From: Newton Key <cfnek@eiu.edu>
List Editor: Richard Gorrie <rgorrie@UOGUELPH.CA>
Editor's Subject: REV: Smail on _The Proceedings of the Old Bailey_
Author's Subject: REV: Smail on _The Proceedings of the Old Bailey_
Date Written: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 13:23:34 -0500
Date Posted: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 16:03:40 -0400


H-NET MEDIA REVIEW
Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (June, 2003)

_The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London, 1674-1834_. A fully searchable
on-line edition of the _Proceedings of the Old Bailey_. Project
Directors, Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker.
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org

Reviewed for H-Albion by John Smail <jsmail@email.uncc.edu>, Department of History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

The incredible riches of the _Proceedings of the Old Bailey_ have long been familiar to historians of British society in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Published continuously since the 1670s, they contain a record of all the trials at London's central criminal court, many in some detail, and as such provide a unique insight into the lives of ordinary Londoners during these centuries. Obviously of tremendous interest to historians of crime, the _Proceedings_ also illuminate many other issues including work, neighborhood interactions, local politics, family, and sexuality and gender.

Heretofore, however, using the _Proceedings_ has required access to a library with the microfilm copies and an almost limitless supply of patience. The project directed by Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker has changed that by putting an edition of the _Proceedings_ on line complete with a very sophisticated search engine. To date, the 22,000 trials for 1714 to 1749 are available. Additional records will be added in batches, beginning with the trials from 1760-99 due out this summer, so that eventually the site will include the published _Proceedings_ from 1674 to 1834, some 100,000 trials in all.

The result is truly outstanding, and it is to be hoped that the various digitizing projects underway in archives across the United Kingdom live up to the standard set here. What the team led by Hitchcock and Shoemaker has achieved is an on-line edition that maintains the integrity of the original source while adding search tools to make the material it contains much, much more accessible to researchers. Moreover that achievement is presented in a web format which is easy to read, easy to navigate, and quite accessible. (Technical note: the essential features of the site present no problems for a telephone modem; the only function that really requires a high-speed connection is viewing the facsimile images of the original.)

Access to the trial records is through the "Search the Proceedings" page, and the various options there allow one unprecedented access to the contents of the _Proceedings_ down several different avenues. The most basic is the ability to browse transcripts of the trials in chronological order; effectively the same as studying the microfilm except that it's a lot easier to read. (Sticklers have the option of checking the transcription against an image of the original page.) The simplest of the search features is a keyword search that trawls through the full text of the _Proceedings_ (or selected data fields); users can combine keyword searches with Boolean operators (and/or) to find combinations of two or more words, and the option of finding words near to each other permits searches for phrases. Somewhat more sophisticated are the search features that allow one to search cases by name, place, or the details of the crime. These searches rely upon data fields that have been added by the programmers including the name, gender, occupation, and residence of all plaintiffs and defendants, the date and place of the crime, and the type of crime and the trial's outcome. In addition, a computer program was used to tag most of the personal names found in the text--including those mentioned in passing in testimony. Finally, the advanced search option allows users to combine name, place, and crime searches for further refinement. In addition, there is a statistical function; the ability to search for references to the same trial in several sets of associated records (such as the _Newgate Calendar_); and, promised for a future release, a mapping function. The search tools are fairly intuitive, though it is worth spending the time to read the instructions and practicing to be sure to get results that best suit your purpose. Particularly helpful, given the vagaries of eighteenth-century orthography, are the various wildcard characters one can use.

Searching by computer, of course, has its pitfalls. Relatively simple searches, for types of crimes, specific places, or individuals, are probably fairly reliable, but the more complex the idea the less easy it is to be sure that the particular search strategy you have chosen is identifying all of the relevant records. For example, a search for the keyword "riot" produced fifty-two records, but failed to include the trial of John Love and others accused of damage to property in 1716 during the course of what clearly was a mug-house riot. However, since the only other option is to read through the records of each and every trial, these are pitfalls that researchers may well be willing to accept.

The character of the entries turned up by these various search strategies vary. In the _Proceedings_ from the 1710s and 1720s, more than half of the entries are a very short paragraph typically giving just the name, crime, and verdict. These are interspersed with longer entries covering the more interesting (read salacious) trials which sometimes a run a page or more and include testimony and sometimes cross examination. Records from the 1740s onwards tend to be fuller, although the coverage continues to vary according to the interest and complexity of the case. Serious students should consult the publishing history included in the introduction that explains how the commercial market for the _Proceedings_ shaped its contents in different periods.

Although the ability to view and search the _Proceedings_ is clearly at the heart of what this project offers, there are some nice extras included on the site. Particularly useful for visitors unfamiliar with the basic social and economic history of eighteenth-century London are a series of essays on the court and criminal proceedings, London and its environs, gender and gender roles, and important racial and ethnic communities in London--gypsies, Jews, blacks, Irish, and homosexuals. Each of these essays is accompanied by a thorough and up-to-date bibliography. There is also a section for schools, though it is aimed primarily at teachers in the United Kingdom.

Even as it stands now, at only a quarter of its eventual size, this on-line edition of the _Proceedings of the Old Bailey_ is a significant addition to the growing body of source material accessible over the internet. Hitchcock and Shoemaker should be congratulated both for what they have done here and for the model they have established. Serious researchers now have access to a high-quality transcript of the Old Bailey cases and the ability to check that transcript against the original on the spot; moreover, the search tools hold the potential of opening up that material to new kinds of questions because the provide the tools needed to manage information on this scale. This site is also a potentially valuable teaching tool, since it allows students access to a substantial body of primary source material. I for one can imagine constructing a methods course around the rich resources found here, for there are plenty of interesting research questions and opportunities for exploration in what is, virtually, the real thing.

Copyright (c) 2003 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu. 

From: "Dr. Carol Barton" <cbartonphd@earthlink.net> List Editor: Richard Gorrie <rgorrie@uoguelph.ca> Editor's Subject: Proceedings of the Old Bailey Author's Subject: Proceedings of the Old Bailey Date Written: Sat, 1 Mar 2003 11:37:22 -0500 Date Posted: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 07:25:27 -0500

I know many of you will find this extremely valuable; the original message was posted by Dr. Norton Rictor to the C18-L Eighteenth Century discussion group. --- Best, C. Barton ---------------------------------------------------------

I am happy to post the following announcement:

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org

Online from 5 March 2003.

Between 1670 and 1834 the proceedings of the central criminal court in London, the Old Bailey, were published eight times a year. These records detail 100,000 trials, and include over 60,000 pages of text. They represent the largest single source of information about non-elite lives ever published, and provide a wealth of detail about everyday life, as well as hugely valuable evidence for the history of crime.

A transcription of this material, along with scanned images of the original pages, is now available free of charge to users throughout the world. You can search for entries in specific fields, such as crime, or defendant's occupation, or search the whole text for any word or text string. It is possible to tabulate specific fields, such as sex of defendant by type of crime, and generate results as either tables or graphs. Information on related documents and sources found in the libraries and archives of London can also be linked to each trial, creating a trail of information leading from the internet to original source material.

The website currently covers December 1714 to December 1759. Trials from 1760 to 1799 will be available in the late Spring of 2003; from 1674 to October 1714 in the Autumn of 2003; and 1800 to 1834 in the Spring of 2004, when an international conference will take place to mark the completion of the project.

The digitisation of this material has been made possible by grants from the New Opportunities Fund and the Arts and Humanities Research Board. Scanning and double rekeying of the original text has been managed by the Higher Education Digitisation Service at the University of Hertfordshire, and file mark up and search engine design at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield. In the process both structured meta-data detailing specific aspects of each trial and archival references have been incorporated into the trial accounts. A substantial website authored by the directors of this project, Professor Tim Hitchcock and Dr Robert Shoemaker, giving detailed historical background to the Proceedings and to the history of crime and of London between 1674 and 1834 has also been created.

=============

On a personal note, let me say that Professor Hitchcock and Dr Shoemaker are very modest. The Proceedings of the Old Bailey is a really outstanding achievement, not only because social historians can now do full-text searches of this record (currently more than 22,000 trials), but because it is wonderfully user-friendly, with comprehensive background material on the black community, the Jewish community, travellers and gypsies, homosexuals, and gender issues, with excellent search strategies for getting the most productive results from the material. I've been dipping into the test site during the past couple of months with a very great deal of pleasure, because although these trials are of course stories of crime and punishment, they also offer enormous insight into the day-to-day lives of non-elite people.

--

Rictor Norton, London

norton@rictor.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.infopt.demon.co.uk