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94 pages

English

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Cops, Villains and Trials is a collection of case studies and background essays intended to provide guidance and advice for family and social historians. It aims to deal with sources and narratives, with material on the context of crime and law through the ages. The book is meant to be a guide for any historian doing family research or who might want less well-known tales and case studies of the law and legal professionals in British history. The material also includes essays on Irish history.

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Publié par	Straightforward Publishing
Date de parution	15 octobre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781913776336
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0300€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cops, Villains and Trials
Explorations in Crime and Law for Family and Social Historians

Stephen Wade
Emerald Guides www.straightforwardco.co.uk
Stephen Wade 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.
Stephen Wade has asserted the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
British cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record is available for this book from the British library.
978-1-913776-33-6
Printed by 4edge Ltd www.4edge.co.uk Cover design by BW Studio Derby
Whilst every effort has been taken to ensure that the information in this book is accurate at the time of going to press, the author and publisher recognise that the information can become out of date. The book is therefore sold on the understanding that no responsibility for errors and omissions is assumed and no responsibility is held for the information held within.
Cops, Villains and Trials Explorations in Crime and Law for Family and Social Historians
Contents
Introduction
1. Chronicles of Crime
2. Cops
3. Villains
4. Trials
5. Other Criminal Sources
6. Irish Themes
General Bibliography
**
Introduction
For some years now I have been working in the huge and complex area of the history of crime. This is one of the rooms in the vast mansion of historical studies that has some space for amateur enthusiasts: that is to say, writers who have no degree in law nor any experience as a police officer or other legal person. My interests in the purely social side of this subject gradually expanded into the fascinating study of family history, and these collected essays are almost all taken from my contributions to the main family history magazines. Some are from The Family and Local History Handbook. But I have added new material.
The focus is on offering case studies in essay form, rather than any systematic presentation of material. My intention here is to add some fascinating stories to the basic framework we all, as historical researchers, have to work with.
As the whole area of interest covered by crime and law within social history generally comprises not only the central themes of crime-investigation -trial, but an almost infinite number of ancillary topics, I always felt the need to explore some of the ramifications of legal history in this respect, and hence I have included here such topics as police court missionaries and the court for crown cases reserved: subjects of great usefulness to family historians but little known.
Overall, I hope this collection provides openings to researchers and writers looking into those skeletons in the cupboard we all have somewhere, the reason being that crimes in times past were so easy to commit that many who were in the dock c. 1750 would now be doing the same action but committing no transgression.
There is a need to explain the problems and pitfalls awaiting the family historian at this point, with particular reference to the history of crime and law. Looking into the narrative of a specific crime offers something very special to the historian; this is perhaps best explained as a light shining into a dark corner. The footnotes of history are often the areas with the most insight into the motivations of the past. The challenge we have is immense, as it is a search for the truth - or as near to the truth as we might expect to arrive at. My view is that there is always an unanswered question, and that every enquiry leads to a dozen others. A small triumph may be an immense discovery.
When my niece delved into our own family history, as a crime historian, I of course secretly desired a terrible villain to be revealed from our past. There was no such luck. The only offender found was an uncle who committed suicide, and that was only shortly before the 1961 legislation which ended suicide per se as a criminal offence (though pacts were still unlawful).
In family history, the problems and pitfalls are many, but the most common are:
Lost or destroyed records
Events with no documentation
Misread information
Journalistic errors in press reports
Specifically in crime investigation from the long annals of the law, we meet with frustrations all the time. I was once asked to try to trace a villain who had emigrated from Britain to South Africa, just after the Anglo-Boer War, and of course he had changed his name. There was very slim chance of tracking him down. But what perhaps exemplifies the nature of these frustrations and wrong turns is an example from when I first began to research history. I was looking into the famous Lincoln case of Tom Otter, and his horrendous murder of his new wife. In a contemporary newspaper report, a writer had written the Latin phrase nisi primis and of course I took out the reference works and searched for this. I wasted some time before realising that what the words should have been were nisi prius - meaning unless before and that refers to a particular timing of a trial.
That was a caveat regarding the internet and newspaper sources. More problematic is oral history. I have always found that families have myths, distortions and delusions. Every little story-source from the past is open to interference over the process of time and change. I grew up with tales of a roving Scotsman called Argyle who arrived in South Leeds circa 1890 and married into our matrilineal line; for years I thought this was the case. Then the discovery was made that the Argyles in our story came north from Buskington in Warwickshire. They were farm labourers.
But at the heart of this aspect of family and social history is the intensely human element. In my notebooks, which have been filled during my mainstream research, with off-shoots of interest, I have this, quoted from the Annual register for 1803:
The sessions ended at the Old Bailey when 7 malefactors received sentence of death.
Viz. Thomas Beck and Peter Robinson for the highway; Dorothy Soffet for stealing a guinea from
A person in drink; Richard Wentland for a street robbery; Anne Wentland his wife for forcibly
... stealing goods out of a house at Hendon. Hurst was held up at the bar to receive
Sentence and died on the back of one who was carrying him to the cells. The 2 women
Pleaded their bellies; Wentland only was found pregnant; 25 ordered for transportation, 3 burnt
In the hand, and 4 to be whipped.
Now, this reflects both the attraction and the challenge of entering that past country where they did things so very differently. The reader has to know the reasons for pleading the belly, and why people were burnt in the hand or transported. Yet under all the contextual material, there is that strong, heart-rending human presence.
**
1
Chronicles of Crime

I begin with a broad survey of crime through our history.
Summary
The years 1100 - 1500 saw massive changes in English law. The process of dealing with criminals moved from a reliance on local courts run by the manorial lords to the assize circuits - courts controlled by travelling justices working on behalf of the King s Peace in his realm. Before the Norman Conquest in 1066 when William of Normandy ( The Conqueror ) began the long line of Plantagenet sovereigns, the Saxon communities had worked by hundred courts and Frankpledge . This meant that a small local group, led by a responsible elder or elders, would take responsibility for hearing accusations and applying punishment. By 1500 there had been a gradual evolution of statute law, with clear notions of trial and punishment. The jury had been created and justices of the peace ran the local and regional hearings.
THE ANGLO-SAXONS
All this was an amazing achievement. For the Germanic Anglo-Saxons, an assortment of laws had been listed and defined by the kings of various areas or shires. These relied on trial by ordeal or combat. Punishment was seen as a sliding scale depending on the nature of the transgression. King Ethelbert of Kent had decreed, for instance, that a murderer would have to pay a hundred shillings, but if the victim only had a facial bone smashed, then the fine would be twenty shillings.
The church was a powerful influence on criminal law and penalties were given for such offences as fornication, eating meat in a fast or doing a deal with the Devil. There was a strong tradition of both the church and the state taking fines rather than punishment, as the kings were always in need of more cash in their coffers. After Augustine landed at Thanet in 597 the church developed its own grand ideas of compensation: if goods were stolen from a holy place, then the Bishop was entitled to twelve times the value.
Particular injuries to people also involved compensation from the assailant with a similar rationale. An eye was valued at fifty shillings, a toe at six pence, and if a thumb was damaged so it had to be cut off then twenty shillings had to be paid.
KEY TERMS
Assizes The courts formalised in the reign of Edward I, later becoming the twice-yearly courts heard by the king s justices in circuits of the land.
Felony An offence that resulted in the offender sacrificing all goods and lands. In this period, it meant a death sentence, and the crown would take the possessions. This forfeiture was abolished in 1870.
Frankpledge A system of preserving the peace in the early Norman period. Men were formed in groups of ten, all charged with the task of keeping order and number in those ranks.
Indictment An official statement of a charge relating to a criminal offence. This Would be a document, presented to the grand jury.
THE NORMAN PERIOD
There was nothing universal here: different rulers had their own ideas of punishments.
The worst destiny for a villain in many ways was outlawry. An outlaw was a man who had been placed outside the protection of the law. A man over fourteen