The Old Bailey Sessions House and the adjacent Newgate Prison in London witnessed the proceedings of the criminal trials for the City of London and County of Middlesex. The Sessions were held eight times a year, starting roughly each November, following the election of the Lord Mayor of London. The criminal court system was completely overhauled in 1834 with the creation of the Central Criminal Court.
In these trials, men, women and children were accused of felonies ranging from shoplifting to homicide, and more often than not found guilty, sent off to be executed, whipped, branded or transported. These proceedings were occasionally published during the 1670s in pamphlet form often under titles such as News From the Sessions House in the Old Bailey. These commercial publications were poorly printed, but very popular, and few of them survived. By the 1680s, booksellers negotiated with the Lord Mayors for the right to print the criminal sessions, eight times a year, in a more regular format, under the title The Proceedings on the King's Commission of the Peace, Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol Delivery of Newgate, Held for the City of London and County of Middlesex at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey, commonly called The Proceedings, also called The Old Bailey Session Papers [OBSP]. The title changed in 1834, with the creation of the Central Criminal Court, but the coverage remained the same.
The library has The Proceedings in complete volumes from 1729 to 1888 in Special Collections. There is also a microfilm copy of The Proceedings from 1714 to 1834, so that the library has all published trials in a continuous fashion from 1714 to 1888. The microfiche set was filmed from the set of Proceedings at the Harvard Law Library, and is often difficult to use; the print is so dark at times, it bleeds through to the other side of the paper, and becomes unreadable on the microfilm itself. The printed set in Special Collections is bound in volumes of 2-3 years each, and includes an index of punishments to each session, and a general index to the entire year.
The Old Bailey Proceedings are also now available online. This is a searchable online edition of The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, which covers the years 1674 to 1834. It contains accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court. These are transcripts of the trials, including digital photos of the original pages. The transcripts are searchable by keyword, name, place, Crime, Verdict and Punishment, and can also be browsed by date. There are advanced searching pages, statistical searching, and associated records searching capabilities.
Research in types of crime, punishment, gender treatment, and acquittal can be done with The Proceedings, as well as analyzing crimes and punishment over the years, and following the misfortunes of those who passed through the Old Bailey. The occasional pamphlets for the years 1670 to 1714 are very rare in the United States, but they can be found using First Search and/or RLIN databases, as well as checking individual academic libraries‰ catalogs online.
The Library has a few of these individual trials published before 1714 in microfiche. See also Howell's State Trials, and other collections of trials in this research guide.
Access through Gale, The Making of Modern Law
Access through Gale, The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926