Robert Venables (ca. 1613–1687), was a soldier during the English Civil War and noted angler.

Venables was lieutenant-colonel in the parliamentary army. He was wounded at Chester in 1645. He was appointed governor of Liverpool in 1648. He served with success in Ireland from 1649 until 1654. He was sent as joint commander with Admiral William Penn, on the Caribbean expedition against the Spanish in the West Indies in 1654. The English forces were routed at Hispaniola in 1655, but managed to successfully take Jamaica later the same year. On his return to England he was sent to the Tower of London in September 1655, and cashiered in October. Appointed governor of Chester, 1660. After the restoration he bought Wincham, retired from public life and remained a nonconformist. He published a treatise on angling, The Experienced Angler, in 1662.

Robert Venables was the son of Robert Venables of Antrobus, Cheshire, by Ellen, daughter of Richard Simcox of Rudheath.Firth 1899, p. 205 The Venables were a cadet branch of a family that could trace their ancestry back to the Norman Conquest, while his mothers family were from the middling sort.

James Patrick Bulger (16 March 1990 – 12 February 1993) was a boy from Kirkby, England, who was murdered on 12 February 1993, when aged two. He was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson (born 23 August 1982) and Jon Venables (born 13 August 1982). Bulger disappeared from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, near Liverpool, while accompanying his mother. His mutilated body was found on a railway line two-and-a-half miles away in Walton, two days after his murder. Thompson and Venables were charged on 20 February 1993 with Bulger's abduction and murder.

The pair were found guilty on 24 November 1993, making them the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history. They were sentenced to custody until they reached adulthood, initially until the age of 18, and were released on a lifelong licence in June 2001. In 2010 Venables was returned to prison for violating the terms of his licence of release.

The case has prompted widespread debate on the issue of how to handle young offenders when they are sentenced or released from custody.