The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913

A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

What's New? (December 2008)

An Old Bailey user wiki has been launched, allowing users to contribute information on people mentioned in the Proceedings, historical background, related source materials, and corrections. The wiki also includes the bibliography and schools pages.

In addition, forty-nine new Ordinary's Accounts, primarily between 1679 and 1689, have been added, and a number of corrections have been made. For more information, see What's New.

Ordinary's Accounts

The website now includes the texts of all but a handful of the Ordinary of Newgate's Accounts published between 1679 and 1772. These richly detailed narratives of the lives and deaths of convicts executed at Tyburn have been linked to the relevant trials and can be searched either together with the Proceedings, or separately on the Ordinary's Accounts search page. There is also an Ordinary's Accounts by Date search page to facilitate browsing.

Historical Background

For information about the Old Bailey Proceedings, see About the Proceedings.

For further information see Crime, Justice and Punishment, London and its Hinterlands, Community Histories, Gender in the Proceedings, and the History of the Old Bailey Courthouse.

About this Project

A collaboration between the Open University, and the Universities of Hertfordshire and Sheffield, this project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Big Lottery Fund. Project Directors are Clive Emsley, Tim Hitchcock, and Robert Shoemaker. It is published by HRI Online Publications, and technical services were provided by the Higher Education Digitisation Service and HRI Digital at the Humanities Research Institute. See About this Project.

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