What is the Newgate Calendar?

The Newgate Calendar first appeared in the 1770s, taking its name from the prison of Newgate in London, the scene of many public executions. It consisted of a collection of accounts of murders, executions and other crimes previously sold individually in chapbooks and broadsheets. Some of these were based on real cases, others (such as the story of Sawney Bean, were almost certainly fictional). There were several precursors of the Calendar:

• The Tyburn Calendar, or Malefactors Bloody Register, published by G. Swindell (c. 1705)
• A Compleat History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Foot-Pads, Shop-Lifts and Cheats of both sexes, in and about London and Westminster, and all parts of Great Britain, for above an hundred years past, continued to the present time by Captain Alexander Smith (1719)
• The Chronicle of Tyburn, or Villainy Display’d in all its Branches (1720)
• A General and True History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers etc. To which is added a genuine Account of the Voyages and Plunders of the Most Noted Pirates, Interspersed with several remarkable Tryals of the most Notorious Malefactors, at the Sessions-House in the Old Bailey, London by Captain Charles Johnson (1734)
• The Tyburn Chronicle (1768)

The first work entitled The Newgate Calendar was published in 3 volumes between 1774 and 1778. Many editions and reprints of nineteenth century editions thereafter have included:

• The Malefactor’s Register or New Newgate and Tyburn Calendar . . . Offered not only as an Object of Curiosity and Entertainment, but as a Work of real and substantial Use (1780)
• The Criminal Recorder (1804)
• The New and Complete Newgate Calendar or Malefactor’s Universal Register, Comprising interesting Memoirs of the Most Notorious Characters who have been convicted of outrages on the Laws of England, with Speeches, Confessions, and Last Exclamations of Sufferers by William Jackson (1818)
• The Newgate Calendar Improved . . . Containing a number of interesting cases never before published: with Occasional remarks on Crimes and Punishments, Original Anecdotes, Moral reflections and Observations on particular Cases; Explanations of the Criminal Laws, the Speeches, Confessions and Last Exclamations of Sufferers. To which is added a Correct Account of the Various Modes of Punishment of criminals in Different Parts of the World by George Theodore Wilkinson, esq. (1822)
• Celebrated Trials, and remarkable cases of Criminal Jurisprudence from the earliest Records to the Year 1825 by George Borrow (1825)
• The Newgate Calendar by Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin (1826)
• The Chronicles of Crime or the New Newgate Calendar by Camden Pelham. (1841)
• The Complete Newgate Calendar, edited by J.L. Rayner and G.T Crook (London, 5 vols., 1926).
• The Newgate Calendar, edited by Edwin Valentine Mitchell (London, 1928).
• The Newgate Calendar, or Malefactors’ Bloody Register, edited by B. Laurie (London, 1933)
• The Newgate Calendar and The New Newgate Calendar, edited for the Folio Society by Sir Norman Birkett (London, 1951 & 1960 respectively; republished as a two-volume set in 1992).
• The Newgate Calendar (London, 3 vols, 1962-1963).