Oxford LibGuides: Legal history: England & common law tradition: Crime

Archives & statistics

Reading the records even when in English requires understanding of the contemporary legal terminology: for example, the phrase "Death recorded" (from 1823) was not a synonym for execution having been carried out.

Criminal trials in the assize courts 1559-1971
TNA's own guide to the records it holds
Trials in the Old Bailey and the Central Criminal Court 1674-
TNA's own guide to records. The Old Bailey officially became the Central Criminal Court in 1834 - but the "popular" old name lingered/lingers still...
Criminals and convicts
TNA's own guide about how to how best to use the sources available
Crime and the law in England
Free resource. Online guide by The National Archives to the unpublished sources noted in the National Register of Archives (NRA), the Manorial Documents Register (MDR), the principal relevant repositories with strong collections relating to criminal and legal history, and general works of reference.

Atheism & Blasphemy

In England & Wales, the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 s 79

The history of the last trial by jury for atheism in England : a fragment of autobiography, submitted for the perusal of Her Majesty's Attorney General and the British clergy.
Free resource. Google digitised the Law Bod's copy of this 1851 publication
HL Select Committee on Religious Offences in England and Wales
Official access Free online access to the papers relating to this Committee's work during 2002/3
Law Commission: Offences against Religion and Public Worship
Law Commission of E&W Report 145 (1985) This recommended the repeal of blasphemy and blasphemous libel

Witches

Witchcraft & the law in early modern Europe & USA
by Elizabeth Wells Last Updated Jul 30, 2021 1307 views this year

History of criminal law & crime in England

An excellent starting point are chapters 29 & 30 of Baker's book below:

Introduction to English Legal History by John Baker
Call Number: Legal Hist B167a5
ISBN: 9780198812616
Publication Date: 5th edn 2019
Holders of an Oxford SSO can read this online via title link.

To find other books on SOLO try the subject searches

Corrections -- England -- History --
Criminal law -- England -- History --
Criminology -- England -- History --
Criminal justice, Administration of -- England -- History --

You can refine all of these by adding a period eg to 1500, or 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, or 20th century.

Expect to find that the Bodleian History Faculty Library has books in this area of research too!

Hierarchy of criminal courts from 1200s to 1971

petty sessions / magistrates' courts heard the most minor if offences
quarter sessions (because held 4 times a year) were local county courts
judges from the higher central courts of Westminster travelled out on circuits twice a year to hear the most serious criminal cases at the assizes held in the main county towns

Justice of the Peace Reports 1837 -
Requires Oxford SSO. LexisLibrary has some as full text.
Cox 's Reports of Cases in Criminal Law Argued and Determined in the Courts of England 1846-1948

Justis
State Trials has "Over seven centuries of higher criminal jurisprudence covering English trials relating to offences against the State or trials illustrative of the law relating to State Officers, e.g. Ministers or Governors of Colonies. A wide variety of cases is covered, predominantly high treason but also bigamy, sedition, seditious libel, murder involving high-ranking officials or peers, riot, piracy, witchcraft, bribery and corruption. It comprises two of the most authoritative series of State Trials, Howell’s/Cobbett’s State Trials (1163–1822) and the New Series (Macdonell’s) (1822–1858), as well as additional material sourced from National Collections and the English (Nominate) Reports."

Alternative names: Justis ; JustisOne ; Justis One; vLex Justis

Due to licensing restrictions this database is not available to "Walk-in" users of the library.
Justis One offers access to a range of law reports, transcripts and other materials from the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Caribbean, and the EU.
In addition it includes the full text of the following: Aspinall's Maritime Law Cases, English Reports, State Trials, CCH Tax Cases, Immigration Appeal Reports, Inquest Law Reports, Mental Health Reports, Session Cases Archive, Irish Reports & Digest, Jersey Law Reports, Bermuda Law Reports, Cayman Islands Law Reports, The Singapore Law Reports, and the International Law Reports.
Justis One offers the ability to search across UK, Irish, Australian and Canadian judgements.
Also included in the service are Justis Parliament and Justis Human Rights.
Making of Modern Law, The: Legal Treatises 1800-1926

Alternative names: MOML ; The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926

The Making of Modern Law comprises over 21,000 works from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on British Commonwealth and American law. It covers nearly every aspect of law, encompassing a range of analytical, theoretical, and practical literature, some very rare. The monographs and materials in Legal Treatises include casebooks, local practice manuals, books on legal form, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, and speeches. The collection covers domestic and international law, legal history, business and economics, politics and government, national defence, criminology, religion, education, labour and social welfare, and military justice.

Online resources available to all

Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London 1674-1913
The Proceedings contain accounts of trials which took place at the Old Bailey. The crimes tried were mostly felonies (predominantly theft), but also include some of the most serious misdemeanours. The first published collection of trials at the Old Bailey dates from 1674, and from 1678 accounts of the trials at each session (meeting of the Court) at the Old Bailey were regularly published. Inexpensive, and targeted initially at a popular rather than a legal audience, the Proceedings were produced shortly after the conclusion of each sessions and were a commercial success. With few exceptions, this periodical was regularly published each time the sessions met (eight times a year) for 160 years. In 1834 it changed its name, but publication continued until 1913.

British Executions
"This site details most criminal executions carried out in Britain between 1100 and 1964.
Most executions are referenced but not all have a full description."
British Transportation Registers 1787-1867
Compiled by researchers at the State Library of Queensland as part of the Australian Joint Copying Project (AJCP). The registers, constituting an index to the British Home Office Convict Criminal Transportation Registers, cover the entire period of convict transportation to Australia, from 1787 to 1867.
Crime and Punishment ; Transportation
Part of the National Archives Learning Curve
Transportation was used as a form of punishment from 1717 - with convicts first transported to America. After US independence in 1776, Australia became the destination. From 1787 to 1857, 162,000 British convicts were transported to Australia.
The Digital Panopticon: Tracing London Convicts in Britain & Australia, 1780-1925
Free resource. This website allows you to search millions of records from around fifty datasets, relating to the lives of 90,000 convicts from the Old Bailey. AHRC funded project
London Lives 1690 to 1800: crime, poverty, and social policy in the metropolis
"London Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners."
Dying speeches and bloody murders
Free resource. Harvard UniversityLibrary has made available over 500 broadsides printed in England between 1707 to 1891
ORB: Medieval English urban history: crime and justice
Free resource.
International Centre for the History of Crime, Policing and Justice
Free resource. Based at the Open University. Useful for links and bibliographies.
History of Crime and Punishment in Britain 1790-1870
Free resource. Selection of broadsides and chapbooks form Glasgow University Library Special Collections.
Making Sense of English Law Enforcement in the 18th Century
Free resource. By Prof David H Friedman. The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable (Spring/Summer 1995).
SOLON: promoting interdisciplinary studies in law, crime, and history
Law, Crime & History (SOLON online journal)
Free resource. "Law, Crime and History is the online journal of SOLON (previously SOLON's online journal was entitled Crimes and Misdemeanours, appearing between 2007 and 2010). Law, Crime and History recognises that global public consciousness in the law and its impact on daily lives has reached unprecedented levels. It will appeal not just to academics but also to policy makers, practitioners, and an interested lay readership. This journal seeks to publish material of interest to both the specialist and the non specialist in law, crime and history. It aims to reflect, both in content and in the profile of individuals who write for it, our desire to promote a more global comprehension of the various issues and strategies intrinsic to the study of law, crime and criminal procedure."
Law Courts and Courtrooms 1: The Buildings of the Criminal Law
Free guide. Part of Historic England's
Introductions to Heritage Assets By Allan Brodie, Mary Brodie (authors) (2016) Criminal courts have been a key part of English life since the Middle Ages, and range from small historic, local magistrates courts to huge modern combined court centres.
This document tells the story of how buildings have been adapted initially and subsequently constructed to meet the needs of England’s complex criminal legal system. It also explains how the courtroom has evolved from a gathering of professionals around a table in the medieval hall to the specialised, purpose-built, modern courtroom.