The disappearance of Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, following the murder of his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett and the attack of his wife Veronica, in November 1974, is one of the most notorious unsolved mysteries in British criminal history. In this special blog, we will explore how his disappearance was reported on by the British press, using newspapers taken from our Archive. We will explore the newspaper reports from the days after the murder, whilst examining the press coverage …
Crime History
Long before Agatha Christie envisioned murder on the Orient Express, or before she wondered what might have taken place on the 4.50 from Paddington, murder, mystery and mayhem were already well established on the railways of Britain and beyond. The first victim of murder on British railways was 70-year-old Thomas Briggs. In this special blog, we will take a look at his story, as well as nine others sourced from the pages of our newspaper Archive, which tell the strange, …
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In late August and early September 1958, the London area of Notting Hill was the scene of racially motivated riots, in which white, working-class, ‘Teddy Boys,’ and others, displayed hostility and violence to the Black community in the area. These riots took place ten years after HMT Empire Windrush arrived in Tilbury Docks, carrying 492 Caribbean migrants. Since that moment in history, more and more migrants arrived in Britain from the Caribbean, and they would come to be known as the ‘Windrush Generation.’ …
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Over the past seven days at The Archive we have added 117,702 brand new pages, with eleven brand new newspaper titles joining us over this period alone. We have added three new local titles (from Wiltshire, Buckinghamshire and Kent respectively), with eight of our new titles this week coming from the British Library’s Heritage Made Digital programme. So read on to discover more about all of our new newspapers of the week (which include amongst them four Victorian illustrated papers), as well as to find …
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On Tuesday, October 24, 1933, between 8 o’clock and 8.10 p.m., Mrs. Violet Kray, wife of Charles Kray, dealer, gave birth to twin boys in their little two-up two-down house in Stean-street, Hoxton…These boys were later to create an empire formed by fear, extortion, protection, torture and finally, murder. This March 1969 Daily Mirror article of course refers to the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, the most notorious British criminals of the 1960s. Feted by celebrities, chased by authorities, the Kray twins were …
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This week at The Archive we have been beavering away to bring you 199,116 brand new pages, 17 brand new titles and 28 updated titles from across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We have added five brand new regional titles from England, Wales and Scotland over the past seven days, and we have added twelve titles as part of the British Library’s ongoing Heritage Made Digital programme. So read on to discover about all of the updates we have made this week, as well as to …
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In December, 1811, all London was convulsed with terror at the tidings of the horrible slaughter wreaked at 29 Ratcliff Highway and 81 New Gravel Lane, and soon, from the Prince Regent’s table at Carlton House to the tap-room of the lowest dram-shop in Wapping, the hideous subject engrossed all. Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday, 27 August 1887 These murders, now generally referred to as the Ratcliff Highway Murders, represent one of the bloodiest chapters in British crime history, and might have …
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As part of our history of law and crime month on The Archive, we are delighted to featured a very special guest post by author and former probation officer Martin Baggoley, who has written extensively on the history of crime and punishment. In this guest post, Martin describes how he used The Archive to research the tragic topic of infanticide in Victorian Salford, a desperately sad chapter in Britain’s crime history. So read on to discover the methods that Martin …
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This week at The Archive we are delighted to have added 54,622 brand new pages, with four brand new titles joining us over the past seven days alone. From Glamorgan to Gravesend, from Sussex to Staveley, read on to discover more about our brand new titles of the week, and also to find out more about the significant updates we have made to our existing titles from England and Wales. Plus, we use our new newspapers to understand more about early attitudes to …
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Following on from our look at life on board the prison hulks of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in this special blog we are going to take a look at what life was like behind prison bars over a century ago. Dartmoor Prison | The Sphere | 10 December 1927 Using our newspapers, we will try to understand what life was like for the men and women sentenced to prison time in the United Kingdom in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: …