Nigel, you should read up on life in Prison in the 1800's the Prisoners were treated in the most degrading fashion, they spent hours and hours on treadmills and undertaking hard labour, it was quite horrendous. There are no Prison Records for Stafford that have been kept, the William Salt Library in Stafford has a list of some names, but only for a few years. You are more likely to find out about the nature of the offense from old Newspapers which are also kept at either the William Salt Library or Stafford Archives. HTH from mrswoman.