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The Swedish Meteor: the blazing career and mysterious death of Charles XII
The mummified head of Charles XII, photographed at the time of his exhumation in 1917, and showing the exit wound–or was it?–left by the projectile that killed him during the siege of Fredrikshald in...
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Fishmonger’s Hall: how William Crockford beggared the British aristocracy
William Crockford—identified here as “Crockford the Shark”—sketched by the great British caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson in about 1825. Rowlandson, himself an inveterate gambler who blew his way...
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White gold: how salt made and unmade the Turks and Caicos Islands
The remains of a windmill, once used to pump brine into the salt pans of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Photo credit: www.amphibioustravel.com. Salt is so commonplace today, so cheap and readily...
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The crucifixion of Prince Klaas: Antigua’s disputed slave rebellion of 1736
Prince Klaas, leader of the supposed slave rebellion on Antigua, on the wheel. Breaking on the wheel was the most horrific punishment ever visited on a convicted criminal. It was a form of...
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The child murder that gave voodoo its bad name
This engraving–probably made from a contemporary photograph–shows the eight Haitian “voodoo” devotees found guilty in February 1864 of the murder and cannibalism of a 12-year-old child. From Harper’s...
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A little bit of background: The crucifixion of Prince Klaas
Prince Klaas lashed to the wheel – the image on display at the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda in St John’s, Antigua. The story of Prince Klaas, the rebel slave, is one of the highlights of the charming...
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Slavery on the Steppes: Finnish children in the slave markets of medieval Crimea
The Constantinople slave market in 1838. The painter, William Allen, claimed to have painted the scene from life, though certainly he was as inclined as most western Christian gentlemen of the day to...
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Aqua Tofana: slow-poisoning and husband-killing in 17th century Italy
Detail from “The love potion”, by the nineteenth century Pre-Raphaelite Evelyn De Morgan. The tangled tale of Aqua Tofana is intimately connected to the “criminal magical underworlds” of the 17th...
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Sorcerers and soulstealers: hair-cutting panics in old China
A Chinese prisoner – wearing the long pigtail, or queue, that was mandated for all indigenous subjects of the Celestial Empire – is interrogated by a Qing magistrate. Painting from Mason & Dadley’s...
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Dreamtime voyagers: Aboriginal Australians in early modern Makassar
The coast of Arnhem Land, in Northern Australia – scene of first contact between Australian Aborigines and Makassan fishermen, probably some time before 1700. If there’s one thing that most people...
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