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What's New Archive

Contents of this Article

About the What's New Archive

This is a full archive of all the announcements of changes made to the website between our initial launch in 2003 and our latest site update. The most recent changes are documented at What's New.

The purpose of the archive is to provide a summary record of the development of the site from its inception, akin to the standard practice by software projects of maintaining documentation of successive Release Notes.

As a source and research tool, an online edition can change in ways that are significant to researchers: content may be added, corrections made to errors, or changes to the technical infrastructure of the site, etc. For example, such changes may cause the results of a statistics search to differ from previously obtained results of the same search query.

The archive documents changes made during site updates that may produce such discrepancies (although this does not mean that it covers all possible changes). Thus, when citing the site as a reference, it is good practice for researchers to include information that will enable others to identify which version of the site was in operation at the time of consultation: this may be the date at which you consulted the website or, alternatively, the site version number (equivalent to the number of a print edition), which you can find at the bottom of every page on the site.

While the archive includes some information about various technical changes to the site, it does not represent a detailed technical guide; for further information in this respect, including some of the significant differences between the original site (2003-2008) and the current version, see also the technical methods section in About this Project.

 

Changes to the Old Bailey Proceedings Online in March 2015 [Version 7.2]

Corrections

We have taken the opportunity to correct a number of errors, including tagging errors and broken links. We are grateful to our registered users for reporting many of these errors. This means that searches conducted using version 7.2 may produce different results from those previously conducted. Changes include:

  • Original page images for the period 1674 to 1715 should now be displayed correctly
  • A number of related issues with the tagging of husbands and wives (in 1674-1834 sessions) have been corrected:
    • Correction of a tagging error that assigned a number of male defendants the occupational title of "wife".
    • The removal of erroneous defendant status tagging from about 800 husbands.
    • Correction of the mis-tagging of a number of wives' surnames as "his" (from "his wife").
  • About 100 mistranscribed defendant ages have been corrected. Many defendants previously tagged as 80 and above are now correctly listed as being in their 20s or 30s.
  • About 850 genders previously listed as "indeterminate" have now been correctly labelled as male or female. In some cases the original "indeterminate" tag resulted from a mistranscription of a forename, and these mistranscriptions have been corrected.
  • Wrongly dated sessions have been corrected:
    • The date of the 13 June 1836 session of the court was previously wrongly listed as 13 July 1836, owing to a mistake on the original title page.
    • The date of the 30 May 1770 session was wrongly listed as 30 June 1770.
    • Correction of these errors has necessitated changing all trial references for those sessions, so for example, t18360713-1634 is now t18360613-1634. If users search for the previous trial numbers they will receive an error notice and be advised to correct the reference.

API limits

  • The API documentation previously stated that up to 50 trials could be downloaded (in a .zip file) from a single API query. However, this limit had been reduced to 10 shortly after the initial release of the API (v. 7.0) for technical reasons. The documentation has now been corrected to reflect this.

Changes to the Old Bailey Proceedings Online in April 2013 [Version 7.1]

Old Bailey Online Celebrates Tenth Anniversary

April 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of the launch of the Old Bailey Online, and the 100th anniversary of the last published edition of the Old Bailey Proceedings. These anniversaries are commemorated in our Press Release, which notes the impact the website has achieved in the last decade.

EU Legislation on 'Cookies'

We have updated our privacy policy in line with EU legislation on Cookies.

Digital Projects and Old Bailey Online Data

We have added a list of Digital History and Humanities projects that use Old Bailey Online project data.

Corrections

We have taken the opportunity to correct a number of minor errors, including tagging errors and broken links. We are grateful to our registered users for reporting many of these errors.

 

Changes to the Old Bailey Proceedings Online in April 2012 [Version 7.0]

API

This update provides access to, and documentation for, the Old Bailey API. Developed by the Data Mining with Criminal Intent project, the Old Bailey API allows you to exploit the 127 million words of text in the Proceedings in new ways. You can build more complex queries than is possible using the search tools on this website, and you can export the results of your query for analysis by other tools such as Zotero and Voyant Tools.

To access the demonstrator, go to: Old Bailey API Demonstrator

For instructions on how to use it, go to: Using the Old Bailey API Demonstrator

Further information for developers is available at: Documentation for Developers

In addition, we provide access to a new statistics facility, also developed by the Datamining with Criminal Intent project, that allows more complex graphing and visualisation of trial data and text:

Citation Guidance and Credits

In order to give credit to the full team that produced the Old Bailey Online, our Citation Guide now includes a recommended form for citing the whole project. In addition, the list of project staff and their responsibilities has been revised.

Corrections

As with every update, we have taken the opportunity to correct a number of minor errors, including tagging errors and broken links. We are grateful to our registered users for reporting many of these errors.

 

Changes to the Old Bailey Proceedings Online in March 2011 [ver.6.0]

Thanks to a generous grant from the JISC e-Content & Digitisation programme for our Crime in the Community project, we have been able to implement a number of improvements to the Old Bailey Proceedings Online during our annual update. These changes, which were planned following the completion of a User Analysis Report, are intended to further embed this resource in university teaching and research.

Personal Workspaces: Saving and Exporting Results

Users can now register to have a personal workspace, where they can save searches and individual trials (and other texts such as Ordinary's Accounts and advertisements), annotate them, organise them into folders, and export them. A tutorial, Using the Workspace, explains how to use this feature. Registered users of London Lives can use the same username and password.

Citation Generator and Print Page Function

Every trial and background page now includes a link to a popup window which provides a full citation for the relevant text, following our recommended citation format. That format has been amended to include the Version Number, to reflect the fact that the content and search facilities of this website can change with our annual updates. By consulting the What's New Archive, it is possible to identify the changes implemented in each update.

For individual trials, we have implemented a print page function, to allow users to print the text only of individual trials. Each printout includes the correct citation for that trial.

Guides, Tutorials and Bibliographies

A series of Research and Study Guides have been created to help all users get the most out of this website.

New Users should find the Getting Started and Guide to Searching video walkthroughs (and associated texts) useful introductions to the online Proceedings.

Those already familiar with this website may learn techniques for using it more effectively by watching the Using the Workspace and Doing Statistics videos. More advanced users may find useful the webpages which explain how to Organise your Research with Reference Management Tools (e.g. Zotero) and Using the API to Measure Linguistic Change? (forthcoming).

Many users, particulary university students, may find the new webpages on How to Read an Old Bailey Trial and How the Proceedings are Different when Read Online illuminating, while the page on Using the Proceedings in University Teaching is designed for university lecturers. The Schools pages have been transferred back to the main website from the User Wiki, but they have not been updated.

Finally, the website Bibliography has been transferred back to the main website from the User Wiki, and an additional bibliography has been started comprised of Publications that Cite the Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Users who wish to add to either of these bibliographies can do so through our public Zotero Group Library.

Search Improvements

To make more advanced search commands easier to execute, we have introduced new radio buttons for keyword searching. Users can now choose between And, Or, Phrase, or Advanced searches. The default search is And. By selecting the Advanced search button, it is possible to use wildcards (*) and the + and - signs to create more complex searches (the technical problem with combining + and - searches has now been fixed). The what's this link provides access to a full explanation of this new feature.

To enable quick refinements to existing searches, we have added a refine search button to all search results.

Finally, and with apologies for the delay, we have reinstated keyword searching for three letter words (except stopwords).

Mapping Crime Data

Using data provided by the Mapping Crime project, we have incorporated 650 links in the Associated Records database from specific trials to ballads, last dying-speeches, and other broadsides in the online John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera from the Bodleian Library. These links will appear when the associated records for the relevant trials are listed, and they can also be searched from the Associated Records Search Page by selecting John Johnson Collection Online in the Library or Archive search box. Users will need to have subscription access to the John Johnson Collection in order to access the these online sources.

Withdrawal of the Wiki

Owing to limited use, we have regretfully withdrawn the Old Bailey User Wiki from service. Relevant biographies have been transferred to the London Lives Wiki. We have attempted to contact in advance everyone who contributed content, but if you did not get the message and have content you wish to preserve please Contact Us and we will retrieve it for you.

Three features of the wiki have been returned to the main website, where they will be preserved:

  • The Schools Pages
  • The site Bibliography
  • A Corrections facility for reporting errors. The link, Add a correction, now appears in the information box at the top of every trial. These reports will be reviewed periodically and necessary changes will be implemented during the next annual update.

Corrections

As with every update, we have taken the opportunity to correct a number of minor errors, including tagging errors and broken links.

Changes to the Old Bailey website in January 2010 [ver.5.2]

Forty new Ordinary's Accounts, primarily from between 1676 and 1690 and 1740 and 1760, have been added. This website now includes all known surviving copies of the Ordinary's Accounts. If you know of any which have not been included here, please contact us.

Minor corrections to some trial transcripts and tagging have been made. We are grateful to contributors to the user wiki for identifying some of these errors.

Keyword searching for three letter words (with the exception of stop words) has been restored.

Further information about current and future projects, including the planned launch of the London Lives website in April 2011, and a new project, Connected Histories, which will create a federated search facility for sources in British History, is included on the About this Project page.

We have also included a full archive of all the announcements of changes made to the website since our initial launch in 2003.

 

Changes to the Old Bailey website in December 2008 [5.1]

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 [no longer accessible] 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.

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Changes to the Old Bailey website in April 2008 [5.0]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.[no longer available]

  • Owing to the lack of resources available to update the Bibliography periodically, this feature has been moved to the user wiki [no longer accessible], 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.

Schools Pages

The Schools Pages have also been moved to the user wiki [no longer accessible], 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 [no longer accessible], last updated in November 2007.

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Changes to the Old Bailey website in November 2007 [4.3]

Corrections

Version 4.3 of this website includes a number of mostly minor corrections. Some tagging errors, missing page images, and broken links have been fixed. The edition of the Proceedings previously dated 25 March 1741 has now been correctly dated as 25 February 1741, and the session dated 7 October 1833 is now correctly dated as 17 October 1833. In addition, approximately 1,300 trials where the verdict was erroneously tagged as 'special verdict' and with no punishment, have now been correctly tagged as 'guilty', with the punishment 'sentence respited'.

These changes mean that searches conducted using this version of the website may produce slightly different (and more accurate) results than searches conducted previously.

Bibliography

The bibliography has been updated to include relevant publications which have appeared in the last twelve months.

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Changes to the Old Bailey website in August 2006

Corrections

Version 4.2 of this website includes a number of mostly minor corrections. Some errors in the keyword, statistics, and crime, verdict and punishment search functions have been corrected, which means that searches conducted using this version of the website may produce slightly different (and more accurate) results than searches conducted previously. In addition, some broken links have been fixed and missing page images provided.

The edition of the Proceedings previously dated as January 1699 has now been correctly dated as a second publication of the Proceedings for December 1699; there is no surviving edition of the Proceedings for January 1699.

Bibliography

The bibliography has been updated to include relevant publications which have appeared in the last twelve months.

FAQs

To assist enquirers, a page of Frequently Asked Questions has been added. If you are thinking of contacting us with a query please check here first to see if your question has been answered.

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Changes to the Old Bailey website in July 2005

Strype and Greenwood Maps Added

The mapping feature has been improved by the addition of two new digitised maps, (provided courtesy of and by permission of Motco.com): parish and ward maps from John Strype's Survey of London (1720), and Christopher and John Greenwood's Map of London (1827/30). As a result, it is now possible to link all crime locations and defendant homes which have been identified in trials to place names on maps for the relevant time period (assuming the location was identified on the map), and vice versa. Place names for trials up to October 1714 are linked to Strype; those for December 1714 to 1759 are linked to the Rocque map (posted earlier); and those for 1760 to 1834 are linked to Greenwood. In addition, it is possible to map place names from trials for the entire period onto the Greenwood map, which allows users to display on a single map all the trials from 1674 to 1834 which have been linked to particular place names.

Statistics and Search Functions Improved

The statistics functions have been reconfigured to improve speed and accuracy. As a result users should less frequently have searches 'time out' before they are completed.

In addition, the method by which both the Statistics and the Crime, Verdict and Punishment searches are conducted has been changed to allow for multiple offences, verdicts, and punishments to be searched for and counted. For example, a convicted defendant sentenced to a fine and imprisonment will now be located and counted in searches for both punishments by fine and punishments by imprisonment, whereas before this was simply listed as a 'multiple punishment' and such cases did not appear in specific searches.

Because accessing multiple defendants, offences, victims, verdicts and punishments requires slightly different databases for each type of information, users now have the possibility of choosing whether to search, or count, by each of these different units of analysis. An 'automatic' function makes the choice automatically according to what appears to be most appropriate, but users can choose to override this if they wish.

Display of Complete Texts for Each Session

The Browse by Date search facility has now been reconfigured so that complete texts of the Proceedings for each session (meeting of the court) are now displayed. This allows you to read the Proceedings in the form in which they were originally published.

Corrections

A number of minor corrections to trial transcripts and tagged information have been made. In addition, trials from three sessions, April 1693, January 1722, and October 1731, which have previously only been searchable via keyword searching, are now included in all searches.

Two missing pages for the July 1689 session have been found, and the missing pages and trials added.

As a result, searches conducted using this version of the website (4.1) may produce slightly different (and more accurate) results than searches conducted previously.

Research Users, University Teaching and Schools Teaching Pages

To facilitate the exchange of ideas, the Old Bailey Proceedings Online invites those using the website for teaching or research to provide us with brief reports of your activities, by filling in the boxes provided on the Research Users Page, University Teaching Page or Schools Teaching Page. Reports will be posted on the appropriate page.

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Changes to the Old Bailey website in December 2004

New Trials

48,000 trials have been added, covering the period from January 1800 to October 1834, the last sessions before the court was renamed as the Central Criminal Court and its jurisdiction was changed. The website now covers the whole period from April 1674 to October 1834. This completes the current project.

The new trials cover a period of considerable social and political change. The political turmoil of these years is evident in the prosecutions of the Cato Street conspirators in 1820 and a number of blasphemy prosecutions for selling copies of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason in 1824. The trials also reflect significant developments in the criminal law, punishment strategies, and policing. Users will find prosecutions based on new statutes against embezzlement, violent assault, child stealing, and trading in slavery. They will find proportionally fewer death sentences, but more convicts sentenced to transportation for life, imprisonment (including some young offenders sentenced to the Penitentiary), and fines. They will also find the word 'police' used to refer to law enforcement officers long before the Metropolitan Police were introduced in September 1829. And by looking at the last five years of the period, they will be able to judge the impact of the new police on law enforcement.

The historical background pages have been revised to accommodate some of the distinctive features of the newly posted trials.

New Mapping Feature

It is now possible to see place names in the Proceedings displayed on an eighteenth-century map of London. Links directly from trials from 1714 to 1759 take the user to an image from John Rocque's 1746 map of London with the location marked. (These digitised maps have been provided courtesy of and by permission of Motco.com.) It is also possible to search for all the trials related to particular place names. The Place search page has been modified to allow users to search for and display specific locations on the maps and to list all the trials in which that location features as a crime location or defendant residence. As part of the indexing of street names for this feature locations have wherever possible been ascribed to the parishes in which they are located. Consequently, it is now possible to use parish name as a search criterion for crime locations on the Crime, Verdict and Punishment search page.

Further maps relating to late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century London, and late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London, will be made available in the near future. These will allow the mapping of place names mentioned in trials conducted between 1674 and 1714 and 1760 and 1834. To search for place names in trials which occurred during these years, users should now go to the Keyword search page.

Ordinary's Accounts and Manuscript Sessions Papers

These associated records, which provide valuable additional evidence about the crimes and accused criminals who were tried at the Old Bailey, have been added (both as searchable digitised texts and as page images) for the decade from 1746-1755. The manuscript sessions papers include witness and defendant statements made before the trial took place and show how criminal charges evolved from original accusations to the formal criminal trial. The Ordinary's Accounts (biographies of convicted felons compiled just before they were executed) contain accounts of crimes and criminal lives written largely from the point of view of the accused.

These new documents are accessible directly from the trials to which they are related: links are provided from the trial summaries at the top of the trial texts. In addition, it is possible to search these documents separately from a new Ordinary's Accounts and Manuscript Sessions Papers Keyword search page and from Browse by Date search pages for the 1740s and 1750s.

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Changes to the Old Bailey website in May 2004

New Trials

7,700 trials for the period from April 1674 to October 1714 have now been added. These trials, never before collected together, come from 235 editions of the Proceedings, covering 223 meetings of the court (in twelve cases there were two separate publications for the same session). These constitute all the surviving editions of the Proceedings known to the project (excluding publications which report only a single trial), and have been assembled from 11 libraries in the UK and North America. They comprise two-thirds of the sessions actually held during this period. If you are aware of surviving issues of the Proceedings which we have not included please contact us.

Users familiar with the later trials will find the early Proceedings have a different character. The trial accounts are shorter, but use more colourful language, reflecting the origins of this genre in popular literature. There are several trials for unusual or vaguely defined offences which rarely appear in later years (when legal procedures were more standardised) and a large number of charges of murder (almost as many as can be found in the Proceedings for the remainder of the eighteenth century).

The new trials cover a period of considerable religious and political turmoil, and users will discover many trials for religious offences (including two witchcraft cases and two trials for pretending to possess divine powers) and a large number for offences against the king. These include coining, seditious words and libel, refusing to take the oath of allegiance, deserting military service, assisting the French during wartime, and many indictments for treason, including the conspirators behind the Popish Plot, Lord Shaftesbury, printers of Jacobite pamphlets, and the Sacheverell rioters.

The punishments in this period include branding on the cheek (used between 1699 and 1707) and a large number of convicts transported. The large number of convicts transported shows how important this punishment was even before the passage of the Transportation Act of 1718.

Historical Background Pages

The historical background pages have been revised to accommodate some distinctive features of the newly posted trials. In addition, two new pages have been added.

A page on the Value of the Proceedings as a Historical Source compares trial accounts with other available published and manuscript sources of the same trials in order to assess the accuracy of the accounts in the Proceedings and identify the types of information often left out.

A page on Huguenot London explains how these French Protestant refugees, who arrived in London in the 1680s, came to form one of the most largest and most distinctive communities in the capital.

Project Conference

The programme for the project conference has been revised slightly. The deadline for registration for the conference is June 15.

New Search Engine

In February 2004 the search engine for keyword and place name searching was changed to Lucene. Users should be aware that its search methodology is different from that of the previous engine, eXist, and are advised to consult the help texts on these pages for details.

Timetable

The website now includes 53,000 trials, from April 1674 to December 1799. The release of the remaining trials (covering 1800 to October 1834) will occur on December 16th 2004.

In addition, a mapping function will be added to the site in the coming months. This will allow users to locate the place names included in trial accounts on contemporary maps, and vice versa. Transcripts and images of many of the associated records for trials between 1746 and 1755 will also be added in the near future.

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Changes to the Old Bailey website in January 2004

Project Conference

New pages have been posted about the project conference, including the conference programme and a registration form.

The Project Timetable has also been revised.

Timetable

The website now includes 45,000 trials, from December 1714 to December 1799. The release of the remaining 50,000 trials will occur in batches, roughly according to the following timetable:

  • 1674 to October 1714: April 2004. We apologise for the fact that the release of these trials has been unavoidably delayed.
  • 1800 to 1834: October 2004

Future releases will include a mapping function, which will allow users to locate the places names included in trial accounts on contemporary maps, and vice versa; and digitised versions of the associated records for trials between 1746 and 1755.

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Changes to the Old Bailey website in July 2003

The second release of trials has been accompanied by updates to many of the web pages and the addition of several new features.

New Trials

23,000 additional trials, covering 1760-1799, have been added. The trials are of increasing length, including the longest trials in the entire 1674-1834 period. They include several famous cases, among which are those of the Gordon rioters, the "London Monster" (Renwick Williams), and the Perreaus and Mrs Rudd, as well as many lesser known but equally fascinating cases. They include the trials of some of the first convicts transported to Australia, and provide evidence of the increasing presence of defence counsel.

New Search Functions

The ages of convicted defendants were provided systematically from January 1789, and it is now possible to search by defendant's age on the crime, verdict and punishment and advanced search pages, and to count by age range and use age as a search criterion on the statistics pages. A new search page, search by reference number, allows users direct access to trials when they know the relevant trial or sessions reference number.

Notification Form for Future Releases

By filling in this form, you will register to be notified automatically of future releases of additional trials.

Project Conference

New information has been provided about the project conference, including the call for papers. You can also sign up to be sent conference details when they become available.

Citation Guide

Advice on how to cite material from this website in publications has been provided.

Timetable

The website now includes 45,000 trials, from December 1714 to December 1799. The release of the remaining 50,000 trials will occur in batches, roughly according to the following timetable:

  • 1674 to October 1714: Late Autumn 2003
  • 1800 to 1834: Late Spring 2004

Future releases will include a mapping function, which will allow users to locate the places names included in trial accounts on contemporary maps, and vice versa.

 

Notes on Initial release, March 2003

Timetable

The project has launched with 22,000 trials, from December 1714 to December 1759. The release of the remaining 78,000 trials will occur in batches, roughly according to the following timetable:

  • 1760 to 1799: June 2003
  • 1674 to October 1714: Autumn 2003
  • 1800 to 1834: Spring 2004