- Catherine Hayes, burnt alive for the murder of her husband
- Thomas Lympus, executed for robbing the mail
- Reverend Wheatley, sentenced to public penance for adultery
- John Everett, sentenced to death for highway robbery
- Francis Smith, condemned to death for the murder of a supposed ghost
- Richard Turpin, executed for horse theft
- And many, many more
Many of these tales were first published in The Newgate Calendar, a popular publication that debuted in multiple volumes between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Historians believed that every household had a copy of at least one volume of the Calendar, which they stored alongside their copies of the Bible and The Pilgrim’s Progress.