Crime and Punishment

a pencil sketch of a tipi with the outlines of several Indians sitting around it

The Unjust Execution of the Dakota 38

In 1862, as the Civil War raged across the fields of the south, another American war was coming to an end: the Dakota War, a conflict between the Dakota people and American settlers in Minnesota. Though the United States military won a decisive and punishing victory over the Dakota, they Read more

By Sarah Handley-Cousins, 2 years ago August 16, 2025

a black and white 19th c illustration of a police officer discovering a woman's dead body on the sidewalk

Crime and Punishment

From Respectability to Ruin to Ripper Victim: The Whitechapel Murders and the Precarity of Poverty in Victorian London

In 1850, a bright-eyed eight-year-old girl walked across London Bridge in her carefully maintained school uniform. Her teachers called her promising; her siblings found her delightful. No one could have predicted that decades later, she would die violently in Mitre Square, known to history only as one of Jack the Read more

By Marissa Rhodes, 2 years ago March 13, 2025