Scottish Prison Registers - How to use them and where to find them

[Forfarian]

Suppose someone were interested in sponsoring some indexing, how would that person find out how much it would cost them?

[dowdstree]

I have now looked at the prison record.

He was charged with a "road offence" between Bonnyrigg and Peebles in 1848. His occupation was a carter. He was fined and released after 2 hours having paid up.

Was he speeding down the road or drunk in charge of his horse and cart 

He did tell a lie on the record saying he was single when in  fact he had a wife and 7 kids at home.

A somewhat trivial offence really but criminal nontheless.

Rosinish - Poor laddie being sentenced to 20 days in prison for pinching a turnip - he was probably starving.


Pharma T - That was a shocking sentence for your 3 x great grandmother to receive for what we would consider a minor offence. The fact that her husband received a much shorter term of imprisonment is beyond belief. It just puts into perspective how bad things were in those days.

Dorrie

[pharmaT]

Pharma T - That was a shocking sentence for your 3 x great grandmother to receive for what we would consider a minor offence. The fact that her husband received a much shorter term of imprisonment is beyond belief. It just puts into perspective how bad things were in those days.

Dorrie

The bit that annoys me the most is that they committed the exact same offence at exactly the same time and appeared in the same court yet she got the harsher sentence because she was a woman.

[dowdstree]

I totally agree with you PharmaT and to blame HER for getting pregnant leaves me speechless.

What became of her and her family?

Dorrie

[pharmaT]

I totally agree with you PharmaT and to blame HER for getting pregnant leaves me speechless.

What became of her and her family?

Dorrie

The 16 year old was forced to take on responsibility for looking after the younger ones and supporting them but they lost their croft and had to move into the nearest town.  The baby who was born in prison died at 10mon old.  by the time she was released she was a gran but her daughter and granddaughter died soon after she was released.  She went to live with her son who moved to Edinburgh for work.  In Edinburgh 2 more of her children died including my grt grt grandfather (he'd been 5 when she went to prison) and her daughter in law moved back up north with those 2 children so she could live with her parents.  She ended up dying at 65 herself.  The last record I can find of her husband was him being released from prison after 4 years (sentenced to 6), he was told not to make contact with the children on his release papers (they were a corrupting influence apparently).  I still haven't established what happened to him in the end.

[Poppy62]

What a sad story. Life was very harsh then.

Rosie

[dowdstree]

That is very sad. The whole family suffered because of an unrealistic sentence.

Just horrible.

Dorrie.

[ScottishAncestry]

Hi  Forfarian,

I’ve been looking into your post. Records of the Dundee Prison are held at the National Records of Scotland, however few survive. The only registers of criminals are 1900-1902 (Reference: HH21/72/1); 1902-1905 (HH21/47/9); 1905-1908 (HH21/47/11); 1911-1915 (HH21/47/15); 1922-1927 (HH21/47/17). We will update our website with these references but it’s a shame none survive from the 1850s period.

Sponsorship is £20 per hour, this is per hour of indexing, the time is not used to photograph the records and put the data online etc., it is a solid hour of indexing. Of course, you can also volunteer to index if you have any time to do so.

Feel free to get in touch to find out more: https://www.scottishindexes.com/contact.aspx

Emma

[Forfarian]

Thanks, Emma. I'll just have to be content with the court case papers then, I suppose!