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History of Europe
Severin Klosowski aka George Chapman, Victorian Murderer
Severin Klosowski was born near Warsaw in Poland in December of 1865. His father was a carpenter who earned enough to give his son a good education - Severin attended a boy’s school until the age of 14, and was then apprenticed to a…
Wallis Simpson, the Woman Who Could Not Be Queen
Wallis Simpson was born as Bessie Wallis Warfield in June of 1896. Her parents had been married only seven months previously, undoubtedly due to her impending arrival, but Wallis always insisted that they had been married the previous June.…
Baroness Moura Budberg, Russian Spy and Fantasist
Like most people involved in espionage, Moura Budberg was largely a creature of her own invention. She spent most of her life shrouded in lies, but she knew the trick to getting people to believe them. It wasn’t just “a kernel of truth”, as…
Henry Prince and John Smyth-Pigott, Agapemonite Messiahs
Henry Prince was born in 1811 in the city of Bath. His family were well off enough to own property in Jamaica - property which included slaves, as his mother was compensated when slavery was abolished there. His father died when he was…
Mary Frith aka Moll Cutpurse, the Roaring Girl
Mary Frith was born sometime in the 1580s - 1584 is a reasonable guess, and is given as a fact by some sources. She came from a relatively respectable background - her father was a shoemaker, and she had an uncle who was a churchman of some…
Black Jack Adair, Donegal’s Most Hated Man
John George “Jack” Adair was born on the 3rd March 1823 in “Queen’s County” in Ireland. (The county in question was renamed “Laois” after Irish independence, for obvious reasons.) It was an appropriate home for the Adairs, who were all…
Queen Isabella of Castile, Mother of Spain
The future queen Isabella was born on the 22nd of April 1451. She was the first child of King John II of Castile and was named after her mother, a Portuguese princess who was his second wife. Isabella was the second in line to the throne…
Frances Howard Carr, Countess and Killer
The popular history of Tudor England is all about the royal family - the dour tight-fisted Henry VII, the laughing murderous Henry VIII, the boy-king Edward, the bloody-handed Mary, the glorious asexual Elizabeth. Of course, that’s barely…
Charles DeRudio, Aristocratic Assassin and US Cavalry Officer
The early life of Charles DeRudio reads a bit like historical fantasy. Perhaps it was - he wasn't a humble man. However given that the later and even more improbable events of his life are thoroughly documented, it may be that everything he…
Petronilla de Meath, Irish Witch
It’s a simple and somewhat sad fact that we really don’t know that much about Petronilla de Meath. We don’t know exactly when she was born (probably some time around 1300), nor do we know who her parents were or what they did. (We do know…