In addition to the Old Bailey sessions papers, what other primary

sources are necessary for a balanced understanding of the UK criminal

justice process in the period 1750–1913?

John Walliss

I

In 2009, the Proceedings of the Old Bailey for the period 1674-1913 [The Proceedings of

the Old Bailey; hereafter the Proceedings] were put online through a collaborative project

between the Open University, the University of Hertfordshire and the University of

Sheffield. The digitized proceedings, alongside the companion site London Lives 1690-

1800, present the historian with a wealth of material on the operation of the criminal justice

system during the period free of charge. The Proceedings are fully searchable and contain

accounts of 197,0000 trials as well as supporting essays about the Old Bailey and the

criminal justice process during the period. In addition to the qualitative material presented

in the trial accounts, the site also has the functionality to allow the historian to generate

tables and charts based on information contained in the Proceedings.1

The Proceedings, however, only present a partial picture of the operation of the

criminal justice process during the period 1750-1913. For a more balanced understanding,

the historian has to consult a range of other primary sources, often in combination with

each other. This essay will do two things. First, it will briefly examine the limitations of the

Proceedings, showing how, despite John Langbein’s claim that they are “probably the best

1 www.oldbaileyonline.org. See also www.londonlives.org1

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accounts we shall ever have of what transpired in ordinary English courts before the later

eighteenth century”, the information contained within them is limited in several ways.2

Second, more substantively, the essay will then discuss four other primary sources -

Assize, Quarter Sessions and Summary Court records from other circuits, official statistics,

newspapers, and books and periodicals, examining the ways in which they have been

utilised by historians, how they can compliment other primary sources, as well their

limitations. It will argue that only by consulting a range of primary sources in a process of

triangulation can anything approximating a balanced understanding of the criminal justice

process during the period be obtained.

II

The material presented in Proceedings have been used by historians as a way of forming

an image of crime and criminality in London during the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries in a number of ways. To take a few examples; Peter Linebaugh and more

recently Andrea McKenzie used the Ordinary of Newgate’s Account to discuss public

execution during the eighteenth century, the latter historian focusing particularly on the last

dying speeches made by criminals and the role of religion in framing the execution scene.3

Malcolm Feeley, Deborah Little and Peter King have used the Old Bailey Sessions Papers

in their discussions of women in the criminal justice system between the eighteenth and

2 John H. Langbein, ‘The Criminal Trial Before the Lawyers’, The University of Chicago Law Review, 45, 2 (1978), 263-316, (p. 271).3 Peter Linebaugh, ‘The Ordinary of Newgate and His Account’, in Crime in England 1550-1800, ed, by John S. Cockburn (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1977), 246-69; Andrea McKenzie, Tyburn’s Martyrs: Execution in England 1675-1775 (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007).

2

nineteenth centuries.4 More recently, Norma Landau has used the Sessions Papers

alongside newspapers to examine the extent of crime in London in the eighteenth century.5

In spite of this, however, the Proceedings are not without problems as an historical

source. Primarily, they can tell historians a lot about crime and the operation of justice in

the capital and in one court, but nothing about crime and justice in the provinces of

England; areas that were covered by other circuits. Second, while the information provided

in the Proceedings is considered to be accurate, it is limited in several ways. The

Proceedings do not contain a full transcript of what was said in court, often truncating or

omitting completely the case for the defence. Legal arguments and the judge’s summing

up were also frequently omitted, as were the speeches given by those convicted of capital

cases. The commercial nature of the Proceedings also reflected which cases were

reported, with cases involving sex or violence or those considered to be amusing being

more fully reported than more trivial offences, such as theft of small amounts. That said,

the amount of material presented in trial reports increased over the period in question.6

Thus, the trial of an unnamed highway man on the 29th April 1674 runs to only 230 words,

4 Malcolm M. Feeley & Deborah L. Little, ‘The Vanishing Female: The Decline of Women in the Criminal Process, 1687-1912’, Law & Society Review 25, 4 (1991), 719-58; Peter King, ‘Female Offenders, Work and Life-Cycle Change in Late-Eighteenth Century London’, Continuity and Change 11, 1 (1996), 61-90.5 Norma Landau, ‘Gauging Crime in Eighteenth-Century London’, Social History, 35, 4 (2010), 396-417.6 Clive Emsley, Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker, "The Proceedings - The Value Of the Proceedings as a Historical Source", Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 28 May 2012), http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Value.jsp (accessed 28th May 2012); Robert Shoemaker, ‘The Old Bailey Proceedings and the Representation of Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century London’, Journal of British Studies 47, 3 (2008), 559-80; Langbein, ‘The Criminal Trial Before the Lawyers’, Op. Cit; For a review of the Proceedings webpage itself, see Drew D. Gray, ‘Review of The Old Bailey Proceedings Online (review no. 897)’, Reviews in History, www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/897 (accessed 19th March 2012).

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while the trial of Elizabeth Pettifer for murder on April 1st 1913 runs to eleven-times that

length (2665 words).7

Many of the uses and limitations of the Proceedings can also be applied to Assize,

Quarter and Summary Court records during the period. Quarter and Assize sessions

reports have been widely used by historians to examine the operation of the criminal

justice process between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Most notably,

historians such as John Beattie, Peter King and John Minkes have used the records from

Quarter and Assizes sessions to critique the claims made by Douglas Hay in his essay

Property, Authority and the Criminal Law over the working of the ‘Bloody Code’ between

the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.8 John Beattie and Barry Godfrey and

his colleagues have also examined court records, the latter scholars analysing them

quantitatively, in their discussions of female offenders and sentencing patterns.9 In

contrast to the Quarter and Assizes Sessions, Summary Courts have received somewhat

less attention by historians, although useful work has been undertaken by Jennifer Davis

and Drew Gray on the operation of Summary justice in the metropolis in the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries.10

7 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 28 May 2012), April 1674, trial of Prisoner (t16740429-1); Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 28 May 2012), April 1913, trial of PETTIFER, Elizabeth Florence (36, laundress) (t19130401-39).8 John M. Beattie, ‘Crime and the Courts in Surrey 1736-1753’, in Crime in England 1550-1800, ed, by John S. Cockburn (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1977), 155-86; Peter King, ‘Decision-Makers and Decision-Making in the English Criminal Law, 1750-1800’, The Historical Journal 27, 1 (1984), 25-58; John Minkes, ‘Wales and the ‘Bloody Code’: the Brecon Circuit of the Court of Great Sessions in the 1750s’, Welsh History Review, 22, 4 (2005), 673-704; Douglas Hay, ‘Property, Authority and the Criminal Law’, in Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E.P. Thompson, & Cal Winslow, (London: Verso, 1975 [2011]), 17-63.9 John M. Beattie, ‘The Criminality of Women in Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of Social History 8, 4 (1975), 80-116; Barry S. Godfrey, Stephen Farrell & Susanne Karstedt, ‘Explaining Gendered Sentencing Patterns for Violent Men and Women in the Late-Victorian and Edwardian Period’, British Journal of Criminology 45 (2005), 696-720.10 Jennifer Davis, ‘A Poor Man’s System of Justice: The London Police Courts in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, The Historical Journal 27, 2 (1984), 309-35; Drew D. Gray, ‘The Regulation of Violence in the Metropolis: the Prosecution of Assault in the

4

The potential limitations of using Quarter Sessions and Assizes records have been

discussed in depth by John Cockburn, John Beattie and Robert Shoemaker.11 Primarily, in

contrast to the good preservation of Old Bailey material, much Assize and Quarter session

material is missing completely, contain significant gaps which cannot be filled, or are too

decayed or damaged to be consulted. Thus, in the case of the Chester Sessions, the

National Record Office hold the Crown Books for between 1560 to 1711, but there is a gap

in the material of over seventy years between 1757 and 1830.12 Although some of this

material for the period 1713-40 is partly filled by a Crown Book held at the Chester Public

Record Office, there is still a significant gap in the record that makes longterm analysis

almost impossible.13 The Quarter Session records held at the Chester PRO contain

material from 1488-1971 and contain writs of summons, bills and indictments and

constables’ and jurors presentments, although the record states that it is not possible to

access some of the files as “they are very dirty and impossible to consult without the

possibility of damaging the documents”. In order to consult much of this material, the

historian would have to ““speak to the Archivist about the possibility of some remedial

conservation work being carried out”.14

A great deal of information contained in the existing records is also often unreliable.

While the name of the defendent is typically accurate, bar the use of any aliases, their

Summary Courts, c. 1780-1820’, The London Journal 32, 1 (2007), 75-87.11 John S. Cockburn, ‘Early-Modern Assize Records as Historical Evidence’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, V (1975), 215-31; John M. Beattie, ‘Judicial Records and the Measurement of Crime in Eighteenth Century England’, in Crime and Criminal Justice in Europe and Canada, ed, by Louis A. Knafla (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981), 127-45; Robert B. Shoemaker, ‘Using Quarter Sessions Records as Evidence for the Study of Crime and Criminal Justice’, Archives 20, 90 (1993), 145-57.12 The National Record Office, CHES 21, Palatinate of Chester: Courts of Great Sessions of Chester and Flint: Crown Books, 1532-1830.13 Chester Public Record Office, ZCR 63/2/13, Crown Book of the Court of Session 1713-40.14 Chester Public Record Office, ZQSF, Quarter Sessions Files, 1488-1971.

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status or occupation is often either left blank or presented in broad terms. This, as

Cockburn has observed, was to ensure that the indictment was not thrown out of court by

clerks on a small technicality. In Middlesex, the designations yeoman’ was, he also

suggests, used so regularly without detail given on the exact occupation of the defendant

to make to render it ‘meaningless’. Women fared even worse, rarely being identified on the

basis of their occupation, but rather typically by their marital status. Indeed, often the

information about the offence presented in the various documents was contradictory, with

Shoemaker finding only 22% of offences described in indictments and recognizances from

Middlesex between 1664 and 1723 using the same language.

More problematically, as Shoemaker has noted, the information recorded in the

existing records “represent only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the number of offences

that were recorded, let alone the number of offences which actually occurred”.15 Prior to

the mid-nineteenth century, the majority of cases were brought to court by victims who had

to apprehend the culprit and then act as prosecutor in court. Many offenders were

consequently never brought to trial, with minor crimes often being dealt with informally

outside of the criminal justice process. A victim may, for example, have agreed not to

pursue the matter if an item was returned, or an offender may have been punished within

the community. In other cases, a victim may have been satisfied to see the offender

punished prior to their trial by being held in a gaol, and would not attend court to pursue

the matter any further.16 Moreover, cases were often prosecuted in different ways than

through indictments, with many petty offences being settled summarily or through

offenders being bound over by recognizances. For these reasons, while the court records

15 Shoemaker, ‘Using Quarter Session Records’, 146.16 See Barry Godfrey & Paul Lawrence, Crime and Justice 1750-1950. (Cullompton, Devon, Willan Publishing, 2005), chapter 3; Beattie, ‘Judicial Records and the Measurement of Crime in Eighteenth-Century England’, Op. Cit.

6

can provide a useful window into the operation of the criminal justice process during the

period, they must be approached with caution and can again only provide a partial image.

Information of a seemingly more substantial nature on the criminal justice process

from the nineteenth century is provided in the official statistics published from the early

nineteenth century onwards. Parliament began to collect statistics on various aspects of

the criminal justice process in 1810, and over the course of the century (particularly after

1857 with the annual publication of Judicial Statistics) the information contained in the

criminal statistics became significantly more detailed and comprehensive.17 Consequently,

while the early reports contain simply the number of persons in each county and in

England and Wales as a whole who had been committed for trial on one of fifty indictable

offences, discharged on ‘no true bill’ being found, acquitted, or convicted, as well as the

sentences imposed for each conviction, the post 1857 reports contain significantly more

information. Primarily, for the first time, the reports contain information on those tried for

summary as well as indictable offences. In both cases, the number of offences committed

during the year is presented along with the number of apprehended persons either

discharged, bailed, bailed for trail, committed for want of Sureties or committed for trial in

each county, borough or district as well as in England and Wales as a whole. The ‘class of

persons proceeded against’ for both indictable and summary offences is also presented,

distinguishing between the number of males and females in each category. Tables also

summarise the size of the police force in each county, borough or district in numbers and

in proportion to the population, as well as their cost and how much of this was met by the

Treasury. Tables on the prisons summarise among other things, the number of persons

committed to each institution, how many times and for how long they had previously been

17 For an overview of the development of nineteenth century crime statistics see Leon Radzinowicz & Roger Hood, A History of the English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750: Volume 5, The Emergence of Penal Policy (London: Stevens & Sons, 1986), chapter 4.

7

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committed as well their age, sex, birthplace, occupation and level of instruction. The costs

of running each prison is also presented, itemised according to building and establishment

costs, the salary, clothing and allowances and pensions of the staff, as well as the

expenses for the prisoners. Similar information on committals are also presented in the

tables for reformatory schools and asylums.

The cornucopia of material presented in the official statistics have been used by

historians in a number of ways, particularly by those interested in long term trends, such

as in violent crime.18 However, contemporaries and historians have raised a number of

concerns about both the reliability and validity of the statistics, with some historians, such

as J.J. Tobias claiming that they “have little to tell us about crime and criminals in the

nineteenth century”.19 Writing a century before Tobias, James T. Hammick noted in the

Journal of the Statistical Society of London, how “improved as are ‘Judicial Statistics’ in the

main, they are still in some respects, defective and unsatisfactory”.20 Thirty years later,

William Douglas Morrison concluded that “the actual number of offences annually

committed is always largely in excess of the amount of officially recorded crime.21 Indeed,

18 See, for example, V.A.C. Gatrell & T. Hadden, ‘Criminal Statistics and their Interpretation’ in Nineteenth Century Social History: Essays in the Use of Quantitative Methods for The Study of Social Data, ed, by E.A. Wrigley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 336-96; V.A.C. Gatrell, ‘The Decline of Theft and Violence in Victorian and Edwardian England’ in Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in Early Modern Europe, eds., by V.A.C. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman & Geoffrey Parker (London, Europa, 1980), 238-337; Manuel Eisner, ‘Modernization, Self-Control and Lethal Violence: The Long-term Dynamics of European Homicide Rates in Theoretical Perspective’, British Journal of Criminology 41 (2001), 618-38; Peter King, ‘The Impact of Urbanization on Murder Rates and on the Geography of Homicide in England and Wales, 1780-1850’, The Historical Journal 53, 3 (2010), 671-98.19 J.J. Tobias, Crime and Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1967), p. 21. More recently Rob Sindell has echoed Tobias, concluding that “that as a direct measure of criminality the usefulness of the criminal statistics is highly suspect” - ; Rob Sindall, ‘The Criminal Statistics of Nineteenth Century Cities: A New Approach’, Urban History Yearbook, 1986, 28-36, (p. 32).20 James T. Hammick, “On the Judicial Statistics of England and Wales, with Special Reference to the Recent Returns Relating to Crime” Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 30, 3 (1867), pp. 375-426, (p. 380).21 William D. Morrison, “The Interpretation of Crime Statistics” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 60, 1 (1897), 1-32, (p. 3).

8

in a recent series of provocative articles, Howard Taylor has suggested that the statistics

may in fact be fictions created by agents within the criminal justice system to keep down

the costs of prosecutions and to create the appearance that the police were doing more

efficient job than was actually the case.22

Historians such as Tobias and Sindall have pointed to a number of inaccuracies and

inconsistencies that, they argue, seriously undermine the crime statistics as an historical

source. It was only from 1892, for example, that the statistical year for all returns ended on

31st of December. Until this time, the returns were collected at different times of the year -

the local and convict prisons being submitted on the 31st March, the police returns on the

27th September, the reformatory and industrial schools on the 29th of September, the

criminal lunatic returns on the 31st of October, and the Quarter Sessions and Assizes

Courts on the 31st of December. Consequently, the information presented in each set of

returns covers different twelve-month periods.

The reliability of the statistics is also brought into question through the inconsistent

ways in which police forces reported crime. Prior to 1861, the classification of ‘known

thieves and depredators’ was used by the Metropolitan police for anyone who had thus

being convicted. After 1861, however, only those believed to be active criminals were

classified as ‘known criminals’ and, after 1864, only those who had committed a crime

were so classified. Similarly, in Gloucestershire, anyone who had been convicted of theft

22 Howard Taylor, ‘The Politics of the Rising Crime Statistics of England and Wales, 1914-1960’, Crime, History & Societies 2, 1 (1998), 5-28; Howard Taylor, ‘The Political Economy of Criminal Statistics since 1850’, The Economic History Review 51, 3 (1998), 569-90; Howard Taylor ‘Forging the Job: A Crisis of “Modernization” or Redundancy for the Police in England and Wales, 1900-39’, British Journal of Criminology 39, 1 (1998), 113-35. For criticisms of Taylor’s thesis see Robert M. Morris, “‘Lies, Damned Lies and Criminal Statistics”: Reinterpreting the Criminal Statistics in England and Wales’, Crime, History & Societies 5, 1 (2001), 111-27; Barry S. Godfrey, “Changing Prosecution Practices and Their Impact on Crime Figures, 1857-1940”, British Journal of Criminology, 48 (2008) 171-89; John E. Archer, “Mysterious and Suspicious Deaths: Missing Homicides in North-West England, 1850-1900”, Crime, History & Societies, 12, 1 (2008), 2-17.

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would be classified as a ‘known thief’. In Yorkshire, in contrast, anyone who was known to

do honest work would not be classified as a ‘known thief’, even if they had been convicted

of theft. Consequently, whereas in one period Yorkshire returned 951 ‘known thieves’ out

of a population of 1,174,000, Gloucestershire returned 777 out of a population of only

400,000.23 Such inconsistency was also to be found in the manner in which infanticide was

often classified by the police as ‘concealment of birth’ rather than the capital offence of

murder.24 Information on the ‘character’ and previous convictions of prisoners can also not

be relied upon to be accurate. Prisoners might also lie about their religion; claiming to be a

Roman Catholic in order to avoid chapel or, conversely, a Roman Catholic might claim to

be a Protestant to avoid discrimination or even for the daily opportunity to leave their cell to

attend worship. They might also falsely declare their occupation or level of education in

order to obtain desirable work in prison or gain admittance to the prison school.25

Changes in both the law and in policing also had an impact on the criminal statistics

in a number of ways. For example, between 1848 and 1850 there was a rise in the number

of juvenile offenders within the statistics, a state of affairs that could be interpreted as the

outcome of a crime wave among juveniles. The explanation, however, was simpler: in

1850 the age of maturity was raised from fourteen to sixteen years of age by the Juvenile

Offenders Act. Similarly, the Summary Jurisdiction Act of 1879 transferred some 3,000

cases that would have been tried as indictable offences to summary jurisdiction A similar

fall in the number of committals for indictable offences against property from 23,241 in

1853 to 15,928 in 1856 can equally be explained as a consequence of the 1855 Criminal

Justice Act, that transferred a large number of formerly indictable larcenies to summary

23 Thomas B. Lloyd-Baker, “Abstracts and Inferences founded upon the Official Criminal Returns of England and Wales for the Years 1854-9, with Special Reference to the results of Reformatories” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 23, 4 (1860), 427-454.24 Hammick, ‘On the Judicial Statistics of England and Wales’, Op. Cit.25 Tobias, Crime in Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century, Op. Cit.

10

jurisdiction.26 Likewise, as Sindall has observed, the effectiveness of the police in securing

convictions improved, largely as a consequence of more thorough evidence gathering.

Thus, while 40% of those brought before metropolitan magistrates were discharged in

1858, by 1865 this had fallen to 30%. In this way, he concludes, an increasingly efficient

police force ironically produced an increase in the number of criminals, at least on paper.27

Finally, there is the issue of ‘the dark figure of crime’; that many acts that could be

classified as criminal are either not reported to nor detected by the police and hence do

not figure in the returns. This is particularly the case with the reports for the period before

1857, which deal only with those persons who have been committed to trial on indictable

offenses. While the post-1857 reports included returns on ‘indictable offenses known to the

police’, the true number of crimes committed cannot be known because, as is still the

case, a vast number are never reported to the police. Indeed, as Peter King has recently

argued, this may even have been the case with incidences of the most serious of all

offenses, murder; many incidences of which were either not discovered or reported to the

authorities or went unreported due to the way in which the Home Office compiled the

statistics. Consequently, while using ‘offenses known to the police’ provides a more

accurate measure of crime in society than the number persons arrested and brought to

trial, it is still nevertheless a partial one. 28

Such issues have led some historians to approach the statistics in a different way.

Rather than drawing on them to provide statistical information on aspects of the criminal

justice system during the period, historians adopting an interactionist position analyse

them as representations instead of changes within the justice system, such as differing

26 Gatrell & Hadden, ‘Criminal Statistics and their Interpretation’, Op. Cit.27 Sindall, ‘The Crime Statistics of Nineteenth Century Cities’, Op. Cit.28 Peter King, ‘The Impact of Urbanization on Murder Rates’, Op. Cit. See also Archer, “Mysterious and Suspicious Deaths’, Op. Cit.

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policing or sentencing patterns.29 In his work on crime in the Midlands between 1835 and

1860, David Phillips adopted an interactionist perspective, arguing that the relationship

between offences and law enforcement agencies is a reciprocal one as, on the one hand,

the amount and type of offences committed will influence the actions of law enforcement

agencies (who may, for example, choose to prioritise certain types of offence or offender

or ‘make an example’ of those found guilty of certain offences) while, on the other, such

actions will influence which offenders are arrested and subsequently punished. Information

on offences and offenders presented in the official statistics will then, in turn, both

influence what contemporaries believe is the relative level of criminality in their society and

lead to further responses from agents within the criminal justice system.30

More recently, Chris A. Williams has applied an interactionist perspective to his

analysis of the police returns for Sheffield in the mid-nineteenth century. He shows how

the justice system exercised a large degree of discretion in terms of who was arrested,

committed for trial and convicted. Thus, while between 1845 and 1862, no person under

ten years of age was convicted on an indictment, the proportion aged between fifteen and

thirty ranged between 5.4% and 5.9%. In addition, only 1.5% of those indicted above sixty

were convicted. The age of the defendant, therefore, he argues would appear to have

influenced how they were treated by the justice system. The same was true in regard to

gender, with women being twice as likely as men in the period to be discharged at trial

(51.8% to 25.8%). Overall, he suggests, the police were targeting forms of anti-social

behaviour, such as drunkenness, rather than for crimes where there was an identifiable

victim. Finally, he shows how decisions were made about what charge a prisoner would

face at trial, with some offenders having their offence re-labelled in order to more

29 Barry S. Godfrey, Paul Lawrence & Chris A. Williams, History & Crime (London, Sage, 2008).30 David Philips, Crime and Authority in Victorian England: The Black Country 1835-60. London: Croom Helm, 1977).

12

successfully secure a conviction. The returns thus, he concludes, do not record the actual

level and types of crime in Sheffield that occurred during the period, but, rather, represent

the outcome of a series of decisions made by the police and Justices about who to arrest,

who to commit to trial, and for what kinds of offences they should be tried.31

This latter approach to the crime statistics - seeing them as social constructions and

as fundamentally part of the process that they are representing - has also been applied to

the study of newspapers. In many ways, the study of both the local and national press has

been made easier by the increasing digitization of newspapers in recent years. The

historian now has access to a significant amount and range of newspaper reportage from

across the country covering the period in question. National newspapers such as The

Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The Scotsman and the Irish Times are all available

online and provide coverage for most of the period. Eighteenth and nineteenth century

local newspapers are also available online via the British Library’s Nineteenth Century

Newspapers and British Newspaper Archive databases. In addition to these resources,

public libraries and public record offices contain many more local newspapers on

microfiche.

Developing on the formative work in the field by Peter King, Judith Walkowitz, Rob

Sindall and Jennifer Davis in the 1980s and 1990s,32 scholarship over the last decade has

31 Chris A. Williams, ‘Counting Crimes or Counting People: Some Implications of Mid-Nineteenth Century British Police Returns’, Crime, History & Societies 4, 2 (2000), 77-93. See also Barry Godfrey, “Changing Prosecution Practices” and Godfrey, Farrall & Karstedt, ‘Explaining Gendered Sentencing Patterns for Violent Men and Women in the Late-Victorian and Edwardian Period’, Op. Cit.32 Peter King, ‘Newspaper Reporting, Prosecution Practice and Perceptions of Urban Crime: The Colchester Crime Wave of 1765’, Continuity and Change 2 (1987), 423-54; Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992); Rob Sindall, Street violence in the nineteenth century: media panic or real danger? (Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1990); Jennifer Davis, ‘The London Garotting Panic of 1862: A Moral Panic and the Creation of the Criminal Class in mid-Victorian England’, in Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500., eds, by V.A.C. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman, &

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examined how crime and criminal trials were reported in eighteenth- and nineteenth-

century newspapers33 and in popular crime literature (particularly broadsides).34 Drawing

on the work of the criminologist Stanley Cohen, a number of historians have analysed the

role played by newspapers in the period in creating ‘moral panics’ around certain forms of

criminality or deviant behaviour.35 Peter King, in particular, has examined the recurring

patterns in moral panics around violent street crime over a two-and-a-half century period,

arguing that the claim that such panics are an inherently modern occurrence needs to be

rethought. More recently, Christoper A. Casey has discussed the role of the Victorian

press in creating a belief that crime was rising when the statistics showed that the opposite

was the case. The increasing emphasis on crime in the press, he suggests, led

contemporaries to believe that crime was in fact increasing when, instead, it was the

amount of crime reportage that was increasing, not necessarily crime itself.36 While much

of this work has focused on London and national newspapers, a growing body of work has

begun to focus on representations of crime in the provincial press.37 Complimenting V.A.C

Geoffrey Parker (London: Europa Publications Ltd., 1980), 190-213.33 Simon Deveraux, ‘From Sessions to Newspaper? Criminal Trial Reporting, the Nature of Crime, and the London Press’, The London Journal 32, 1 (2007), 1-27; Elizabeth Snell, ‘Discourses of Criminality in the eighteenth-century press: the presentation of crime in The Kentish Post, 1717-1768’, Continuity and Change 22, 1 (2007), 13-47; Peter King, ‘Newspaper Reporting and Attitudes to Crime and Justice in late-eighteenth - and early-nineteenth century London’, Continuity and Change 22, 1 (2007), 73-112; Peter King, ‘Making Crime News: Newspapers, Violent Crime and the Selective Reporting of Old Bailey Trials in the late Eighteenth Century’, Crime, History & Societies 13, 1 (2009), 91-116; Landau, ‘Gauging Crime in Late Eighteenth-Century London’. 34 Phillipe Chassaige, ‘Popular Representations of Crime: The Crime Broadside - a Subculture of Violence in Victorian Britain’, Crime, History & Societies 3, 2 (1999), 23-55.35 Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers (London, Routledge, 2002) Peter King, ‘Moral Panics and Violent Street Crime 1750-2000: A Comparative Perspective’, in Comparative Histories of Crime eds, by Barry S. Godfrey, Clive Emsley & Graeme Dunstall (Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2003) 53-71. See also the contributions to two collections of essays edited by Judith Rowbotham and Kim Stevenson: Judith Rowbotham & Kim Stevenson, eds, Behaving Badly: Social Panic and Moral Outrage - Victorian and Modern Parallels. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Judith Rowbotham & Kim Stevenson, eds, Criminal Conversations: Victorian Crimes, Social Panic and Moral Outrage. (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2005). 36 Christopher A. Casey, ‘Common Misconceptions: The Press and Victorian Views of Crime’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History XLI, 3 (2011), 367-91.37 Although see the work of Andrew Hobbs on how the distinction between provincial and national newspapers may be an artificial one during the nineteenth century at least -

14

Gattrell’s magisterial discussion of capital punishment and execution during nineteenth

century, for example, John Tulloch and Zoe Dyndor have examined in detail the

representation of executions in local newspapers in Lincoln and Northamptonshire

respectively.38 In doing so, they have shown the role played by the local press in a form of

national dialogue over capital punishment itself, particularly after the 1820s.

Two other useful textual sources for the study of the criminal justice process during

the period are periodicals and books. Again, as with newspapers, these sources can be

used to illustrate contemporary views of crime and justice, but they can also be used to

examine the emergence of discourses around crime and criminality during the period.

Notable here is the work of the criminologist David Garland, who has drawn on a variety of

nineteenth- and early-twentieth century criminological periodicals and books to examine

the emergence of a ‘science of the criminal’ during the period.39 Moreover, like many

contemporary newspapers, such works are increasingly being digitized in online archives,

such as googlebooks and JSTOR.

III

This essay has examined what other sources in addition to the Old Bailey sessions papers

are necessary for a balanced understanding of the UK criminal justice process in the

Andrew Hobbs ‘When The Provincial Press Was The National Press (c.1836-c.1900)’, International Journal of Regional and Local Studies 5, 1 (2009), 6-43.38 V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); John Tulloch, ‘The Privatising of Pain: Lincoln Newspapers, “Mediated Publicness” and the end of Public Execution’, Journalism Studies 7, 3 (2006), 437-51; Zoe Dyndor, ‘Death Recorded: Capital Punishment and the Press in Northampton, 1780-1834’, Midland History 33, 4 (2008), 179-95.39 David Garland, ‘The Criminal and his Science: A Critical Account of the Formation of Criminology at the End of the Nineteenth Century’ The British Journal of Criminology, 25, 2 (1985), 109-37.

15

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period 1750–1913. It has discussed how historians have made use of records from the

Assize and Quarter Session records from other circuits, official statistics covering the

period 1810 onwards, national and local newspapers and books and periodicals. In doing

so, it has highlighted how each of the sources provide a partial picture of the criminal

justice process during the period, and how serious questions can be asked about the

reliability and validity of some of the sources, particularly the assize records and the official

statistics. Finally, it has suggested that newspapers and other textual sources can be

examined as part of the criminal justice system - in the sense of influencing what is seen to

be the state of crime in society and in some cases creating crime waves - rather than

simply reporting crime.

For a balanced understanding of the criminal justice system during the period, the

historian should use use a variety of sources in triangulation. Assize records could be

supplemented with further information provided in newspaper reports, or the historian

could examine the impact of perceived ‘newsworthiness’ on what cases were reported and

how they were reported. The official statistics could also, when used with caution,40

provide broad statistical data on particular crimes or punishments, that could then be

examined in detail through court records. The historian interested in the operation of the

‘Bloody Code’ could, for example, ascertain the broad trends on the number of capital

cases in the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-century where the convicted criminal was

not convicted and then examine court records, including petitions and (where they exist)

the judge’s notes, to try and uncover the decision making process in the court. (S)he could

also examine what role, if any, local newspaper commentary played in appeals and

reprieves.41 In cases where the convict was executed, the historian could then examine

40 See Gatrell & Hadden, ‘Criminal Statistics and their Interpretation’ for a discussion of what ‘limiting conditions’ should be applied to the statistics for the analysis of longterm trends. 41 Martin J. Wiener, ‘Convicted Murderers and the Victorian Press: Condemnation Vs. Sympathy’, Crimes and Misdemeanors 1, 2 (2007), 110-25.

16

newspaper reports of the execution, focusing on how it represented and the extent of

coverage given to it - either in ‘column inches’ or geographically. Were some criminals and

executions deemed more ‘newsworthy’ than others and, in an era where ‘local’ news was

shared across the country, which executions/types of criminals were deemed of interest

often at the other end of the country? Finally, they could compare accounts of executions

presented in elite national newspapers with how they were presented in more plebeian

documents, such as broadsides or flash ballads.42

Both local and national newspaper reporting of crime could be examined to

ascertain the way in which aspects of the criminal justice process more broadly were

reported. The period in question saw the emergence of a professional police force, a

growth in the number of prisons, as well as the abolition of transportation, and a historian

could examine the ways in which these changes were both reported in the press and the

way in which newspaper reportage and debate may have influenced changes in criminal

policy. By examining newspapers aimed at both elite and non-elite, metropolitan and

regional audiences, (s)he could examine how reportage and discussion of these debates

differed depending on their audience. The historian might also examine local newspapers

in triangulation with trial records and criminal statistics to ascertain whether, and in what

ways, newspaper-fueled moral panics impacted on the criminal justice process. (S)he

could in this way, examine the impact of a moral panic on sentencing patterns - reflected in

both the assizes reports and the statistics - and the impact of the panic on long term

trends. The same is true of books and periodicals. A historian influenced by the work of

Michel Foucault may, like Garland cited above, wish to examine the learned periodicals in

cogent disciplines to examine the emergence of a new form of ‘governmentally’ based

42 Cf Gatrell, The Hanging Tree, Op Cit.17

TMA-3 John Walliss B6950886

around medical and criminological discourses.43 (S)he could then also examine the impact,

if any, of these discourses in sentencing at both the Old Bailey and other assizes.

Finally, there are a wealth of other miscellaneous sources that could add further

richness to our understanding of the criminal justice process during the period. Such

sources would include such items as images (photographic, paintings or sketches), maps

and plans, diaries or any of the other documents generated by the criminal justice process,

such as warrants, police or gaol records. These sources could also be used to cross-

reference the information presented in the other sources discussed above or possibly even

fill gaps in the record. For example, the city and county gaols in Chester were demolished

over the course of the nineteenth century and there is only one contemporary image of the

former. However, by consulting maps, plans, travelogue descriptions, archeological

reports, as well as the report of John Howard in the late eighteenth century on prisons , the

historian can build up an image of both institutions. Prison records for both institutions can

then be used to enhance our understanding of how both operated during the period.44

To sum up, while the Old Bailey sessions papers - and the Old Bailey Online

webpage - are an excellent resource for our understanding of the criminal justice process

during the period, it is only one resource that should be consulted by the historian

interested in the crime and criminality. Other sources, such as assize reports, official

43 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1991).44 For the plans of Chester County Gaol by Thomas Harrison see Chester Public Record Office, ZCR 7/3, Thomas Harrison Collection. For travelogue descriptions, see Joseph Hemmingway, Panorama of the City of Chester (Chester, T. Griffith, 1836) and Thomas Hughes, The Stranger’s Handbook to Chester and its Environs (Chester, Thomas Catherall, 1856). The Chester City Gaol at Northgate is also discussed in John Howard, The State of the Prisons in England and Wales (Warrington, William Eyres, 1777). For an archeological report on the site of the second Chester City Gaol, see K.J. Matthews, An Archaeological Evaluation on the Site of a proposed Extension to the Queen's School, Chester, March 1992 (Council of the City of Chester, Department of Leisure Services Archaeological Service, 1992). Various records for both gaols are also held at the Chester Public Record Office (reference QAB).

18

statistics, newspapers, books and periodicals and other miscellaneous sources should

also be consulted in triangulation. Only in doing so can a balanced understanding, as far

as it is possible, of the criminal justice process during the period be achieved.

(4721 words - excluding footnotes and bibliography)

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