Crime & Legislation
Spanning criminals, prisons and the Metropolitan Police, find out about London’s laws and its lawbreakers in our objects, stories and blogs.
Blogs-And-Stories
The Kray Twins: Notorious east London gangsters
Dangerous and famous in the Swinging Sixties
Jack Sheppard: An 18th-century working class hero
How one young criminal became a working class hero by escaping London prisons four times.
Six things you didn’t know about executions in London
London’s courts condemned more people to die than the rest of England, and six facts you may not know
The history of London's Newgate Prison
London’s longest-running prison was home to high-profile criminals, common thieves and the condemned
Executions & death-penalty reforms in Britain
How 18th-century British reformers questioned capital punishment and the fight continues today
Jack the Ripper
How the murders of five women birthed an infamous East End crime story
The murder of Thomas Becket
An event that shocked medieval Europe – and a cult that's lasted centuries
Horsemonger Lane Jail
Where rooftop executions became a violent Southwark spectacle
The Metropolitan Police: From 1829 to today
Two hundred years of policing London
Changing London: A view from inside Pentonville Prison
From behind the walls of HMP Pentonville, these men share their views of post-WWII London and their experiences as Londoners
From avoiding the gallows, to leading a mutiny
What happened to convicts who were transported to penal colonies instead of being executed?
London’s public executions
Hung, drawn and quartered. Beheaded, boiled or burned
London’s dark public execution history in 5 objects
A look at 700 years of public executions in London through five objects
Frances Burney’s mahogany desk: A symbol of slavery
Exploring histories of pain and exploitation in one English novelist’s writing desk
The Zong Massacre Trial
The appalling case of 130 enslaved Africans murdered for an insurance claim
Mapping London’s execution landscape
In central London, you’re never further than 5km from a known site of execution
Who was publicly executed in London?
Thirteen tales of the cooks, rebels, bankers and king who died in front of a watching crowd
