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Family History Skills and Strategies (Int.) Victorian Crime & Punishment

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Victorian Crime & Punishment,

Courts Police and Prisons

Lesson Two

Local Court Records

This lesson looks at the administration of, and records created by, the local courts. In the first lesson we looked at some of the changes to the criminal law in Victorian England and Wales, and different levels of criminal court and started to realise that many people appear in court records who were not criminals but caught up in the legal system for other reasons. The records we examine in this lesson form a vast, often uncatalogued, treasure-trove of local, social and political data covering all levels of society. Whilst very few of the original court documents are to be found online, the various websites we look at nevertheless give vital information about the location and scope of the original records. The topics we shall cover in this lesson are:

The court hearing

Identifying the court case

Quarter Sessions

Petty Sessions

The Assizes By the end of the session you should be able to:

Evaluate a specific criminal case using Judges Reports/petitions to the Home Office.

Identify the location of court records using a variety of websites.

Recognise the scope and content of records of the Petty, Quarter and Assize sessions.



1. The Court Hearing If you were to sit in on a Victorian courtroom hearing you would find it quite a different experience from that of today’s Crown Court. Nowadays the person accused of the crime (the defendant) has usually been arrested and charged by the police, and the Crown Prosecution Service will have decided whether or not there is a case to be heard. In the early 19th century there was no official police force – we study the police force in lesson four – so it was down to the local parish constable to apprehend any suspected criminal and take them before a local magistrate who would then decide whether or not there was a case to hear. Preparing for the Case If the magistrate decided the case was a misdemeanour or a petty crime, he might well have passed sentence there and then – summarily tried – or passed the case to the Petty Sessions where it would have been heard by two magistrates without any jury and few written records may have been created. If the magistrate felt the case was ‘indictable’, then he would pass the case either to the local Quarter Sessions or, for more serious crimes, to the Assize, placing the accused in custody. These higher courts are far more likely to leave valuable records behind. The Accused Whilst waiting for trial, the accused person was housed in the local county gaol or House of Correction. Bail could be offered by the magistrate for misdemeanours, but few could afford it. After 1823, those awaiting trial for indictable offences were supposed to be housed separately from the convicted prisoners. This added to the overcrowding in prisons and the local House of Correction was often used as an 'overflow'. From 1848 onwards, magistrates were forbidden to interrogate the accused but could question witnesses. They could bind over witnesses to appear at the court hearing; the documents issued were known as Recognizances Court Preparations When preparing for the court sessions, the clerks to the court sorted through all the documentation provided and prepared indictments for each case. They might even interview the accused. Their work decided how the case was presented and this was reflected in the punishment which, up to the late 1820s, was quite often death. The Jury At the start of the sessions, a ‘grand jury’ was appointed and their job was to assess the cases presented by the clerk, deciding whether or not there was sufficient evidence to proceed with the case before the court started.



Grand Jury – Huntingdon Quarter Sessions 1830 ref HCP/2/1/13 Huntingdon Archive Office

This list of jurors on the Grand Jury provides valuable information about the local gentry and landowners, all of whom would have been chosen by ballot from those liable to serve. Thomas Bloodworth the surveyor from Kimbolton regularly appears in local enclosure awards whilst Richard Daintree of Hemingford Abbots was one of the local major landowners. Those cases that the Grand Jury felt unlikely to convict, they could throw out as ‘No True Bill’ and the case would not be heard. Where sufficient evidence was available, they passed the case as ‘True Bill’ and it would proceed. Jurors were not given any special training, their decision was based on local knowledge, life experience and status in society. There were moves throughout the 19th century to dispense with the Grand Jury but their usefulness waned during the period anyway as the police and magistrates were better able to make pre-trial decisions. The Trial By the early 1800s the use of prosecution counsel was becoming common, but defendants were rarely represented. Few working-class prisoners could afford to pay for a lawyer to represent them and there was no legal aid in the 19th century. The defendant had to answer questions from the prosecution, the jury and the judge but not be able to put forward their own case. Any previous convictions were read out at the start of the trial; obviously a criminal record was going to weigh against you, so many suspects gave a false name when arrested to avoid a harsher sentence. Evidence collected was presented to the court and read out, questions asked and answered and it seems that many cases were heard in a matter of minutes, the jury passing their verdict equally quickly. Not what we may regard today as a “fair” trial in most cases !



EXPLORE FURTHER For a very detailed account of Victorian courtroom proceedings visit the Old Bailey website page: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Trial-procedures.jsp

2. Identifying the Court Case One key to finding details of a criminal trial lies within the Home Office records held at The National Archives at Kew (TNA). The Criminal Registers are returns from the counties to the Home Office. Series HO 26 covers the county of Middlesex and London for the period 1791 -1849, thereafter Middlesex & London are incorporated with the rest of the country in series HO 27 which runs from 1805 - 1892. Some of the southern counties have a partial name index on microfiche at TNA. These records list all persons held in the prison system whether actually convicted or awaiting trial. They provide the name of the accused, the date and place of the trial and the crime committed. Armed with this information, you can then start a search of the appropriate court records for the relevant trial. Printed Calendars of Prisoners 1868 – 1971 are in HO 140 and they list all convicted prisoners in the country outside London and those for London 1855 – 1949 are in series CRIM 9. The subscription websites Ancestry and findmypast both have the Criminal Registers series on their databases which allows subscribers to search by surname for entries between 1791 and 1892. Thus they provide an easy way to find anyone indicted from 1805 onwards, and from 1791 for Middlesex and London. On the next page is an extract from the Criminal Register for Buckinghamshire dated 1849 showing the names of those persons charged with indictable offences and brought before the Quarter Sessions and Assizes for the year 1849. The column headings show the name of the offender, whether or not they could read and write (the word Imperfect, often abbreviated to Imp, frequently appears) and their age (in this extract both columns left blank). The next column provides the details of the hearing – the actual court and date – which will enable you to search the original records if surviving. In this extract we see the court was the County Sessions and the date was 3rd July. The next column shows the charges made – Nathan William Deal is accused of receiving stolen goods. The sentence passed as 4 calendar months imprisonment and the final columns provide space for details of acquittal or commutation of capital punishment.

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/HowToReadTrial.jsp

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/HowToReadTrial.jsp

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Trial-procedures.jsp



Extract from the Buckinghamshire Register 1849 from http://www.ancestry.co.uk The subscription website findmypast has quite an extensive list of criminal record sets which includes the After-Trial Calendars for the Central Criminal Court (CRIM 9)1855-1931 and the After-Trial Calendars for the Home Office (HO140) 1868-1929, amongst many other. See findmypast – Crime, Prisons & Punishment Judges’ Reports & Petitions for Mercy A more unusual way to find a 19th century criminal is via judges’ reports on criminals which run from 1784 – 1830 in series HO 47 at TNA , judges’ reports usually relate to a case that has already been tried and sentence passed but a query or appeal or petition for mercy has been raised. You can search HO 47 by surname online for free within TNA Discovery but, be warned, the existing online database is not complete. Other series of petitions by prisoners are also held by the Home Office in HO 17 (1819 – 1840) and HO 18 (1839 – 1854) and are also being catalogued to be fully searchable. Some of these are available at findmypast. These petitions can be invaluable for giving more information about the family of a prisoner.

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/

http://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/england-and-wales-crime-prisons-and-punishment-1770-1935



EXERCISE 1: Using the PDF showing the petition/judges report from HO 17 on William Wilson, shoemaker of Nottinghamshire which you will find in the forum, answer the following questions: 1) Briefly list the chain of events as you understand them. 2) Identify the family members mentioned in the extract and their relationship to William Wilson 3) Can you see anything in the extract that might provide you with additional leads into the Wilson family background? Post your answers in the Exercise 1 - William Wilson thread.

Gaol Calendar Another way to track down a criminal in the Quarter Session records is via the Gaol Calendar held at the local archive office. Twice a year a list of prisoners held in the county gaol was recorded at the Quarter Sessions. These are usually well catalogued and will give you a précis of the court case.

Huntingdon Gaol Catalogue – printed book (extract) – Huntingdon Archive Office

This example is from Huntingdon. The column headings are not given after the initial page but working from left to right they show the name of the prisoner, their abode and crime, occupation, age and date of conviction. These documents are NOT usually available online – but check the websites of any county archives you are interested in as things become available all the time. At the least, you can usually check a catalogue online to see if they exist. If you know where a family lived you can therefore check the relevant local records.



3. Quarter Sessions

Records of Quarter Sessions cover a very large amount of local administration as well as the records of the criminal courts. Quarter sessions dealt with highways and roads, poor law cases, such as bastardy and settlement, and licenses of various types. When looking for a criminal case the main records will be:

Minute Books and Order Books containing formal summaries of the business of the court (including criminal cases and verdicts)

Indictments or the formal records of criminal charges

Session rolls or files, including recognizances, depositions and other documents such as jury lists and petitions.

In some counties, a catalogue may list the cases covered at each session, in others you have to work your way through the Minute Book to find the record of the case. A typical catalogue entry might look like this:

December 1830 Body-stealing: William Patrick and William Whalley, labourers of Farcet, were charged with stealing from Yaxley churchyard the recently interred body of Jane Mason. Patrick said a certain Grimmer repeatedly offered him money for body-snatching. There was a man and a child buried that day, Grimmer says ‘we must have that there or we shall loose the season’. Huntingdonshire Quarter Sessions Catalogue 1734-1860

Huntingdon Quarter Sessions – Catalogue – Huntingdon Archive Office

The catalogue entry gives names, a précis of the court case and, most importantly, a date. The Quarter Session Minute Books are arranged by session and one book may cover up to 5 years (20 Quarter session sittings). In these books you will find a summary account of the session – the reports from various official bodies such as the Highway Surveyor or the Gaol Chaplain, the recording of official appointments such as the Coroner, local administrative matters – and then the criminal cases. In the preparation for the Sessions, the court clerk would sort through and list the criminal cases to be heard. On some occasions the case was dismissed through lack of evidence, otherwise there should be an entry showing the name of the defendant, a note of the case brought and the verdict delivered.



Another important role of the Quarter Sessions was to issue licences to gamekeepers and slaughter-houses. On the right is an extract from the Licencing Book for 1867 showing the margin entry for Messrs Wm Inglett and George Britten – licensed to kill horses at Hemingford Grey. The 1871 Census Return for Hemingford Grey shows William Inglett as a horse slaughterer, living quite comfortably with his wife and substantial family. Huntingdonshire QS Licencing Book 1867 ref HCP2/1/20 Huntingdon Archive

Office(right) Lists of gamekeepers granted licences are often to be found published in the local newspapers, as in this extract from the Norfolk Chronicle of 20th December 1806. Being a very rural county, the list takes up most of the first page of the paper.



Huntingdon Quarter Session Minute Book 1830 – ref. HCP/2/1/13 – Huntingdon Archive Office

Here we see the results of another case from the 1830s – Elizabeth Haslem of Fletton accused of stealing a pair of shoes valued 3 shillings and a dresser cloth valued 6d from Charles Barker, publican of the same place. Elizabeth pleaded not guilty but the jury found her guilty and she was sentenced to 28 days imprisonment with hard labour in the House of Correction (this was part of the county gaol at that time). Note how we also have the name of the victim and his occupation provided (at a time before census returns). Finding such an entry in the Quarter Sessions Minute Book will immediately lead you on to look at the original court documents. These are usually arranged by Quarter Session and appear in boxes, tied with pink legal tape, often untouched since originally deposited. These boxes will contain the depositions (witness statements), recognizances (summons to appear), Receipts and other miscellaneous papers often including the Gaol Calendars – usually bundled separately. Antiquarian societies across England & Wales often published extracts from Quarter Session records and some of these can now be found as free, digitised books at the website Archive.org These include the Worcestershire, North Riding of Yorkshire, Middlesex and Somerset although most of these are likely to be from a much earlier period (17th century). Explore the records on this link : Archive.org – Quarter Sessions

http://www.archive.org/

https://archive.org/search.php?query=quarter%20sessions%20records%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts



Riots are frequently featured in the news and here is a specific case from 1871 to illustrate the type of material you might find in a deposition. At first glance the case is a straight-forward ‘breaking the peace and minor assault’ case but as you read through the 3 documents you realize that this was very much a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ representing a typical Gown (university) versus Town (local citizens) conflict, a forerunner of the more modern Rag Week. It comprises 3 documents – a brief, the proof and ‘the case’. It has been transcribed and punctuation inserted (not in the originals) to make it easier for you to read. All is not what it seems and this is a rather unusual case but it does highlight the fact that not everyone who appears in court records is a master criminal.

Cambridge Quarter Sessions 1871 - Depositions

The Queen on the prosecution of William Bond, Police Constable Against

Charles Drummond Stooks, for riot, affray and common assault Brief for the Prosecution The jurors for our Lady the Queen upon their oath, present that Charles Drummond Stooks, together with other evil disposed persons to the number of 3 and more, to the jurors aforesaid unknown, on the 6th November 1871 at the parish of St Mary the Great, in the said Borough, unlawfully, riotously and riotously did assemble and gather together to disturb the peace of our said Lady the Queen; and being so then and there assembled and gathered together, as aforesaid, did then and there unlawfully, riotously and riotously make great noise, riot and disturbance for a long time, to the disturbance and terror not only of the liege subjects of our said Lady the Queen there being and residing, but of all other the liege subjects of said Lady the Queen then passing and re-passing in, and along, the Queen’s common highway there, in contempt of our said Lady the Queen and her laws, to the evil example of all others in the like case offending and against the peace of our Lady the Queen her Crown and dignity. And the jurors present that Charles D Stooks on 6th November 1871 in St. Mary Gt with other unknown persons did make an assault on him the said person then and there did beat hit and ill-treat and other wrongs to the said person then and there did to the great damage of the said person against the peace of our Lady the Queen, her Crown and dignity. PROOF Witness is a Police Constable in and for the Borough of Cambridge – that witness was on duty on the 6th November 1871 about ½ past nine – there was a disturbance going on - witness saw defendant fighting with a townsman. (signed) William Bond, Police Constable, Cambridge. CASE (precis) This is one of three prosecutions arising in connection with the Town and Gown Rows which to some extent occur every year in the 5th November but as that day this year fell on Sunday, the Row was with the apparent consent of all parties adjourned until



the following evening. Defendant in this case is a member of Clare College in this University. On the evening in question Sir Buche E Cunnard of Trinity College was taken into custody for letting off fireworks. He was fined 10 shillings by the Master of Christ College, Dr Cartmell. As the constables were taking Cunnard to the Guildhall a cry of ‘Rescue’ was raised but they kept hold of him. In the attempt to rescue Cunnard, Sir John Kaye struck the Constable and was seized, but the present Defendant together with others succeeded in rescuing him but, unfortunately for the Defendant, he fell into the Constable’s clutches. The Authorities both of the University and the Town are anxious to do away with these disturbances and this will account for the committal of this Defendant and his two companions. Some observations may be made that the Constables do not arrest townsmen but it may be stated that one hobbledehoy was, when prisoner was committed, convicted of rioting and fined. The respectable young men of the Town have long since given up this annoying system of amusement. The law has very stringent provisions in reference to assaults on peace officers but it is thought these cases need not be too hardly pressed. If any effort to arrange the matter and to escape convictions should be made, case must be taken that the Borough Fund be not burdened with any expenses in the shape of costs or otherwise. NOTE : On the outside – ‘No true bill ‘

Cambridge Quarter Sessions 1871 – Brief – ref. K/S2/48 – Cambridgeshire Archives

Very much a case of a general prank getting out of hand – attached to the original documents was a schedule showing the number of arrests made over the past 7 years during the Rows in November, illustrating how it was the Gown rather than the Town causing the problems!

EXERCISE 2 Visit the website for the History of Wolverhampton (make sure you are on the Law & Order – Courts page) and examine the five examples provided relating to Ann Miller (right hand menu items). Which of these would you consider to be the most informative and why? Post your thoughts in the Exercise 2 - Ann Miller thread and feel free to comment on each others' postings.

http://www.wolverhamptonhistory.org.uk/politics/law/courts



4. Petty Sessions

In 1828 the increased work load of the Quarter Sessions in the 18th and early 19th century lead to the official formation of a separate court, to deal with the minor business. These were known as the Petty Sessions. The magistrates gave a verdict without recourse to any jury – summary justice – and in addition to minor criminal cases were responsible for the licensing of public houses. In 1971 the Petty Sessions became the Magistrates Courts. Below is an extract from the page for the Register of Licences for public houses dated 1874. It is interesting to check who owned the pub – if your ancestor appears on the census returns, or in the trade directories, as a publican you may find that he was a tenant of a brewery

Borough of Godmanchester – Petty Sessions 1874 ref. 308/GDM 72 – Huntingdon Archive Office



EXERCISE 3 What can you find out about alcohol Licensing Acts in the 19th century? Start your search online with the term ‘Licensing Acts 1828 – 1886’. Post your answer in the forum and be ready to discuss your findings in one of our chats.

On the 5th August, 1880 Levi Bodger was brought before the Magistrate at Godmanchester Petty Sessions. The case was dealt with in minutes – the arresting police constable, PC William Pope, presented his evidence that the defendant had allowed his horse to stray on the public highway. Mr. James Freshfield, JP, hearing the case quickly found Levi guilty and fined him £1 with 5s 6d in costs (equivalent to around £38 in modern-day terms). Levi paid his fine and that was the end of the matter. The census returns for 1871 and 1881 show Levi Bodger, an agricultural labourer and his wife and children, leading blameless lives in Godmanchester. There is nothing to tell you that Levi had this brief brush with the law, except for the Petty Sessions register. I wonder how many times our ancestors had a similar experience about which we know nothing ? These records will usually be in the relevant county archive or record office – often in large quantity, but rarely have they been indexed. You may want to visit the catalogue page of an archive in an area where your ancestors were living and explore the type of petty session records they hold. A clue that may lead you to look at court records will often come from local newspapers who loved to report in detail on the proceedings of the Petty Sessions – here is an example from the Cambridgeshire Chronicle of April 1889.

PETTY SESSIONS – Cambridge Division – April 26 (Before H.W. Pemberton. I.H. Wilkinson, R.G. Wale and J. Osborn Daintree, Esqs) Boxworth – Charles King, painter, no home, was charged with stealing from the Two Pot Inn, Boxworth, a pair of shoes value 7s the property of Isabella Hirst, on the 25th April. Prosecutrix deposed that she lodged at the Two Pot Inn and was mistress of the school at Knapwell. On the morning of 25th April she went to her duties at Knapwell and when she returned in the evening she missed her boots. Police Constable Carlow deposed that, in consequence of information he received, he called at the Cross Keys Inn, Caxton and found the prisoner sitting in the taproom and he had a bundle with him. On opening the bundle, the witness found the boots and the prisoner said, in explanation, that he had begged them. He charged the prisoner with sealing them and took him into custody. Mrs Emma Goodley, landlady of the Two Pot Inn, stated that the prisoner entered her house about four o’clock in the afternoon. The boots in question were then in the room which the prisoner entered. The prisoner was remanded for a week, pending inquiries as to his character.



EXPLORE FURTHER Manchester City Council has a useful selection of court records – explore from this link: http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/448/archives_and_local_history/7382/court_records Family Search wiki has a very useful article on Quarter Sessions: https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Quarter_Session_Records The Digital Panopticon – a new academic portal site looking at criminal records in London, and particularly those transported to Australia: https://www.digitalpanopticon.org

http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/448/archives_and_local_history/7382/court_records


https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Quarter_Session_Records

https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/



5. The Assizes

Working up from the Petty Sessions (no jury), through the Quarter Sessions (local magistrates and jurors) we now come to the next level in the courts – the Assizes. You will recall from the first lesson that the Assizes comprised a panel of judges who travelled a circuit, hearing cases in different locations – a ‘roving commission’, convening twice a year to deal with the more serious cases such as homicide, infanticide, assault and some cases of burglary. It is not necessarily the case that only the most serious cases were heard at the assizes, as much depended on local circumstance as well as funding, so caution should be used in categorizing them too strictly, however capital cases were handled by the Assize judges and often carried either the death penalty or transportation up to the 1850s. Records of the Assizes are held at The National Archives (TNA) in the series ASSI, and are organised by circuit. The survival rate is patchy, many clerks destroyed their files when they became unwieldy. Any search for criminal trials dealt with by the Assizes in the 19th century should start with the Criminal Register series HO27 which we have already mentioned and which appear on the subscription websites. Assize records at TNA are divided between civil and criminal cases and the appropriate research guides (from the website) provide the reference numbers by county. Here is the link for the criminal cases guide. You can find Minute Books, Depositions (for some circuits only) and Indictments along with a variety of other material depending on the circuit and the date. However, and very unfortunately for many researchers hoping to find clues about someone’s family background or trial, the Indictments are often inaccurate about places of birth and occupations and actual transcripts of the trial do not exist. This is particularly disappointing for people hoping to trace backwards from a criminal ancestor who was transported to Australia, where place of birth is unknown from other sources. In the local or county record office, you could find there are printed Crown Assizes Minute Books or Gaol Books – depending upon what has survived. The make-up of the records is very similar to those created by the Quarter Sessions. On the next page is an extract from the Minute Book for Huntingdon dated 1852 – check the entries for William Stalley and John Hall.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/assizes-criminal-1559-1971.htm



Huntingdon Assizes Minute Book 1852 ref ASZ/3/2– Huntingdon Archive Office.

Note how the literacy of the prisoner is recorded in a margin note (Hall could read and write imperfectly) and how John Hall was to be executed and William Stalley sentenced to 14 years transportation. A check of the Criminal Registers (HO 27 records online at Ancestry) confirm that Stalley was transported for 14 years but the death sentence for John Hall (along with his two accomplices, John Titman and James Stokes) was commuted to transportation for life. There is a copy from the original register on the next page but it is a poor quality image – you can just make out the commutation of the death sentence to ‘trans life’ – transportation for life.



HO 27/100 ff 88 – Criminal Registers from Ancestry website

Was John Hall married? Did his sentence leave a family here in England? These are all questions that should be asked by any researcher discovering a similar case in their ancestry and is something we can discuss in our chat. Consider also the different crimes recorded just in the above short extract from the Assize Minute Book from 1852 – do you see a common thread? The Assize Courts, even more than the Quarter Sessions, attracted local journalists and the reporting in the local papers of the cases may well be superior in quantity and give you more information than the remaining original documents. Let us quickly investigate the curious case of Elizabeth Bingham and her daughter Julia. The family story is that Elizabeth was ‘wronged’ by her husband’s family who threw her out onto the street when he suddenly died. The 1881 census return shows her as the widow of a tailor, living with her married brother in Lincolnshire. She has a young daughter, Julia, born in Peterborough, Northamptonshire. The 1871 census return shows her living with her husband, Thomas F. Bingham a tailor, and their 3-year old daughter in Stanground in the registration district of Peterborough. The birth of Julia was registered in Peterborough in 1868 and the death of Thomas F Bingham is shown as September quarter 1880. So far so good. However, looking at the national probate calendar online (via Ancestry website) raises a query. Thomas Frederick Bingham, tailor of Peterborough died in 1880 as a bachelor, administration of his estate was left to his father in Norwich, no mention of any wife or child! Fortunately this newspaper extract dated 5th February 1882 from the Northampton Mercury provides us with the missing details. A civil case for Jackson v. Bingham was brought before the Assizes by Elizabeth Bingham alias Jackson against the father of her late husband who had thrown her out of the house and refused to give her items that her husband gave to her.



Northampton Mercury 05.02.1882 – from http://britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

We learn that the couple had lived together for 18 years as man and wife but had never married and after the death of the 'husband', the father turned Elizabeth and her daughter (his grandchild) out of the house. Do you think £40 'an exceedingly fair arrangement'? More importantly, consider the family history research implications. The Old Bailey in London acted as the Assizes for Middlesex, London and part of what we now refer to as the Home Counties. We will look at the records of the Old Bailey Online in more detail in Lesson Three when we investigate the High Courts. Don’t forget that the FamilySearch catalogue will provide details of quarter session records for each county which you can view at your local LDS centre if they have been digitised. We looked at this in Lesson One.



CONCLUSIONS Victorian court hearings would often seem a travesty of justice to our eyes, yet the volume and scope of business was such that the courts did not have time to consider every case as thoroughly as today and policing / detective methods were very primitive. The Quarter Sessions not only dealt with crime but also with administrative matters – highways, licensing, county administration – right up to the 1880s when the County Councils were formed. This means that there is a fabulous collection of evidence about the everyday life and times of our ancestors, notwithstanding the criminal aspects of Victorian life. Quarter Sessions records remain one of the most under-used resources in family history partly because of the poor cataloguing at a local level. You may find an ancestor recorded as a juror, a witness, the defaulting father of a bastard child, a deserted wife, a pick-pocket or a hardened criminal. He may be licensed as a game keeper or appointed County Coroner. He may be on a list of jurors or a Justice of the Peace. The Petty Sessions records provide a treasure-trove of miscellaneous family history trivia from petty thieving, punished with a couple of days in prison, to public house ownership details. On the other hand the Assizes, responsible for the more serious cases, may provide the clues to unravelling lifelong mysteries about ancestors and their families who seem to vanish but, in reality, have been transported to the colonies or imprisoned. In short, check out the county record office for Quarter and Petty Session records – via their website or by email – and if that is not productive, then look at the FamilySearch website, or try TNA Discovery online catalogue to seek the whereabouts of relevant original material held locally. For the Assizes, start with The National Archives research guides and plan your research accordingly.



WEBSITES VISITED IN THE LESSON

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/HowToReadTrial.jsp - description of the Old Bailey court procedure. http://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/england-and-wales-crime-prisons-and-punishment-1770-1935 Information on the crime and punishment databases held by findmypast. History of the justice system: http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/introduction-to-justice-system/history-of-the-judiciary http://www.wolverhamptonhistory.org.uk/politics/law/courts - examples of Wolverhampton court records http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/assizes-key-civil-1656-1971.htm Vital search aid - Research Leaflet from the National Archives on location and scope of the Assize Records. https://archive.org/search.php?query=quarter%20sessions%20records%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts list of Quarter Session records from the Archive.Org website – free to view. http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/448/archives_and_local_history/7382/court_records Guide to Manchester court records www.digitalpanopticon.org Guide to London and Australia criminal records https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Quarter_Session_Records Family Search wiki

Chats

Chats



http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/introduction-to-justice-system/history-of-the-judiciary

http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/introduction-to-justice-system/history-of-the-judiciary

http://www.wolverhamptonhistory.org.uk/politics/law/courts

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/assizes-key-civil-1656-1971.htm

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/assizes-key-civil-1656-1971.htm





http://www.digitalpanopticon.org/

https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/England_Quarter_Session_Records

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