Crime & Justice in the 18th century

140 sourced entries, 1700 CE to 1799 CE, oldest first. Also see Crime & Justice across every century or everything else in the 18th century.

1700April 18 – Hungarian freedom activist Ferenc Rákóczi is arrested by Austrian authorities and charged with sedition. Imprisoned near Vienna and facing a death sentence, he escapes and later leads the overthrow of the Habsburg control of Hungary.source
1701May 23 – Scottish-born Captain William Kidd, having been imprisoned in Boston Gaol (Massachusetts) and Newgate Prison (London) and convicted by the High Court of Admiralty of piracy and the murder of one of his crew, is hanged at Execution Dock in Wapping (London). His body suffers gibbeting over the River Thames at Tilbury Point; ballads are already spreading the legend that he has left buried treasure in the Americas.source
1703March 21 – Jeanne Guyon is freed from the Bastille in Paris after more than seven years imprisonment for heresy.source
1703July 29–31 – Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory in London, then imprisoned until mid-November for the crime of seditious libel after publishing his satirical political pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702).source
1703October 23 – Hannah Twynnoy, a 24-year-old barmaid in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, becomes the first person to be killed in Great Britain by a tiger. While working at the White Lion Inn, where a group of wild animals is on exhibit, she is mauled after bothering the tiger.source
1703French-born imposter George Psalmanazar arrives in London.source
1705December 26 – Fateh Singh and Zorawar Singh, sons of Guru Gobind Singh, are murdered by Wazir Khan for refusing to convert to Islam, and become hallowed martyrs in Sikhism.source
1705The Shogunate confiscates the property of a merchant in Osaka "for conduct unbecoming a member of the commercial class". The government seizes 50 pairs of gold screens, 360 carpets, several mansions, 48 granaries and warehouses scattered around the country, and hundreds of thousands of gold pieces.source
1706March 21 – Mary Channing, who was pregnant at the time that she was convicted of the murder of her husband, is burned at the stake at Dorset, in front of a crowd of 10,000 onlookers.source
1706June 11 – In Tibet, Lha-bzang Khan, khan of the Khoshut, kills the regent and kidnaps the 6th Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, and kills the Lama's regent.source
1706November 15 – Five months after having been deposed from his position as the Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso disappears while in exile in Qinghai and is presumed to have been murdered.source
1708December 17 – Deborah Churchill, British pickpocket and prostitute, is executed before a large crowd for being an accomplice to murder.source
1709April 21 – Mirwais Hotak takes control of Kandahar (in Afghanistan) by murdering the Persian governor, Gurgin Khan, known also as George XI.source
1709July 9 – Christopher Slaughterford of London is executed in Guildford for the murder of Jane Young, his fiancée. He is the first person in modern England executed for murder based exclusively on circumstantial evidence, and he maintains his innocence to the last.source
1710January 4 – Robert Balfour, 5th Lord Balfour of Burleigh, two days before he is due to be executed for murder, escapes from the Edinburgh Tolbooth by exchanging clothes with his sister.source
1710June 24 – In the Isle of Man, Manx coins become legal tender.source
1711September 16 (approximate date) – Tuscarora natives kill Lawson. Von Graffenried and one African American slave are known to have been set free.source
1711October 14 – Woodes Rogers returns to England after a successful round-the-world privateering cruise against Spain, carrying loot worth £150,000.source
1712June 10 – Kurtkulağı Caravanserai in Adana Province, Turkey, is restored and 50 soldiers are appointed to guard it.source
1712October 3 – In Scotland a warrant is issued for the arrest of outlaw Rob Roy MacGregor by Advocate Sir James Stewart.source
1712November 4 – The Bandbox Plot aims to kill British Lord Treasurer Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford but is foiled by Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver’s Travels).source
1715June 29 – Britain's Treason Act 1714 takes effect, providing for forfeiture to the British Crown of property owned by any person convicted of treason in the Kingdom. The Act remains in effect until June 24, 1718.source
1716February 24 – Jacobite leaders James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater and William Gordon, 6th Viscount of Kenmure are executed in London.source
1716September 15 – "Maria", an African slave of the Dutch West India Company on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, murders the plantation overseer, Christiaan Muller, then leads a rebellion, killing Muller's family and much of the white staff on the company's plantation. The uprising is suppressed after 10 days, and Maria is executed by burning at the stake on November 9.source
1716English pirate Edward Teach (Blackbeard) is given command of a sloop in the Bahamas.source
1717January 1 – Count Carl Gyllenborg, the Swedish ambassador to Great Britain, was arrested in London for a plot to assist the Pretender to the British throne, James Francis Edward Stuart.source
1717October 18 – Trial begins in Boston for six pirates who had survived the April 26 wreck of Samuel Bellamy's ships Whydah and the Mary Anne. Five of them (John Brown, Hendrick Quintor, Thomas Baker, Peter Cornelius Hoof and John Shuan) are convicted on October 22 of piracy and robbery and hanged on November 15.source
1717November 28 – Pirates led by Edward "Blackbeard" Teach and Benjamin Hornigold capture the French slave transport Concorde near island of Saint Vincent the West Indies. Blackbeard renames the vessel Queen Anne's Revenge, adds to its armaments, and makes it his flagship. Hornigold soon accepts a British amnesty for all pirates, and Blackbeard teams up with Stede Bonnet and begins plundering ships approaching North American ports.source
1717François-Marie Arouet is sentenced to imprisonment in the Bastille for eleven months, because of a satirical verse against the Régent of France and his infamous daughter Marie Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, who is hiding an illegitimate pregnancy and soon to give birth; Arouet will emerge with the pseudonym Voltaire and the completed text of his first play, Œdipe.source
1718October 3 – Stede Bonnet and his crew are captured near the mouth of the Cape Fear River and taken to Charleston, South Carolina, where they are tried for piracy. All but four are found guilty and sentenced to death (with 22 hanged on November 8), but Bonnet escapes from prison on October 24.source
1718December 10 – Pirate Stede Bonnet is hanged at Charleston, after being recaptured.source
1720November 16 – Pirate John Rackham (captured on October 22) is brought to trial at Spanish Town in Jamaica; he is hanged at Port Royal two days later. Most of his crew is also hanged but female pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny are spared.source
1721April 26 – Pirates John Taylor and Olivier Levasseur capture the 700-ton Portuguese galleon Nossa Senhora do Cabo at Réunion. The total value of treasure on board (from Goa) is estimated as between £100,000 and £875,000, one of the largest pirate hauls ever.source
1722June 15 – Pirate Edward Low and his men sail the stolen ship Rebecca into Port Roseway near modern Shelburne, Nova Scotia, where 13 fishing boats from Massachusetts are anchored. Over the next few days, the pirates board the boats and lay siege to them. On June 19, Low confiscates the schooner Mary from its owner, Joseph Dolliber, outfits it with cannons and renames it the Fancy. Eight of the fishermen are taken hostage as the stolen vessel departs, including Philip Ashton.source
1722August 24 – Francis Atterbury, Anglican Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, is arrested in his deanery and confined in the Tower of London for treason, accused of leading the Jacobite "Atterbury Plot" in support of the pretender James Francis Edward Stuart with the aim of overthrowing the House of Hanover and King George I of Great Britain and restoring the House of Stuart by installing Prince James as "King James III".source
1723January 25 – English-born pirate Edward Low intercepts the Portuguese ship Nostra Signiora de Victoria. After the Portuguese captain throws his treasure of 11,000 gold coins into the sea rather than surrendering it, Low orders the captain's brutal torture and execution, then has the rest of the Victoria crew murdered. Low commits more atrocities this year, but is not certainly heard of after the end of the year.source
1723April 1 – In Switzerland, the attempt by Major Abraham Davel to make the canton of Vaud independent of the Swiss government, is put down, one day after he and 500 men had taken control of the Vaudois capital, Lausanne. Davel is arrested, tortured and tried for treason; he is beheaded on April 24.source
1723May 27 – The Black Act 1723, intended to combat illegal hunting in Great Britain, comes into force and expands the number of crimes that are punishable by death, and remains in effect for 100 years.source
1724July 27 – "Peter the Wild Boy" is captured near Helpensen in Hanover.source
1724November 11 – Joseph Blake (alias "Blueskin"), English highwayman, is hanged in London.source
1724November 16 – Highwayman Jack Sheppard is hanged in London.source
1724November 16 – Willem Mons, lover of Catherine I of Russia, is executed, and his head preserved in alcohol.source
1724Shah Mahmud Hotaki of Afghanistan goes insane.source
1725May 24 – Jonathan Wild, fraudulent 'Thief-Taker General', is hanged at Tyburn in London, for actually aiding criminals.source
1726August 7 – English-born pirate Nicholas Brown is captured near Xtabi, Jamaica.source
1726September 6 – An explosion kills all but seven of the 700 passengers and crew on the Portuguese Navy galleon HMFMS Santa Rosa as its cargo of gunpowder blows up. Historians speculate that of the 693 people on the ship, those who weren't killed by the explosion drowned or were killed by sharks as the ship went down off of the coast of Recife.source
1727An old woman known as Janet (Jenny) Horne of Loth, Sutherland becomes the last alleged witch in the British Isles to be executed, when she is burned at the stake in Dornoch, Scotland. (Some sources give the date as June 1722.)source
1728May 31 – The Royal Bank of Scotland invents the overdraft, allowing Edinburgh merchant William Hogg cash credit (in the amount of £1,000) for his creditors to be paid by the bank until Hogg receives expected revenue to repay the amount owed, plus interest.source
1729February 25 – James Oglethorpe, a member of the British House of Commons, begins service as the Chairman of the Gaols Committee to investigate the conditions of Britain's jails and prisons after the death in Fleet Prison of his friend, Robert Castell. The Oglethorpe Committee's report propels Oglethorpe to fame and leads to the beginning of British penal reforms.source
1730June 1 – Enslaved woman Sally Basset is put on trial for murder in Bermuda; she will eventually be convicted and burned at the stake.source
1730August 4 – Maria Madlener becomes the last person to be executed after the Galgeninsel witch trials in Bavaria, and is beheaded by sword.source
1730August 25 – French Protestant Marie Durand is imprisoned in the Tower of Constance at Aigues-Mortes for her defiance of the Roman Catholic government, and is kept captive for the next 38 years. During her incarceration, she continues to resist converting to Catholicism as a condition of release. She is finally set free on April 14, 1768 and lives 8 more years.source
1730November 6 – After being convicted of treason for attempting to desert the Prussian Army with Crown Prince Frederick, Hans Hermann von Katte is beheaded at the Küstrin Prison. Frederick's father, King Frederick William, forces the prince to watch the execution.source
1735August 16 (August 5 old style) – John Peter Zenger of The New York Weekly Journal becomes a symbol of freedom of the press when he is acquitted of seditious libel against William Cosby, the British Governor of the Province of New York. A jury concludes that what Zenger published was true.source
1736April 14 – The Porteous Riots erupt in Edinburgh (Scotland), after the execution of smuggler Andrew Wilson, when town guard Captain John Porteous orders his men to fire at the crowd. Porteous is arrested later.source
1736June 24 – Witchcraft Act 1735 (9 Geo. 2. c. 5) in Great Britain comes into effect, criminalizing claimants accusing people of practising witchcraft or of possessing magical powers, intended to end legal witch trials in the early modern period in the country.source
1736September 7 – An Edinburgh crowd drags John Porteous out of his cell in Tolbooth Prison, and lynches him.source
1738February 4 – Court Jew Joseph Süß Oppenheimer is executed in Württemberg.source
1739April 7 – English highwayman Dick Turpin is executed by hanging for horse theft.source
1742The Lopukhina Conspiracy arises at the Russian court.source
1743July 20 – Lord Anson captures the Philippine galleon Nuestra Señora de Covadonga and its treasure of 1,313,843 Spanish dollars at Manila along with a treasure of 2 1/2 million dollars, and proceeds back toward Mexico, then returns to Britain in 1744source
1743Probable date – The last wolf in Scotland is shot, in Killiecrankie.source
1747March 19 – Simon Fraser, the 79-year old Scottish Lord Lovat, is convicted of high treason for being one of the leaders of the Jacobite rising of 1745 against King George II of Great Britain and attempting to place the pretender Charles Edward Stuart on the throne.source
1748The ruins of Pompeii are rediscovered.source
1749October 2 – Edward Cornwallis, the British Governor of Nova Scotia, commands his militia and local citizens "to annoy, distress, take or destroy the Savage commonly called Micmac, wherever they are found" and promises a reward of ten guineas (21 British shillings) for every Mi'kmaq scalp brought in.source
1750May 16 – Two weeks after police in Paris arrest six teenagers for gambling in the suburb of Saint-Laurent, rioting breaks out when a rumor spreads that plainclothes policemen are hauling off small children between the ages of five and ten years old, in order to provide blood to an ailing aristocrat. Over the next two weeks, rioting breaks out in other sections of Paris. Police are attacked, including one who is beaten to death by the mob, until order is restored and police reforms are announced.source
1750November 11 – A riot breaks out in Lhasa after the murder of the regent of Tibet.source
1750Maruyama Okyo paints The Ghost of Oyuki.source
1751February 18 – As the Governor of French Louisiana, Pierre de Rigaud, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, issues the first police regulations for New Orleans in an attempt to combat crime in that city.source
1752February 27 – The Virginia Assembly passes a law making maiming a felony, in response to the practice of gouging.source
1753January 29 – After a month's absence, Elizabeth Canning returns to her mother's home in London and claims that she was abducted; the following criminal trial causes an uproar.source
1756December 14 – Rev. John Home's tragedy Douglas is performed for the first time in Edinburgh, with overwhelming success, in spite of the opposition of the local church presbytery, who summon Alexander Carlyle to answer for having attended its representation. However, it fails in its early promise to set up a new Scottish dramatic tradition.source
1757February 3 – French artist Robert Picault begins the rescue of the frescoes at the King's Chamber of the Palace of Fontainebleau before architect Ange-Jacques Gabrel begins renovations.source
1757October 14 – Of the 478 people arrested, and 442 (including 50 women and young boys) convicted, for their roles in the Porto riot in February, 13 men and one woman are hanged; afterwards, their bodies are then quartered, and the severed limbs are publicly displayed on spikes. Another 49 men and 10 women are exiled to Portuguese colonies in Africa and India, and the other convicts are either flogged, imprisoned, or pressed into service rowing galley ships.source
1757October 16 – Seven Years' War: Raid on Berlin – Hungarian raiders (3,400 horseman) under Count András Hadik plunder Berlin. He demands that the city council pay a ransom of 200,000 thalers and a dozen pairs of gloves for Empress Maria Theresa. The Hungarians leave the Prussian capital after they received messages about a Prussian relief force under Prince Dietrich von Anhalt-Dessau, marching towards Berlin.source
1758January 20 – At Cap-Haïtien in Haiti, former slave turned rebel François Mackandal is executed by the French colonial government by being burned at the stake.source
1758March 16 – Members of the Comanche Nation loot and destroy the Spanish Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá (near modern-day Menard, Texas) and kill eight of the people there, including the mission leader, Father Alonso Giraldo de Terreros.source
1759January 13 – Távora affair: The Távora family is executed, following accusations of the attempted regicide of Joseph I of Portugal.source
1759Churton Town, the Orange County, North Carolina county seat laid out in 1754, is renamed Childsburgh, in honor of North Carolina attorney general Thomas Child. It is later renamed Hillsborough in 1766.source
1760April 22 – Belgian entertainer Joseph Mervin is said to have given the first demonstration of roller skates, in a performance at the Carlisle House in London, but the stunt ends in disaster.source
1762March 10 – Jean Calas, a 68 year old French merchant convicted unjustly of murdering his son because of religious differences, is brutally executed on orders of the Parlement of Toulouse. After his legs and hips are broken and crushed, Calas is tortured on the breaking wheel (la roue), to remain "in pain and repentance for his crimes and misdeeds, for as long as it shall please God to keep him alive."source
1763April 18 – Marie-Josephte Corriveau is hanged near her home at Saint-Vallier, Quebec before being gibbeted after being found guilty by a military tribunal of twelve officers of murdering her husband. She becomes famous in French Canadian folklore as "la Corriveau".source
1765March 9 – After a public campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have committed suicide.source
1765August 14 – In protest of the Stamp Act, Bostonians attack the home of official Andrew Oliver.source
1765August 26 – In protest of the Stamp Act, Bostonians destroy the home of lieutenant governor Thomas Hutchinson.source
1765September 6 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau's house in Switzerland is stoned by a mob.source
1765September 21 – François Antoine announces he has killed the Beast of Gévaudan.source
1766February 20 – The Pennsylvania Gazette reports that a British sloop off Wilmington, North Carolina, has seized a sloop sailing from Philadelphia, and another sailing from Saint Christopher, on the charge of carrying official documents without stamps. In response, local residents threaten to burn a Royal Man-of-War attempting to deliver stamps to Wilmington, forcing the ship to return to the mouth of the Cape Fear River.source
1766July 1 – François-Jean de la Barre, a young French nobleman, is tortured and beheaded, before his body is burnt on a pyre, along with a copy of Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique nailed to his torso, supposedly for the crime of not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbeville, and for other sacrileges, including desecrating a crucifix.source
1766August 10 – During the occupation of New York, members of the 28th Foot Regiment of the British Army chop down the liberty pole that was erected by the Sons of Liberty on June 4. The Sons of Liberty put up a second pole the next day, and that pole is cut down on August 22.source
1766December 5 – James Christie holds the first sale at Christie's auction house in London.source
1770February 22 – Christopher Seider, an 11-year-old boy in Boston in the British Province of Massachusetts Bay, is shot and killed by a colonial official, Ebenezer Richardson. The funeral sets off anti-British protests that lead to the massacre days later.source
1770Joseph Priestley, English chemist, recommends the use of a rubber eraser to remove pencil marks.source
1771December 3 – The cause of action in Sommersett's Case, which eventually leads to the end of slavery in Great Britain, begins when escaped slave James Somerset is found imprisoned on the ship Ann and Mary.source
1772January 17 – Johann Friedrich Struensee and Queen Caroline Matilda are arrested, leading to his execution and her banishment from Denmark.source
1772February 12 – The Virginia Assembly amends an act to describe the punishments for the practice of gouging.source
1772Frederick II, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, demands that all bodies remain unburied for three days to ensure that death has actually taken place.source
1774January 27 – An angry crowd in Boston, Massachusetts seizes, tars, and feathers British customs collector and Loyalist John Malcolm, for striking a boy and a shoemaker, George Hewes, with his cane.source
1775October – The Sayre Plotters attempt to kidnap George III of the United Kingdom.source
1777The code duello is adopted at the Clonmel Summer Assizes as the form for pistol duels by gentlemen in Ireland. It is quickly denounced, but nevertheless widely adopted throughout the English-speaking world.source
1778September – The Massachusetts Banishment Act, providing punishment for Loyalists, is passed.source
1780August 24 – King Louis XVI abolishes the use of torture in extracting confessions in French law courts.source
1780In Ireland, Lady Berry, who is sentenced to death for the murder of her son, is released when she agrees to become an executioner (she retires in 1810).source
1781July 27 – French spy François Henri de la Motte is hanged and drawn before a large crowd at Tyburn, London in England for high treason.source
1782January 23 – The Laird of Johnstone (George Ludovic Houston) invites people to buy marked plots of land which, when built upon, form the planned town of Johnstone, Scotland, to provide employment for his thread and cotton mills.source
1782February 6 – Singu Min is overthrown as king of Myanmar by his cousin Phaungka Min and would be executed eight days later by his uncle Bodawpayar.source
1782June 18 – In Switzerland, Anna Göldi is sentenced to death for witchcraft (the last legal witchcraft sentence).source
1782London creates the Foot Patrol for public security.source
1785August 15 – Cardinal de Rohan is arrested in Paris; the Affair of the Diamond Necklace comes into the open.source
1785October 13 – France mints new Louis d'or coins, with the image of King Louis XVI on the obverse, and one-sixth less gold than the coins with King Louis XV's image.source
1785Charles Adams, John Adams’ son and John Quincy Adams's brother, enters Harvard in August at age 15. A few months later, he starts to drink often and to get into trouble, and is almost expelled when he is caught running naked through the Campus while drunk with other boys.source
1786May 21 – The trial in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace ends in Paris.source
1786The last reliably recorded wolf in Ireland is hunted down and killed near Mount Leinster, County Carlow, for killing sheep.source
1788March 14 – The Edinburgh Evening Courant carries a notice of £200 reward for the capture of William Brodie, a town councilor doubling as a burglar.source
1788August 27 – The trial of Deacon William Brodie for burglary begins in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is sentenced to death by hanging.source
1788October 1 – William Brodie is hanged at the Tolbooth in Edinburgh.source
1788December 6 – Russo-Turkish War (1787–92): The Ottoman fortress of Ochakiv falls to the Russians after a prolonged siege, and a murderous storm with a temperature of -23 C F.source
1789July 1 – The comic ballet La fille mal gardée, choreographed by Jean Dauberval, is first presented under the title Le ballet de la paille, at the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, at Bordeaux, France.source
1790June 23 – The alleged London Monster is arrested in London; he later receives 40 years for 10 assaults.source
1792February 18 – Thomas Holcroft produces the comedy The Road to Ruin in London.source
1792April 21 – Tiradentes, a leading figure in the Inconfidência Mineira conspiracy, is executed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.source
1792April 25 – Highwayman Nicolas Pelletier becomes the first person executed by guillotine in France.source
1792August 10 – French Revolution: Insurrection of 10 August 1792 – The Tuileries Palace is stormed and Louis XVI is arrested and taken into custody.source
1792September 11 – Six men steal some of the former French Crown Jewels from a warehouse where the revolutionary government has stored them.source
1792December 26 – The trial of Louis XVI of France begins.source
1793January 13 – Nicolas Jean Hugon de Bassville, a representative of Revolutionary France, is lynched by a mob in Rome.source
1793July 13 – French Revolution: Charlotte Corday kills Jean-Paul Marat in his bath.source
1793December 18 – French forces under Dugommier capture Toulon from royalists and British forces under Vice Admiral Lord Hood. The British fire the dockyards and take 16 ships, one of which, the Lutine, becomes a famous treasure ship.source
1794April 28 – Sardinian Vespers: The people of Cagliari in Sardinia oust the viceroy and his Piedmontese functionaries.source
1794May 8 – Reign of Terror: chemist Antoine Lavoisier is tried, convicted and executed in Paris with 27 co-defendants also associated with the former ferme générale.source
1794July 27 (9 Thermidor) – French Revolution – Thermidorian Reaction: Maximilien, Augustin Robespierre and Saint-Just are arrested on the orders of the French National Convention; they are executed the next day, ending the French Revolution's Reign of Terror.source
1794August 9 – Napoleon is arrested and put under house arrest at Nice for his association with the Robespierres during their fall in the Thermidorian Reaction. He is later taken to Antibes and detained in a military fort.source
1795April 23 – Former Governor-General of India Warren Hastings is acquitted by the British House of Lords of misconduct.source
1796April 2 – The only night of the supposed Shakespearean play Vortigern and Rowena (actually written by William Henry Ireland) ends in the audience's laughter.source
1796April 27 – Case of the Lyons Mail: During the night, five highwaymen attack the mail between Paris and Lyon, kill the postmen and steal the funds sent to the armies in Italy.source
1796August 10 – A mob of peasants overtakes the Convent of St. Peter (Bludenz, Austria) and murders Ignaz Anton von Indermauer.source
1796Rizla rolling papers established.source
1798February 15 – U.S. Representative Roger Griswold (Fed-CT) beats Congressman Matthew Lyon (Dem-Rep-VT) with a cane, after the House declines to censure Lyon for earlier spitting in Griswold's face; the House declines to discipline either man.source
1799January 17 – Maltese patriot Dun Mikiel Xerri, along with a number of other patriots, is executed.source
1799October 16 – War of the Second Coalition: Action of 16 October 1799 – A Spanish treasure convoy worth more than £54,000,000 is captured by the British Royal Navy off Vigo.source