The poaching of game has been categorised under game law offences. Burglary was defined as breaking into a dwelling house at night with intent to commit a felony normally theft , or actually doing so.
Offences of this sort committed during the day time were defined as housebreaking. This offence was considered to be particularly serious because there were likely to be people sleeping in the house.
Thefts committed by clerks, servants, or other employees of goods belonging to, or in the security of, their employers. During the eighteenth century increasing concern about thefts of this sort led to the passage of statutes which prescribed the death penalty for several types of embezzlement, including the theft of notes, deeds, bills, etc.
In another statute prescribed transportation for any servant or clerk who, having received money or property on their master's behalf, embezzled or secreted the same. The enactment of these and other statutes led to a rapid expansion of prosecution for embezzlement offences in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, many such cases were prosecuted simply as petty , grand , or after simple larceny , or as summary offences adjudicated by magistrates acting outside the courts.
See also stealing from master and theft from the post. Any case of obtaining payments or benefits from another by the use of threats. This category of offence includes cases where individuals were threatened with prosecution for a criminal, ecclesiastical, or civil offence.
Extortion and blackmail are particularly associated with embarrassing crimes such as adultery or sodomy. In the offence of threatening with intent to extort was made punishable by transportation for life. Only persons who met specified property qualifications, essentially gentlemen and the aristocracy, could legally hunt game such as deer, rabbits, or pheasants.
Anyone else hunting these animals, whether using nets, guns, or other animals, were committing a crime, even if they owned land upon which the game was found.
Prosecutions under these statutes frequently occurred outside the courts, under summary jurisdiction, but some offences were made punishable by death under the "Black Act" and in the process brought within the jurisdiction of the Old Bailey.
This Act made it a capital offence to hunt, wound, or steal deer, conies, hares, and fish in the King's forests; break down the heads of fishponds; or simply go about armed and disguised anywhere game was kept. This act was repealed in , but being armed and entering into enclosed land in order to remove game remained a crime throughout the period covered by the Proceedings.
This is the most common offence found in the Proceedings. It involves the theft of goods of the value of 1 shilling or more, but without any aggravating circumstances such as assault, breaking and entering, stealing "privately", or taking from a series of specified locations such as a house.
Occasionally juries used their discretion to find people accused of such thefts guilty of the lesser crime of petty larceny with a partial verdict. By finding the defendant guilty of the theft of goods worth less than one shilling, the jury ensured the defendant would receive a lesser punishment, most notably a punishment other than death.
Grand Larceny was abolished in when a new offence of simple larceny removed the distinction between grand and petty larceny. Breaking into a dwelling house in the day time with intent to commit a felony normally theft , or actually doing so, thereby putting the inhabitants of the house in fear. Such offences when committed at night were charged as burglary. Theft of items under the value of one shilling 12 pence. There was some uncertainty whether this offence was actually a felony, but as the least serious form of theft it was never punishable by death.
Most minor thefts were tried by justices of the peace outside the court using their powers of summary jurisdiction , and convicted offenders were punished without trial. Petty Larceny was abolished in when a new offence simple larceny removed the distinction between it and grand larceny. Up until , this crime involved "privately" stealing from the person of another, which meant without their knowledge, goods worth more than a shilling.
The difficulty of proving that the victim had no knowledge of the crime made it difficult to convict defendants of this offence, though many were found guilty lesser charges through use of partial verdicts.
Many pickpocketing cases involved prostitutes stealing from their clients. From the definition of the offence was loosened to include any theft from the person. In other words, victims no longer needed to prove that the theft was committed without their knowledge. The same statue removed the death penalty for this offence. By a statute of receiving stolen goods, knowing them to be stolen, made the recipient an accessory to a felony. Normally, prosecutions under this heading were only possible after someone had been convicted of the original theft.
The offence of "privately stealing" 5 shillings or more worth of goods from a shop was defined separately as a capital offence in This reflects concern over the apparent increase in this offence, which was thought difficult to prevent, and reflects the rapid growth in the number of shops in London. Theft of this sort taking place before is also included in this category.
In shoplifting ceased to be a capital offence. A category created in following the abolition of the distinction between petty larceny and grand larceny. This offence covered all types of theft perpetrated without any other aggravating circumstance, such as assault or breaking and entering, theft from the person or from a specified place.
Following the passage of the Criminal Justice Act in , many of these cases were tried summarily by magistrates rather than at the Old Bailey. This offence was created in following the passage of an Act "for the further and more adequate punishment of servants convicted of robbing their masters". While theft by servants was indirectly legislated against in , this was the first Act to deal explicitly with theft by employees not just domestic servants and arose in response to industrialisation and the corresponding increase in concern about workers' behaviour.
In it became a felony, without benefit of clergy, to rob mail or steal letters from the Post. According to the Blackstone, the "great malice and mischief" involved in such a crime meant that it should be punished more severely than most other types of theft. Included in this general category are thefts from warehouses, ships, manufactories, churches, lodging houses, and domestic houses where no breaking and entering took place.
See also housebreaking and burglary. This category of offence also includes removing fixed material from a building such as lead from a roof. Some of these crimes violated specific statutes which prescribed the penalty for specific offences. In , for example, a statute made a capital offence theft from dwelling houses of goods over the value of 40 shillings.
Although such a theft could be prosecuted as a capital offence under a different heading, the desire to create a new and specific offence is entirely typical of eighteenth-century legislative practise. Includes cases of theft where insufficient information is given concerning the value of the goods stolen, the location of the theft, or the manner of the theft, to place the offence in any of the above categories.
Usually these case involve relatively minor thefts, to which the publishers of the Proceedings did not wish to devote much space. Edward Clarke followed Wilde's testimony with a powerful summation on behalf of his client. Clarke closed by asking the jury to "gratify those thousands of hopes that are hanging on your decision" and "clear from this fearful imputation one of our most renowned and accomplished men of letters of today and, in clearing him, clear society from a stain.
The jury deliberated for over three hours before concluding that they could not reach a verdict on most of the charges the jury acquitted Wilde on charges relating to Frederick Atkins, one of the young men with whom he was accused of having engaged in a gross indecency. On May 7, Wilde was released on bail. Unlike an acquittal, a hung jury gives the prosecution another bite at the apple.
Wilde enjoyed three weeks of freedom until the start of his second criminal trial. The Liberal government determined to go all-out to secure a conviction in Wilde's second trial, even when people such as Queensberry's attorney Edward Carson were urging, "Can you not let up on this fellow now?
Rosebery was suspected of having had a homosexual affair, when he was Foreign Minister, with Francis Douglas, another one of Queensberry's good-looking sons. It was shortly after Francis Douglas was "killed in a hunting accident" probably a suicide , that Queensberry went on the rampage against Oscar Wilde.
There is plausible evidence in the form of ambiguous letters to conclude that Rosebery was threatened with exposure by Queensberry or others if he failed to aggressively prosecute Wilde. It is interesting to note that during the two months leading up to Wilde's conviction, Rosebery suffered from serious depression and insomnia.
After Wilde's conviction, his health suddenly improved. Although the trial resembled in many ways the first, the prosecution dropped its weakest witnesses and focused more heavily on its strongest. Prosecutors, like everyone, can learn from experience. The evidence that Wilde engaged in sexual activity with young men was compelling. In his closing speech for the defense, Clarke argued that Wilde's "brilliant promise had be clouded" by false accusations, and that his "bright reputation" had "been nearly quenched in the torrent of prejudice sweeping through the press.
Lockwood had the last word in the trial, and used it to offer what Wilde described as an "appalling denunciation [of me]--like something out of Tacitus, like a passage in Dante, like one of Savonarola's indictments of the Popes of Rome. After over three hours of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict: guilty on all counts except those relating to Edward Shelley. Wilde swayed slightly in the dock; his face turned gray.
Some in the courtroom shouted "Shame! The Wilde trials caused public attitudes toward homosexuals to become harsher and less tolerant. Whereas prior to the trials there was a certain pity for those who engaged in same-sex passion, after the trials homosexuals were seen more as a threat, more as predators. The Wilde trials had other effects as well.
They caused the public to begin to associate art with homo-eroticism, and to see effeminacy as a signal for homosexuality. Many same sex relationships seen as innocent before the Wilde trials became suspect after the trials. After the Wilde trials, every male relationship of any intensity came under a cloud, every effeminate gesture raised an eyebrow, and the arts and homosexuality became linked in the public mind. People with close same sex relationships grew anxious, concerned about doing anything that might suggest impropriety.
Wilde served two years in prison, the last eighteen months being spent at Reading Gaol. He came out chastened and bankrupt, but not bitter. He told a friend that he "had gained much" in prison and was "ashamed on having led a life unworthy of an artist. After his release, Wilde traveled in Europe. He met up again with Douglas, a reunion Wilde described as "psychologically inevitable. Wilde described it as "the most bitter experience of a bitter life.
Wilde died on November 30 , in a Paris hotel room. His words, in De Profundis , tell of the lessons learned from his trials:.
The first time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be led back to the house of detention, and the third time to pass into prison for two years. Society as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
One final observation about the Wilde trials, often overlooked, deserves mention. Prior to Wilde's trials, prosecutions for consensual homosexuality in England were about as rare as they were in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.
A wall had been left out in order to increase the supply of fresh air to reduce the risk that prisoners suffering from gaol fever typhus would infect others in court.
On the first floor there was a "stately dining room" for the justices. Inside the courtroom there was a bench for judges at the far end, and, on both sides, partitioned spaces for jurors and balconies for court officers and privileged observers. Other spectators crowded into the yard. The trials attracted a mixed audience of London's more and less respectable inhabitants, and it was alleged that criminals attended in order to devise strategies for defending themselves should they find themselves on trial.
The crowd's presence could influence or intimidate the jurors sitting inside. In the building was remodelled, and enclosed. Although this was purportedly in order to keep out the weather, the City authorities may also have wanted to limit the influence of spectators. The ground floor of the exterior was refaced with large masonry blocks, and the windows and roofline altered to reflect prevailing architectural styles.
A passageway was constructed linking the courthouse with Newgate Prison, to facilitate the transport of prisoners between the two. The interior was rearranged so that the trial jury could sit together, since they were now expected to give their verdicts after each trial, without leaving the courtroom see Trial Procedures. With the courtroom now enclosed, the danger of infection increased, and at one sessions in an outbreak of gaol fever typhus led to the deaths of sixty people, including the Lord Mayor and two judges.
Subsequently, the judges spread nosegays and aromatic herbs to keep down the stench and prevent infection, a practice commemorated in a ceremony which continues to this day. Spectators frequently came to see the trials, and courthouse officials had the right to charge fees for entry to the galleries. The radical John Wilkes, when Sheriff of London in , thought this practice undemocratic and prohibited it. Consequently at the October sessions of that year there was almost a riot due to the pressure of the crowds trying to get in, and those inside the galleries were accused of being "turbulent and unruly".
Wilkes's order was rescinded, and spectators continued to pay to see trials until As a way of further controlling public access, a semi-circular brick wall was built around the area immediately in front of the courthouse, the bail dock.
This wall provided better security for the prisoners awaiting trial and was intended to prevent communication between prisoners and the public. Public view of the courtroom windows was thereby obstructed. Visit us in Kew to see original documents or view online records for free.
Consider paying for research. This guide will help you to find records of trials held at the Old Bailey since , as well as records of the prisoners and convicts tried and held there. Reborn as the Central Criminal Court in , the courthouse has nevertheless continued to be known popularly as the Old Bailey. Most pre records are held in other archives, most significantly at the London Metropolitan Archives. However, The National Archives does hold some pre records.
For trials of crimes committed in London south of the Thames before you need to look at the records of assize courts for Surrey. Records from the last 20 to 30 years are not held at The National Archives.
For these records contact the Ministry of Justice. See their advice on Freedom of Information requests. Under the Central Criminal Court Act of , the court could also hear cases outside its ordinary jurisdiction to ensure a fair trial where local prejudice existed or where, due to its frequent sessions, it could offer an early trial and so avoid the delay in waiting for the next assizes.
To this day, criminal cases from other parts of England and Wales are occasionally dealt with by the court. When crown courts replaced assize courts in the title Central Criminal Court was retained for the crown court sitting in London. Trials for people accused of felonies serious crimes and the more serious cases of misdemeanors crimes less serious than felonies were and still are held at the court. This included the following crimes:.
The most detailed records you are likely to find for any trial are known as proceedings or sometimes sessions papers. They provide summaries of trials and what was said in court. They vary in length and detail, from reports of a few dozen words to detailed transcripts. The first published account of trials held at the Old Bailey dates from and from to accounts of trials were regularly published. These published proceedings were produced for public consumption.
Published proceedings ceased in by which time they had become largely redundant in the face of newspaper reports of trials. The original proceedings are held at a variety of libraries and not at The National Archives but they are available to search and view online at the Old Bailey Proceedings Online website. The Chadwyck Healey microfiche collection of British Trials which also includes a few trials from is available in The National Archives reading rooms and in some major libraries.
These unofficial contemporary accounts of trials were originally published as pamphlets and sold to the general public.
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