What's New

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. Some features which can no longer be maintained have been discontinued. We hope users will find these improvements beneficial, but if you encounter any difficulties please contact us.

The old website, last updated in November 2007, will remain available at a separate URL until December 2008, when it will be withdrawn.

Contents of this Article

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.

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Ordinary's Accounts 1690-1772

The website now includes the texts of all Ordinary's Accounts published between 1690 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. In the future we hope to include the Accounts published between 1676, when the first Account was published, and 1689.

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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 1715-1660 and London 1760-1815.

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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.

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Discontinued and Period-Limited Features

Some features from the previous version of the website have been discontinued. Until December 2008 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 dropped. Lists of introductory reading, however, can still be found at the bottom of every Historical Background page. For additional reading, you are advised to 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 wider 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.

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Schools Pages

The Schools Pages have also been withdrawn, owing to the difficulty of finding partners among school teachers who are willing to advise us on the redesign of these pages. Should you wish to help with this, please contact us. If sufficient interest is shown, we will try to add a revised set of Schools Pages when we next update this website.

Until December 2008 you can continue to use the Schools Pages on the old website, last updated in November 2007.

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Old Bailey Community Wiki (forthcoming)

We shall very soon be creating a wiki for researchers to contribute additional information to the Old Bailey project, including material about individuals mentioned in the Proceedings, associated source materials, background information, corrections, and teaching materials. It is likely to be broadly similar to the National Archives' Your Archives website.

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