RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: brianchatters on Tuesday 21 January 25 14:59 GMT (UK)
-
I am researching a murder in Warwick in 1842. The case came to trial at the Spring Assizes in 1845 and lasted about four and a half hours, including one and a half hours of jury deliberation and passing of sentence. My question is this? Is the length of the trial typical of the period is or is it too short? The defendant (who was found guilty and executed) complained that his defence rushed his case. There was no dispute about whether he had killed someone (many witnesses and an admission by the defendant) but his defence counsel had made a plea of insanity but only called one witness.
-
Ones I've read in the past have been over & done the same day, often taking only an hour or two, so on the surface it seems pretty standard.
Have you tried looking at Old Bailey Online for comparable types of case? There are various filters to help, such as case type and year.
-
They were often rushed and with such poor forensic evidence available there must have been many wrong verdicts.
Class differences often made differences in attitudes to the accused.
Women who committed adultery were often judged on that rather than the actual alleged offence and by men who were adulterous themselves !
As late as the early fifties a wrong verdict of Murder was passed on Timothy Evans for the murder of his wife , some years later John Reginald Halliday Christie was found guilty, too late for Evans who had been hanged.
The preface to Dickens達arnaby Rudge gives an account of an actual execution .
The case of Mary Jones.,1777 .
She was a young ( 19) mother with a very young baby and a toddler.
Her husband had been press ganged .
She ran up a few debts so what few goods she had were taken as payment and she was turned out of her home. She had to beg for food on the streets .
She was arrested for stealing and sentenced to death ,notwithstanding she had her baby with her on the public scaffold ,breast feeding it.
Hanged in public as an example 覧覧-
She was of good reputation until that incident, and given her husband had been forcibly drafted into the army she had been left destitute.
To satisfy the shopkeepers of Ludgate she was hanged as an example 覧- presumably to the many other young mothers whose husbands had also been press ganged against their will, into the army thus leaving many more women in the same awful predicament.
She was hanged in public at Tyburn.
That used to really upset me,well still does.
Press Ganging was a dreadful thing ,leaving families destitute,no Army pay sent home to their families .
Rant over覧-
Viktoria.
-
Thanks for the replies. I have looked at the old bailey site but there are no overall statistics regarding the length of trials. As you say, times vary quite a bit and I know that most trials are very short. Given the evidence that was heard at the case I'm investigating, the time seems reasonable.
I don't think the issue was a miscarriage of justice. The evidence of the killings was not in doubt. It was more an issue as to whether it was manslaughter or murder, or whether the defendant was insane.
I think that the defendant's gripe was that his defence counsel did not question the prosecution witnesses
-
'To satisfy the shopkeepers of Ludgate she was hanged as an example ' :o
That's a terrible tale. I'll never shop in Ludgate again. Not that I could, even if I wanted to.
-
I know it was not murder but for petty theft given she had no breadwinner , really shocking .
Viktoria,
-
If any court papers survive for the case they should be at TNA, in the ASSI series.
-
AntonyMMM
Thanks for the advice. I've looked at the catalogue but I do not think there is anything there that adds to the information that I've got from the newspapers which covered the trial in great detail. I know that the Shakespeare Archives Library do have the assizes records but (sod's law) 1845 is missing!
Regards