The Newgate Calendar

The Newgate Calendar, a series of stories about criminals from the 17th century and earlier through to 1840, is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in the criminal underworld of 18th Century Britain. There are actually several wildly different editions (see this Exclassics page for a detailed discussion). I have used a mixture of two editions, mostly conforming to the version on the Exclassics site.

Although the text is easily available, it is a disconcertingly large and dense block of text which is hard to wade through. To make things a little easier I have separated each entry into its own file and have provided a database search to help you to navigate them.

In 1735 Arthur Hayward published his Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals, which is essentially a Newgate Calendar by another name. It mostly covers the decade from 1720 to 1730. I have divided it up as per the Calendar and have added it to the database. It also has its own index page.

Newgate Calendar Database

You can search the Newgate Calendar database in much the same manner as you can do for Thieves' Cant. Search either the names, the 'tagline' or the body of the text. ('Names' in this context means the header lines - to search for all names use the body text search).