『Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals』のカバーアート

Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals

Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals

著者： Dark Stories
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概要

Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is a true crime podcast unlike any other; because every word of it was written nearly 300 years ago.


Each week, we read aloud one chapter from a remarkable book first published in London in 1735: a sprawling collection of murderers, highwaymen, coiners, housebreakers, pirates and worse, recorded in vivid and unsparing detail.


The crimes are real. The voices are authentic. And the world they reveal, brutal, strange, and surprisingly familiar, has been waiting three centuries to be heard again. True crime did not begin with podcasts. It began here by the burning light of a candle.

© 2026 Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals ノンフィクション犯罪
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  • Episode 025: Thomas Butlock: The Aspiring Thief Who Stole for Fine Clothes

    Episode 025: Thomas Butlock: The Aspiring Thief Who Stole for Fine Clothes
    2026/11/02
    Send us your FeedbackThomas Butlock, alias Butloge, is a young man driven by what he calls an 'aspiring temper': a restless vanity that propels him from Ireland to London, always chasing the appearance of a gentleman he can never quite afford to be. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals recounts, his story is one of those quiet, devastating true crime episodes where the crime itself takes barely half an hour to commit but a lifetime of yearning to produce. Raised among broken fortunes and borrowed prospects, Butloge drifts between masters and schemes, always just short of respectability. He is the kind of man the eighteenth century manufactured by the thousands: hungry for status, fragile in means, and dangerously convinced that appearance is everything. In a city that measures a man by his coat and his coin, Butloge's aspiring temper is about to meet its sharpest test. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Vintner: today the word conjures images of boutique winemakers in sun-drenched valleys. In eighteenth century Dublin and London, a vintner was simply the keeper of a tavern or wine house; a place of drink, noise, and often the 'lewd scenes' the text describes corrupting young Butloge's morals. Broke: when the text says his master 'broke,' it does not mean he fell apart emotionally. To break meant to go bankrupt; to fail in business so completely that a man might flee the country to escape his creditors, exactly as Butloge's master did when he crossed to Chester. Substantial man's daughter: the word 'substantial' here has nothing to do with size. A substantial man was one of solid financial standing; a man of property and credit. Marrying such a man's daughter was a route back to respectability, a social rescue operation disguised as romance. Aspiring temper: temper in this era did not simply mean a tendency to anger. It referred to one's essential disposition or character. An 'aspiring temper' meant an ambitious, upward-reaching nature; the kind of restless drive that could lead to greatness or to ruin depending on how it was fed. Getting into a place: a 'place' was not merely a location but a position; a salaried post, often in government or in the household of someone powerful. The pursuit of a place was the great hustle of Georgian England, and connections at the Law, meaning the Inns of Court, were considered a reliable ladder. Louis d'ors: French gold coins, each one worth roughly a guinea or slightly more. Finding them in a London drawer alongside English guineas tells you something about the cosmopolitan flow of money through the capital; and about the foreign gentleman Butloge served. Making a figure: to 'make a figure' meant to cut a striking public appearance; to dress well, carry oneself grandly, and be seen doing so. The phrase carried both admiration and warning. In Butloge's world, making a figure was the performance that preceded the crime. About This Series Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse. The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud. True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight. The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
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    4 分
  • Episode 024: James Booty: The Young Ravisher of Holborn

    Episode 024: James Booty: The Young Ravisher of Holborn
    2026/10/26
    Send us your FeedbackIn the dim workshops of early Georgian London, a boy barely into his teens finds himself infected by a disease he does not understand, and in his desperate ignorance he becomes something monstrous. Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals captures his story with the blunt clarity of a court record: a fatherless apprentice, left to the mercy of older hands, absorbing the worst possible counsel from the men around him. James Booty is no hardened criminal when his life begins to unravel; he is a child without capacity, as the old text puts it, adrift in a world that offers him nothing but cruel superstition. His case stands as one of the earliest documented episodes in the long lineage of true crime writing, where youth and depravity collide in ways that still disturb. What follows is a tale shaped by ignorance, infection, and the pitiless logic of eighteenth century justice closing in on a boy who scarcely comprehends his own actions. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Peruke-maker: a peruke is the formal word for what we now casually call a wig. A peruke-maker crafted those elaborate powdered creations that sat atop Georgian heads; it was a skilled trade and a respectable living, placing the Booty family squarely in the artisan class of Holborn. Foul distemper: this is the text's euphemism for venereal disease, almost certainly syphilis or gonorrhoea. In the eighteenth century, 'distemper' could mean any illness or bodily disorder; adding 'foul' before it was the polite way of saying the unspeakable. Made a shift: today 'making a shift' sounds like rearranging furniture, but in this period it simply meant managing with difficulty or contriving to do something. The boy made a shift to learn the cause of his pain: he scraped together enough information from those around him to understand what afflicted him. Sound: in modern speech, 'sound' means reliable or healthy in a general sense. In Georgian medical language it carried a much more specific meaning: free from disease, particularly venereal infection. To lie with someone who was 'sound' was the supposed cure; a lethal piece of folk superstition. Sessions: the regular sittings of the criminal court, held at the Old Bailey in London. Cases were tried in batches at these sessions, often at breakneck speed; a prisoner might wait weeks in Newgate only to be tried, convicted and sentenced in a single day. Newgate: London's most infamous prison, a name that carried dread for centuries. By 1722 it was already ancient, filthy, and overcrowded; a place where disease killed almost as efficiently as the gallows that awaited beyond its walls. Tyburn: the principal site of public execution in London, located near what is now Marble Arch. Condemned prisoners were carted through the streets to Tyburn in a grim procession that served as both spectacle and warning; the gallows there were known simply as 'the tree.' Infant criminals: the text uses 'infant' not in the modern sense of a baby but in its older legal meaning: a person under the age of majority. That the law could condemn a child to the same gallows as a grown murderer reveals how differently Georgian England understood youth, responsibility, and mercy. About This Series Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse. The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud. True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight. The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
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    3 分
  • Episode 023: Richard Whittingham: The Young Footpad of London's Streets

    Episode 023: Richard Whittingham: The Young Footpad of London's Streets
    2026/10/19
    Send us your FeedbackRichard Whittingham is barely past boyhood when he abandons his apprenticeship and steps into London's criminal underworld. As Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals recounts, his downfall begins not with malice but with weakness: an easy temper exploited by the wrong company and the relentless demands of women who trade affection for coin. His story is the kind of true crime narrative that reveals how quickly a young life can unravel in Georgian London. Whittingham is not born a villain; he is made one, piece by piece, by appetite and circumstance, until the streets themselves become his trade. The world he enters is one of coordinated violence and fragile loyalty, where the very companions who share the spoils are also the ones most likely to turn. Dark Lexicon: Old words. Dark meaning.The past speaks its own dialect; here is what to listen for in this episode. Footpad: today the word means nothing to most people, but in the eighteenth century it was instantly understood and deeply feared. A footpad was a robber who worked on foot, as opposed to the more glamorous highwayman on horseback. There was nothing romantic about a footpad; they were street-level predators who relied on speed, surprise and numbers. Hot-presser: this was a tradesman who used heated plates to press and finish cloth, giving fabric a smooth and lustrous surface. It was a respectable trade, the kind of steady apprenticeship that might have kept a young man out of trouble; Whittingham chose otherwise. Cutting off women's pockets: today a pocket is sewn into a garment, but in the early eighteenth century women wore separate pouches tied around the waist beneath their skirts. Thieves would literally slice the strings and snatch the pocket away. This is also the origin of the term 'pickpocket,' though the method here was closer to outright robbery. Impeached: we think of impeachment now as a political process, a formal accusation against a president or officeholder. In this era it meant something rawer and more personal: one criminal informing on another to save his own skin. To be impeached by a companion was to be betrayed from within. Passenger: in modern usage a passenger is someone riding in a vehicle, but in early eighteenth-century English it simply meant a person passing by on foot. The victims of Whittingham's gang were ordinary pedestrians walking London's broad streets. Condemned hold: this was the section of Newgate Prison where those sentenced to death were confined in their final days. It sat deep in the building, dark and airless, and the condemned could hear other prisoners beneath them through cracks in the floor; a last cruelty layered on top of all the others. Dissolution: today the word carries a formal, almost bureaucratic tone; the dissolution of a company or a parliament. In this context it means death itself: the dissolving of body from soul. It was the polite, prayerful way of naming the thing that waited at Tyburn. About This Series Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals is one of the earliest works of true crime writing in the English language, nearly 300 years old, covering murderers, thieves, highwaymen, forgers, coiners and worse. The book is entirely in the public domain and every word of it can be read today for free. But if you would rather listen, this podcast does exactly that: one criminal at a time, every week, read aloud. True crime was not invented by podcasts or streaming services. Eighteenth century readers were just as fascinated by outlaws and killers as we are today. They just consumed their dark stories by candlelight. The voice you hear is David Dark: crime researcher, theatre script writer, producer of live immersive experiences, and audiobook narrator and voice artist. This podcast uses an AI voice model trained on David's own voice, built using the maximum available training data to faithfully represent how he actually sounds. To hear David's real voice in human generated form, visit him on Audible, Online Stage, Voices of Today, Spoken Realms, and Internet Archive.Support the show
    続きを読む 一部表示
    4 分
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