1808: The Bushranger Who Apologised Mid-Robbery, Then Hanged at Sydney
Hugh Dowling and his accomplices broke into William Styles’s house near the Nepean River in 1808, beat a sleeping servant unconscious, bound Styles’s wife as she nursed an infant, and ransacked the home at gunpoint. Read more →
1829: The Informer They Called Kangaroo Jack: Silenced in the Bush Near Bathurst
John Hazeldine went by the name Kangaroo Jack, and he liked to remind men what his evidence could do: he claimed it had hanged one man in England and transported two others. Read more →
1829: The Five-Pound Threshold: Two Men Hanged at Sydney for Burglary
Daniel Grier and Charles Penson were hanged at Sydney in 1829 for nothing more than burglary: stealing from a dwelling house goods valued at just over five pounds, a sum that under the law of the day was enough to turn a break-in into a hanging offence. They died on the same gallows as a young murderer, though their own execution became its own grim spectacle. Read more →
1854: Being Drunk Was No Excuse: A Husband Hanged at Maitland for Beating His Wife to Death
Neighbours near Lydney Park on the Hunter River heard Mary Walsh begging “to spare her life” as the blows fell, then heard her husband Christopher Walsh order her to leave the house. Read more →
1898: Executed as Reform Martyrs, But Were They Assassins? The Beheading of Six Gentlemen in Beijing
When Empress Dowager Cixi crushed the Hundred Days’ Reform with a palace coup in September 1898, she moved fast. Read more →
1978: The Vatican Cover-Up That Fuelled a Poisoning Legend: the Death of Pope John Paul I
Pope John Paul I was found dead in his bed after just 33 days in office, the shortest papacy since 1605, with a religious devotional still in his hands. Read more →
