duelling in the Victorian age.

9 astonishing deaths reported in Victorian newspapers.

Photo of Chelsea Pensioners

Q&ACould you really once be hanged for impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner?

Incent's House as it stands today on the Berkhamsted High Street. (Creative Commons)

The hunt for the Tudor hitman.

Great Train Robbery’s Ronnie Biggs dies