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Equality
for all
Between
1674 and 1834 the proceedings of the central criminal
court in London, the Old Bailey, were published eight
times a year. These records detail some 100,000
individual trials, and include approximately 60,000
pages of text. They represent the largest single source
of information about non-elite lives and behaviour ever
published, and provide a wealth of detail about everyday
life, as well as valuable evidence of the circumstances
surrounding crimes, the lives of the accused, and their
trials. This project is creating a fully digitised and
structured version of all surviving published trial
accounts between 1674 and 1834 and making them available
as a searchable online resource.
Users are able to
search for entries in specific fields, such as crime, or
defendant's occupation, or search the whole text for any
text string. It is also be possible to tabulate specific
fields, such as sex of defendant by type of crime.
Beyond this, information on related documents and
sources found in the libraries and archives of London is
linked to each trial, creating a trail of information
that leads users from the internet to the original
manuscript sources for eighteenth-century crime.
The digitisation involves the scanning and entering of
the original text. This is performed via the Higher
Education Digitisation Service at the University of
Hertfordshire. The files thus created are then
transferred to the Humanities Research Institute in
Sheffield, where they are marked-up, incorporating both
structured meta-data detailing specific aspects of each
trial and archival references. A series of learning
packages have been designed to make the material
accessible to students in schools and universities,
researchers of family and local history, and users
interested in the histories of individual communities,
such as the Black, Gay, Irish and Traveller communities
(all of which are frequently referred to in the
Proceedings). Links to a wide range of other internet
sources for all types of users have also been
incorporated.
A
website,
hosted by Sheffield University was launched in March
2003 with 22,000 trials (covering the period from
December 1714 to December 1759).
(left) Orlando Pownall
QC, prosecutor in Jill Dando murder trial
(right) Lord Carlile QC, for Royal butler Paul Burrell
Visit
the Old Bailey, the world's most famous courthouse.
RAPE
MURDER
•ROBBERY
•FRAUD
•CORRUPTION
Just
contact obinsight@hotmail.com
to arrange a time.
A
HISTORY OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE OLD BAILEY
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THE PROCEEDINGS:
HISTORY:
FOR
SCHOOL:
The
Proceedings of the Old Bailey London 1674 to 1834
A
fully searchable online edition of the largest body of
texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever
published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal
trials held at London's central criminal court.
Keyword
· Name
· Place
· Crime,
Verdict and Punishment · Advanced
Search · Browse
by Date · Reference
Number · Statistics
· Search
the Associated Records
Publishing
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Records · Advertisements
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and its Hinterland · The
Old Bailey Courthouse · Community
Histories · Gender
in the Proceedings · Glossary
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