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1721: The Housebreaker Who Could Not Stay Away: Hanged at Tyburn for Returning from Transportation

John Meff was a housebreaker who had already cheated the gallows once, having been convicted and then transported to the colonies rather than executed. But transportation was meant to be permanent exile, and Meff broke its terms by making his way back to England, a crime that under the law of the day carried the same penalty as the original offence: death.

He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to hang for illegally returning from transportation. On 11 September 1721 he was taken to Tyburn and executed at the age of forty, going to the gallows alongside James Redding, who had been condemned separately for robbery.

For Meff the return to Tyburn marked the end of a second chance he could not keep: having once escaped the noose through transportation, the simple act of coming home proved fatal.

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Crime and Punishment Execution London Robbery Transportation UK

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1978: The Umbrella That Killed: Assassinated with a Ricin Pellet

Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was waiting for a bus on Waterloo Bridge in London when he felt a sudden sharp pain in his leg. He turned to see a man pick up a dropped umbrella and hurry away, offering a mumbled apology. Markov thought little of it until a small red mark and fever set in over the following days.

The umbrella had been rigged to fire a tiny pellet packed with ricin, a poison for which there was and is no antidote. Markov died four days later, on 11 September 1978, from the resulting blood poisoning, becoming one of the most infamous casualties of Cold War espionage.

His killer would not be identified for almost three decades. It was not until 2005 that leaked files named the assassin as Francesco Gullino, an agent working for the Bulgarian secret service, though he was never extradited or tried for the murder.

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Assassination Cold Case Espionage Europe Poisoning Political Crime UK

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1897: The World’s First Drink-Driving Conviction, London 1897

Just before one in the morning on September 10, 1897, a taxi driver named George Smith lost control of his cab on New Bond Street, swerving across the road and crashing, smashing a water pipe and a front window. No one was hurt, cars of the era topped out at about 8mph, but Smith admitted to police that he had been drinking, and that confession was enough to convict him in what is recognised as the world’s first drink-driving case.

He was fined 20 shillings. There was no specific drunk-driving law to charge him under; the conviction rested entirely on his own admission, since officers otherwise had only their own snap judgement of a driver’s sobriety to go on. It would be almost a decade before any jurisdiction, enacted a dedicated drunk-driving law, and more than half a century before the breathalyser existed to test drivers objectively.

Humorous Vintage New Year Postcard: Policeman Discovers Man Asleep in Snow (circa 1900. A delightfully humorous and classic vintage postcard illustration from the early 20th century (circa 1900-1910s), perfectly capturing the aftermath of a lively New Year’s Eve celebration... The scene depicts a gentleman, dressed in a formal black suit with a white shirt, bow tie, and suspenders, comically sprawled out in a pristine snowdrift. His top hat is discarded nearby, his umbrella askew | ID 404164454 © Svetlana Gavrilyuk | Dreamstime.com — ID 404164454 © Svetlana Gavrilyuk | Dreamstime.com

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First of its Kind Legal History London Traffic Offence UK

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1754: Born to Mutiny Twice: Captain William Bligh, Survivor of the Bounty and the Rum Rebellion in Sydney

Born on 9 September 1754, William Bligh rose to Vice-Admiral of the Blue and served as Governor of New South Wales from 1806 to 1808, but he is remembered above all for surviving not one but two uprisings against his command.

The first came on 28 April 1789 aboard HMAV Bounty, when Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian led a mutiny in the South Pacific. Bligh and 18 loyal crew were cast adrift in a 23-foot open launch so overloaded its gunwales sat only inches above the water, given four cutlasses and barely a week’s food, with a compass and quadrant but no charts. The ship’s clerk, Samuel, defied threats from the mutineers to smuggle aboard vital navigation instruments, while the gunner’s own pocket watch became the only means of keeping time. Fleeing hostile islanders at Tofua, the party lost quartermaster John Norton, killed on the beach, before Bligh navigated the tiny boat some 3,618 nautical miles to safety at Timor.

Nearly two decades later, as governor of Sydney, Bligh faced a second rebellion when officers of the NSW Corps deposed him in the colony’s Rum Rebellion, a rare case of a British officer surviving both a shipboard mutiny and a colonial military coup.

Sydney Rum Rebellion Arrest of Governor Bligh historical illustration

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Australia Historical Event Mutiny Naval History NSW Pacific Political Crime Rebellion Sydney UK

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