In 1860, a routine police check in Marylebone turned violent when two men brutally attacked Constable Thomas Bell with life-preservers. Mistaking them for help, he was struck down and left bleeding in the street. Both attackers were later captured and sentenced to eight years’ penal servitude.
Tag Archives: family-history
This Day in History: April 13th, 1743
In 1743, apprentice Elizabeth Cannon and lodger Ann Ellard robbed their bedridden mistress after a night of drunken planning. Caught within hours, they confessed and were sentenced to death. This tragic Old Bailey case reveals how quickly crime, drink, and desperation could lead to the gallows in Georgian London.
This Day in History: 9 April 1684
On 9 April 1684, two women named Mary Corbet were tried at the Old Bailey—one for counterfeiting coin, the other for murdering her concealed newborn child. Both were sentenced to death, yet later records hint at a royal pardon, leaving their ultimate fates uncertain and historically ambiguous.
This Day in History – 24 March 1839
A drunken quarrel in Deptford in 1839 led to a brutal knife injury and a courtroom drama revealing mutual violence and desperation. This Old Bailey case explores the blurred line between assault and self-defence in Victorian London, where candlelight, jealousy, and alcohol combined with devastating consequences.
This Day in History – 6 March 1905
On 6 March 1905 Elizabeth Cove stood trial at the Old Bailey for wounding John Rubbins during a violent pub quarrel in Chalk Farm Road. The attack left the seventeen-year-old labourer permanently blinded in one eye. Despite the injury, the jury accepted the defence of self-protection and acquitted Cove.
This Day in History – 5 March 1839
On 5 March 1839 two teenagers, Charles Chapman and Eliza Clements, were convicted at the Old Bailey for stealing a handkerchief in Fenchurch Street. Sentenced to ten years’ transportation, they were shipped to Van Diemen’s Land, where absconding, labour assignments, marriage and conditional pardons shaped their new colonial lives.
This Day in History – 27 February 1843
In 1843, William Cannell shot barmaid Elizabeth Sarah Magness at the Auction Mart Hotel in Bartholomew Lane. Surviving both the attack and his own suicide attempt, Cannell was transported to Tasmania for fifteen years, where he later married and received a conditional pardon
This Day in History: 18 February 1775 — John Smith and the Fatal Return
On 18 February 1775, John Smith was tried at the Old Bailey for returning from transportation before his fourteen-year term had expired. Originally sentenced to death for highway robbery and reprieved, he was again condemned to die before being transported once more, on the eve of the American Revolutionary War.
This Day in History: 27 January 1688 — Mary Aubry and the Dismembered Murder
On 27 January 1688, French midwife Mary Aubry murdered her abusive husband in London and dismembered his body. Tried at the Old Bailey on 22 February, she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to burning at the stake, carried out at Leicester Fields on 2 March 1688. Her case became one of early modern England’s most notorious.
This Day in History: 17 January 1681 — Elizabeth Wigenton and the Murder of Her Apprentice
On 17 January 1681, Elizabeth Wigenton, a coat-maker of Ratcliff Parish, was tried at the Old Bailey for the wilful murder of her thirteen-year-old apprentice. After binding and beating the girl so violently that she died, Wigenton was found guilty of murder. This case reveals the brutal realities of apprenticeship and justice in seventeenth-century London.
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