Factual error: The depiction of the hanging is completely inaccurate. By the 1890s, the gallows at Newgate were housed in a room within the prison, not in the courtyard. Prisoners' wrists and legs were pinioned before they were hanged, not left free as depicted. The long drop was used in Britain from the 1870s, not the short drop depicted. The large knot depicted was not used in Britain (although it was in America) ; a simple sliding loop was actually used, and this was positioned under the jawbone at the side of the neck, not at the back of the neck, which would quite probably not have broken the neck, leaving the person to strangle to death.
Ripper Street (2012)
Starring: Matthew Macfadyen, Adam Rothenberg, Jerome Flynn, David Wilmot
Genres: Mystery
Factual error: When reading out the list of the day's crimes, Artherton mentions two "teenaged" girls. Use of this term is not recorded in America until the 1920s and in Britain until the late 1940s. The series is set in 1889 and the speech used by the characters is consistently very much the speech of the time - it has not been updated for modern understanding.
Factual error: A woman who was sentenced to death while pregnant, as Long Susan was, was never hanged. Her sentence was stayed until she gave birth and then always commuted to imprisonment. Most such women were released after only a few years.
