Among the earliest Newgate novels were Thomas Gaspey's Richmond (1827) and History of George Godfrey (1828), Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Paul Clifford (1830) and Eugene Aram (1832), and William Harrison Ainsworth's Rookwood (1834), which featured Dick Turpin.
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Thackeray's Catherine (1839) was intended as satire of the Newgate novel, based on the life and execution of Catherine Hayes, one of the more gruesome cases in the Newgate Calendar: she conspired to murder her husband and he was dismembered; she was burnt at the stake in 1726.
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The publication of Catherine coincided with the serialization of Ainsworth's novel, but it was the murder in 1840 of Lord William Russell by his valet, Benjamin Courvoisier, that spurred the authorities to act.
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