Episode Details

Send us your Feedback

This is not a podcast about true crime. It is true crime — written in 1735 and read aloud for the first time in nearly three centuries.

Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals was first published in 1735, covering murderers, highwaymen, housebreakers, coiners, pirates and worse — each one profiled in vivid, unsparing detail. It is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, and it has been waiting nearly three centuries to be heard aloud.

The crimes are real. The world they reveal — brutal, strange and surprisingly familiar — is closer to our own than most of us would care to admit.

True crime fascination did not begin with podcasts. It began here, by the burning light of a candle.

Support the show