What's New

Changes to the Old Bailey website in December 2008

In addition to some minor corrections, the two most important changes to version 5.1 are the addition of 49 additional Ordinary's Accounts, primarily from beween 1679 and 1689, and the creation of the Old Bailey user wiki. We hope users will find these improvements beneficial, but if you encounter any difficulties please contact us.

Additional Ordinary's Accounts

49 additional editions of the Ordinary's Accounts have been added, primarily from between 1679 and 1689. With the exception of about twenty additional editions which we are still processing, this website now provides a comprehensive edition of all the Ordinary's Accounts published. We define an Ordinary's Account as a biography compiled by the Ordinary (chaplain) of Newgate Prison of a convict who was tried and sentenced to death at a normal session of the Old Bailey court. This definition excludes biographies of those convicted of piracy and high treason, as well as biographies compiled by anyone who was not the Ordinary of Newgate. If you are aware of any editions of the Ordinary's Accounts which meet our definition and are not included on this website, please contact us.

Old Bailey User Wiki

An Old Bailey user wiki, sponsored by the Economic History Society, has been created, to allow users of this website to participate in the creation of contextual information about the trials and Ordinary's Accounts provided on this website. Sections of the wiki allow users to contribute biographical information about individuals included in the Proceedings or Ordinary's Accounts, historical background, and information about relevant additional primary sources ("associated records"). The Bibliography pages from the old version of the Old Bailey Proceedings website have been included, so that users can find relevant secondary works, make comments, and add new entries. The Schools Pages from the old website are also available for teachers and students to use and, for teachers only, to amend (or create new pages).

The wiki is easy to use and, once you have registered, you can add your own content.

Keyword Search

In the previous version of the 1674-1913 website keyword searches functioned differently from the earlier 1674-1834 website, in that searches for words which include hyphens produced different results. This problem has now been rectified, so that, as before, hyphens are always treated as spaces by the search engine. Thus, a search for "tea pot" will find all instances of both "tea pot" and "tea-pot" in the text, and a search for "tea-pot" will produce the same results. Neither of these searches, however, will find "teapot". For further information, go to the main search page, click on the help button next to the keyword search box, and read the section on "multiple keywords".

Corrections

A number of other minor corrections to the tagging have also been implemented, including:

  • Many of the defendant and victim genders previously identified as "unknown", primarily cases of women listed as "wife of", have now been correctly identified. This means that gender statistics compiled on the site will now be slightly different, and more accurate, than statistics compiled in the previous version.
  • We have discovered that the sessions dated 11 April 1749 was misdated on the original title page, and actually occurred a month later. To avoid confusion, the metadata have not been changed, but a note tag has been added to all files from that session to indicate the correct date of 11 May 1749.
  • The generic associated records for the early nineteenth-century Proceedings have been reintroduced.

We are grateful to those who have contacted us to inform us of errors on this website. If you find any more, please contact us. In the meantime, since the content of the site is liable to undergo minor changes without warning, users are reminded that proper internet citation practice involves including the date you consulted the website, as indicated in our citation guide.

Changes to the Old Bailey website in April 2008

The addition of the 100,000 trial accounts published between 1834 and 1913 represents the single biggest change to this website. We have, however, taken advantage of the opportunity to update many of the technical and historical features of the website and to introduce a new, improved overall design.

The old website, last updated in November 2007, will remain available at a separate URL until 31 January 2009, when it will be withdrawn.

1834 to 1913 Trials

100,000 additional trials, covering the period from November 1834 to April 1913 (when publication of the Proceedings ceased), have been added to the database. This website now includes all surviving published editions of this periodical from the first edition in April 1674 to the last one published 239 years later in April 1913.

The new trials have a different character than those from the earlier period. There are fewer cases of certain types of theft (animal theft, highway robbery, and shoplifting), but more cases of embezzlement, robbery, theft from the post, and property crimes involving deception (bankruptcy, forgery, and fraud). With respect to violent crimes, there are fewer murders but more cases of manslaughter, and more cases of minor violence such as assault, threatening behaviour, and wounding. Religious offences, seditious words, and seditious libel are less common, while tax offences disappear. On the other hand, coining offences are more frequent. Sexual offences, particularly rape and sodomy and attempts at these offences, together with keeping a brothel, occur more often. Finally, some new offences, created by nineteenth-century statutes, appear, such as being an habitual criminal, unlawful abortion, and indecent assault.

In a few cases, changes to statute law (such as the abolition of the distinction between petty larceny and grand larceny in 1827) and the creation of new offences have necessitated some recategorisation of offences from the 1674 to 1834 period, mostly from early nineteenth-century trials. Consequently, statistics compiled from this website, even when they only involve dates before November 1834, may vary slightly from previous calculations.

Back to Top

Ordinary's Accounts

The website now includes the texts of all Ordinary'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. A new historical background page explains the significance of these Accounts.

Back to Top

Historical Background Pages

The Historical Background pages have all been thoroughly updated to include material covering the period from 1834 to 1913, as well as recent scholarship on the earlier period. Four new pages have been added:

In addition, the Eighteenth-Century London page has been reconfigured as two pages, London 1715-1760 and London 1760-1815.

Back to Top

Search Functions

Improvements in search engine design have allowed us to improve the search functions on this site, most notably by allowing combinations of keyword searching with structured searching by crime, verdict, and punishment and other criteria. This makes it possible, for example, to search for all murder trials which contain the word pistol. It is even possible to combine keyword searching with the statistics function, so that one could compile a table containing all the theft cases which include the word handkerchief, broken down by defendant gender and by decade.

This improvement has allowed us to consolidate the search functions into a smaller number of pages. Name, keyword, and crime, verdict, and punishment searches can now all be conducted from the main search page. More advanced person searches can be conducted on a new Personal Details search page, which allows combinations of name, gender, age, occupation, and place searching.

Other changes to the search pages are as follows:

We have reconfigured some of the general categories used for the compilation of statistics, so statistics compiled on this website will sometimes produce different results from those produced on the previous version, even when the same criteria are used.

  • The general category of partial verdict has been abolished, and all partial verdict subcategories are now counted within the general category Guilty.

Punishments have been grouped together into a smaller number of general categories, as follows:

  • The pillory and whipping have been grouped together in the new category of Corporal Punishment.
  • Executed has been included within the general category Death.
  • Pardon and sentence respited have been incorporated within the general category No Punishment.
  • Branding, military and naval duty, fines, forfeiture of land or goods, and providing sureties for good behaviour have all been included with the category Miscellaneous Punishments.

It is still possible, however, to search (and compile statistics) for each of these subcategories separately.

Back to Top

Discontinued and Period-Limited Features

Some features from the previous version of the website have been discontinued. Until January 2009 you can continue to use these features on the old website, last updated in November 2007, available at a separate URL.

  • Owing to the lack of resources available to update the Bibliography periodically, this feature has been moved to the user wiki, where users can not only find relevant secondary works but also make comments and add new entries. Lists of introductory reading can still be found at the bottom of every Historical Background page. For additional reading, you can also consult the comprehensive bibliographic resource, London's Past Online, created by the Centre for Metropolitan History in association with the Royal Historical Society.
  • The Manuscript Sessions Papers from 1746-1755 have been temporarily removed, pending the creation of the new Plebeian Lives website, available from 2010, which will contain all the eighteenth-century manuscript sessions papers, together with a wide range of other documents concerning the lives of ordinary Londoners.

Owing to a lack of sufficient resources, two features of the previous site have not been extended to the 1834 to 1913 period. Both the Search the Associated Records and Map and Place Search functions remain, but they can only be used for the 1674-1834 trials.

Back to Top

Schools Pages

The Schools Pages have also been moved to the user wiki, where they can be consulted by teachers and students. Teachers can also amend pages, or create new ones.

Until 31 January 2009 you can continue to use the old Schools Pages on the old website, last updated in November 2007.

Back to Top