“The most famous secret agent in history” is somewhat of a contradiction in terms. If someone is famous, they’re hardly that secret. Sidney Reilly avoids this contradiction by being impossible to pin down. His real name, his place of birth…

The “class system” in British society grew out of the feudal system that Britain never officially abandoned (unlike most other European countries afflicted with that particular social disease). The transition was largely gradual - the…

Lee Christmas was born on a plantation in Louisiana in 1863. His first job was as a pilot on the local tugboats, but by the time he was 16 he was working on the railroad in Mississippi. For the next twelve years he works on railroads across…

Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in 1810 in the town of Bethel, Connecticut. His family had deep roots thereabouts - he was named for his mother’s father, a local judge. His own father was, according to PT Barnum’s obituary, “ever on the…

James Rush was born in 1800, of what was delicately referred to as “uncertain parentage”. His mother, Mary Bloomfield (spelt as Blomfield in some texts) was the unmarried daughter of a tenant farmer, and she did not name his father. Some…

History is rarely as clear-cut as it appears on the surface. Everybody knows that the druids were the educated priestly classes of the Celts, for example, but our sole source for that knowledge is the writings of non-Celts looking in from…

There is a myth about the tortured scientist, crying out in pain as he sees the inventions he created for peace used to wage war. There are stories of scientists who believed that the inventions they created had made war so terrible that it…

The police forces of the world have, it sometimes seems, more than their share of traditions. Perhaps it’s the inherent danger of the job that drives this desire for ritual, and a similar drive can be seen in military forces, firefighters…

One important lesson for any historian is this: beware of imposing our values on the past. While we should naturally avoid taking on archaic moral attitudes ourselves, we must always remember that the cultures of the past judged things…

There’s a story in The Newgate Calendar about Jonathan Wild. A merchant came to him with one of his porters and told him of how the man had been set upon by a gang of thieves. At the time, London had no professional police force but…