Crime Transcripts Great For Research

[Tami]

A crime time machine
Transcripts of 210,000 trials held at Britain's famous Old Bailey court from 1674 to 1913 are now available online

Reuters with a report from Philip Jackman

LONDON — The transcript from Oscar Wilde's trial for gross indecency at London's Old Bailey court went online for the first time yesterday alongside a raft of murder, robbery and abduction cases.

Up for free examination are 110,000 pages of transcripts - including Wilde's trial and the notorious story of Dr. Crippen and the murder of his wife.

Lurid tales of murder and rape, stories of pickpocketing and robbery - every type of crime was paraded before the London court.

The Oldbaileyonline.org site was billed as the largest single source of searchable historical information about British lives that has been published. The transcripts cover every one of the 210,000 trials held at the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1913. The court is still in operation.

As well as chronicling a string of sensational trials, the records also list the biographical details of about 3,000 men and women executed at the notorious Tyburn gallows in London.

"Until now, this treasure trove of social, legal and family history has only been available to a few dedicated historians who were prepared to spend months peering at microfilms," said Tim Hitchcock, a co-director of the project.

The website is being published by the Humanities Research Institute and is a joint project by the British universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire along with the Open University.

"Beside the desperate drama of crimes punished, the proceedings give us a new and remarkable access to the everyday," Prof. Hitchcock said.

"If you want to know how to order a plate of oysters in an East End pub, or what not to wear to church in Islington - the information is here."

The transcripts also illuminate very different attitudes toward crimes then and now. One trial details a child of 13 who was sentenced to death for breaking into a house and stealing goods.

The online records were obtained by scanning images of the original printed pages using a combination of manual rekeying with optical-character-recognition technology.

Robert Shoemaker, another co-director of the project, said people from all over the world can now get a valuable insight into a whole range of crimes. "These crimes were committed by Irish terrorists, train robbers and suffragettes as well as by ordinary people."

The site could also help people to search for criminal ancestors.

What Crippen said

Excerpt from the testimony of Hawley Harvey Crippen , who murdered his wife in England in 1910 and fled to Canada on the SS Montrose. He was the first criminal to be captured with the aid of wireless communication.

DR. CRIPPEN (testifying on Oct. 21, 1910): "On the early morning of February 1 I was left alone in my house with my wife, then alive and well; I know of no person in the world who has seen her alive since, no person who has ever had a letter from her since, no person who can prove any fact to show that she ever left that house alive.

"The last I saw of her would be between 2 and 3 in the morning, when we retired. I breakfasted at home that morning; I prepared breakfast myself; I nearly always did; my wife seldom came down to breakfast; we were usually very late retiring, and I was off probably at 8.30 in the morning. Occasionally I would take her up a cup of coffee in the morning, not often.

"In the evening of February 1 I returned home at my usual hour, about half past seven; it might have been 7.25 or 7.35. ... As she had always been talking to me about Bruce Miller [an admirer], I thought she had gone to him in America; that was the only guess I could make."

Dr. Crippen was found guilty of murder on Oct. 22. He was hanged in Pentonville Prison, London, on Nov. 23, 1910.

Source: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org

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