Sawney Bean
The cannibal of Galloway
Dick Turpin
The most famous highwayman of all
Jack Ketch
Hangman, who was himself hanged
Moll Cutpurse
Mistress of all the thieves in London, whose obituary was written (maybe) by John Milton. Her life was made into a play by Midleton and Dekker
Claude Du Vall
The amorous French highwayman who "made every man stand, and every woman fall"
Captain Kidd
Pirate, known as the "Wizard of the Seas"
Richard Savage
Poet and friend of Samuel Johnson, who narrowly escaped hanging for murder
Jonathan Wild and his gang:
Other members of the Gang:
Captain John Porteous
Lynched by a mob in Edinburgh, as described by Walter Scott in The Heart of Mid-Lothian
Eugene Aram
Murderer whose guilt was discovered many years after his crime, and whose story was told by Bulwer Lytton and also by Thomas Hood.
Earl Ferrers
Tried by his Peers for murder, and hanged in white satin
The Countess of Bristol, otherwise the Duchess of Kingston
A shocking tale of bigamy, forgery and deceit, one of the great scandals of the Eighteenth Century.
John Wilkes
Champion of liberty
Lord George Gordon
Who inspired the riots described by Dickens in Barnaby Rudge
Robert Emmet
The Darling of Erin
John Williams
Whose crimes were described by De Quincey in On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts as "the sublimest and most entire in their excellence that ever were committed."
John Bellingham
Who Assassinated Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in the House of Commons
The Cato Street Conspirators
Who in 1820 planned to seize the Tower of London, the Bank of England and Military Barracks, and to murder Cabinet Ministers
Maria Marten
Murdered in the Red Barn; the truth was revealed to her mother in a dream
The Colleen Bawn
The "Lily of Killarney" whose youth, beauty and innocence did not save her from her husband's cruelty
The Wildgoose Lodge Murders
An entire family of eight people murdered by an Irish secret society, the basis of one of William Carleton's best-known stories
Burke and Hare
Edinburgh lodging-house keepers, who murdered their guests and sold the bodies to the anatomists
The Tolpuddle Martyrs
Transported for organising a Trade Union
Courvoisier
A Valet who murdered his master in 1840; Dickens and Thackeray attended his execution. Thackeray's Account.
