Crime and punishment - Getty Images

Crime and punishment

Four Murder, Inc hitmen are questioned by detectives

Murder, Inc: the rise and fall of New York City's mafia hitmen

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

Rudolf Höss & the men behind the mass murder at Auschwitz

The real history behind Victorian thriller ‘The Limehouse Golem’

Left: Hungarian Jews arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau, in German-occupied Poland, in June 1944. Between May and July that year, more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to the camp complex. Right: Prisoners at Dachau celebrate the liberation of the camp by US soldiers on 29 April 1945. The camp was used again after the war to house SS personnel awaiting trial, and then German refugees. (Photos by Getty Images and Alamy)

Aftermath of the Holocaust: how Europe dealt with the crimes of the Third Reich

Amy Robsart and the Earl of Leicester

Amy Robsart: a Tudor tragedy

A police officer uses his baton on a protester in Glasgow, 1919

1919: Britain's red summer

Two girls are tried for witchcraft in a courtroom scene

What were the Salem Witch Trials?

Abraham Lincoln (Photo by Library of Congress)

The secret plot to kill Lincoln

People flee to boats on the River Thames to escape the Great Fire of London, September 1666.

Coffee, plague and the Great Fire: the pleasures and perils of living in Restoration London

Henry Avery: the legendary 17th-century pirate

Wrecked buildings in Los Angeles' South Central district following 1992 riots

The 1992 LA riots

Medieval punishments, Toulouse, 14th century. (Photo by Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)

How bloody was medieval life?

Saturday lecture: Medieval crime and violence

Protesters demonstrate against a US military base at Santo Stefano in 2005

Sardinia: the legacy of the notorious shepherd-bandits of the mountains

Painting of an auto-da-fé

Your guide to...the Spanish Inquisition

What was a drunkard's cloak used for? This illustration shows a man wearing the archaic punishment tool designed to punish habitual drinkers. (Photo by Getty Images)

Q&AWhat was a drunkard’s cloak used for?

Painting of Bligh and those loyal to him being cast adrift from the Bounty in a small boat

Mutiny on the Bounty: the incredible tale of how castaway captain William Bligh made it back to England

Photo of JFK in the motorcade

Who killed JFK? The case that can never be closed

Great Fire of London quiz – how much do you know?

The renowned poet Lord Byron has gone down in history for being “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. But his ancestors were hardly paragons of virtue. (Image by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Adultery, elopement and incest: the scandalous sex lives of the 18th-century Byrons

The scandalous Byrons

John Wilkes Booth leans forward to shoot President Abraham Lincoln as he watches a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C, in 1865.

Q&AWhat play was Abraham Lincoln watching when he was shot?

A copper engraving of Margaret Pole's execution

General History

Are these the worst botched executions in history?

The Cato Street conspiracy

Georgian terrorists: the Cato Street Conspiracy

The rise of the cat burglar

A Burglar Looks In, Picture Post 1950. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Burglary: a modern history

Charles Manson stares out from fabric on sale in San Francisco

The afterlife of Charles Manson

The execution of Charles I in 1649.

To kill a king: 350 years of regicide

Portrait of John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (Lord Lucan), who disappeared in 1974 following a bloody homicide

The curious case of Lord Lucan + 10 other mysterious disappearances from history

Policemen from Scotland Yard patrolling at night

Real-life Sherlocks: the detectives of Scotland Yard and their curious cases