Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Details of all crimes tried at legendary London criminal court the Old Bailey between 1674 and 1913 are now freely available on-line thanks to researchers from the Open University, the University of Hertfordshire and the University of Sheffield.

The trials of the likes of Oscar Wilde, the infamous Dr Crippen, suffragettes and ancient Irish terrorists, can be viewed alongside those of the common man for the first time as the Old Bailey Proceedings Online 1674-1834 website has doubled in size.

With details of over 197,000 criminal trials, the Old Bailey Proceedings Online website now provides access to the largest single source of searchable information about “ordinary” British lives and behaviour ever published, allowing people to compare criminal activities past and present.

“We think of terrorism as being new, but within the Old Bailey Proceedings, people will see terrorists who are attempting to do the same things 100 years ago,” said project co-director, Professor Clive Emsley of the Open University. “We think of street crimes as new, and yet it in the mid-19th century, people will see that the term ‘to mug’ was even in use then.”

As well as an insight into some of the Old Bailey’s most sensational trials, such as Oscar Wilde’s conviction for indecency and Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen who killed his wife, the Proceedings contain fascinating facts about the circumstances of crimes, the lives of the accused, witnesses and victims, and verdicts and punishments handed down by judges.

They also reveal the differences in attitudes to crime between then and now, such as a 13-year old child who was sentenced to death for breaking into a house and stealing a number of goods.

Digitisation of the text was performed via the Higher Education Digitisation Service at the University of Hertfordshire before being transferred to the University of Sheffield where a specially adapted search engine was developed to facilitate searching and to compile statistics.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed