Old Bailey opens its unseen files

Old Bailey opens its unseen files
Transcripts of 210,000 trials from across four centuries are now freely available online

Amelia Hill, social affairs correspondent
The Observer, Sunday April 27 2008


The long arm of the law now stretches across time: from tomorrow, the transcripts of every trial heard at the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1913 can be read online, free of charge. The records of more than 210,000 criminal trials held from shortly after the Great Fire of London until just before the Great War, and the biographical details of around 3,000 men and women executed at Tyburn, are to be posted on the Old Bailey Proceedings website (oldbaileyonline.org).

The cases include some of the most sensational in history, such as the trials in which Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and the infamous Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen, who killed his wife, was brought to justice.

'People from all over the world can visit the site for free and get a valuable insight into a diverse range of crimes, from pickpocketing and robbery to abduction and murder,' said Professor Robert Shoemaker, co-director of the project. 'These crimes were committed by Irish terrorists, train robbers and suffragettes, as well as by ordinary people. Through these transcripts, we can read the personal accounts of events by the accused and the accusations of their prosecutors.'

The site is the largest single source of searchable information about everyday British lives and behaviour ever published, said co-director Professor Tim Hitchcock. 'Besides the desperate drama of crimes punished, the proceedings give us a new and remarkable access to the everyday. History is full of information about kings and queens and wars, but there isn't much that tells us about the everyday life of ordinary people.'

The website, published by the Humanities Research Institute, is a collaboration by the Universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire and the Open University. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the trials run to more than 110,000 pages of text and some 120 million words. In addition to the text of the trials, the website provides 195,000 digital images, as well as contemporary maps, images of the courtroom and information on the historical and legal background to the Old Bailey court.

'Until now this treasure trove of social, legal and family history has only been available to a few dedicated historians, who were prepared to spend months peering at microfilms,' said Hitchcock. 'Now everyone from schoolchildren to amateur historians can have easy access to this wealth of information.'

The site also enables people to search for criminal ancestors. Joan Brewer, a researcher, found her husband's great-great-grandmother, Phoebe Douglas, had been transported to Australia in 1829. Douglas's trial details how she and two friends distracted the owner of an east London draper's shop, allowing them to steal 30 yards of printed cotton, valued at 19 shillings.

Brewer said discovering the criminal history of her relative had made her proud of her heritage. 'It was a huge surprise but wonderful to be able to read the transcript of Phoebe's trial,' she said. 'Life for her was clearly very hard: her husband had been transported to Bermuda as a convict, then she was transported to Australia for what we would consider to be a very small crime in today's society.

'What made it even sadder was that she had a child she wasn't able to bring with her to Australia,' Brewer added. 'Phoebe was a remarkable lady, one we are proud to have in our family history.'