The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
This is the opening paragraph for those lucky enough to get a connection today.
"A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court."
Piss Poor Planning and Preparation
When the database actually works, users can research cases of interest or family names of people appearing in trials at the Old Bailey Criminal Court, London, covering a 240 year period. BBC Radio 4 ran the press release yesterday and that started a flood of visitors to the web site at: oldbaileyonline.org
Unfortunately, the Old Bailey Online hosting servers soon became overloaded and the database just didn't work most of the time. Today, newspapers around the world are displaying the press release and snippets from selected cases and the web site completely crashed for many hours.
I wonder just how many people need to be connected to their server before things slow down and then crash? In all probability the problem will be a low "concurrent" connection limit and this should have been predicted and set at a reasonably high number BEFORE publishing the URL to the world's media and thus avoid disappointing many first time visitors.
At least a disclaimer has now been published on the home page:
"Due to high demand, the site is currently running slowly and some services may be temporarily unavailable. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused."
I'm certainly NOT impressed with the layout and continuity of font used (the person responsible for designing the stylesheet should be "transported" back for retraining) and the commercialisation by using Google Adsense on what appears to be a publicly funded web site project. However, when you can finally get the data to load; you'll find it is absolutely fascinating.
I started my research by "dipping" into some of the earlier cases and found plenty of examples of the death sentence being given for guilty verdicts in cases of theft when even the most minor items and sums of money were at issue. Moving on a hundred years I found less occurrences of "death for minor theft". Instead, the trend turned to transportation, often for many years. One young lady received 7 years transportation for "using" her employer's hankie. She offered no defence other than asking for mercy. So sad, she must have been scared witless.
Using other "convict" web sites and databases, it should be possible to track an individual from sentencing at the Old Bailey all the way through the transportation process.
Australian Convict Index, 1788-1868 includes more than 48,000 names of convicts sent to Australia between 1788 and 1868.
http://www.genealogylinks.net/australia/all-australia/convicts.htm
I just might try and find out what happened to the poor girl sentenced to 7 years transportation and hard labour for "using" a hankie that didn't belong to her.
Summary
The Old Bailey Online web site does provide a incredible amount of information about how society, laws and customs were acted out during the last few hundred years. People tracing their family tree may well be either shocked or pleasantly surprised to find the actual statements made by their distant relatives.
It's a real shame the web site launch was handled in such an inept way, when a little planning and investment could have made all the difference.
Dry Facts From WikipediaThe present building dates from 1902 (officially opened on 27 February 1907), was designed by E.W. Mountford and built on the site of the infamous Newgate Prison, which was demolished to allow the Courts to be built. Above the main entrance is inscribed "Defend the Children of the Poor & Punish the Wrongdoer". The original medieval court was located on the western wall of the City of London, but was destroyed in the 1666 Fire of London. It was rebuilt in 1674, with the court open to the weather to prevent the spread of disease. In 1734 it was refronted, enclosing the court and reducing the influence of spectators: this led to outbreaks of typhus, notably in 1750 when sixty people died, including the Lord Mayor and two judges. It was rebuilt again in 1774 and a second courtroom was added in 1824. In 1834 it was renamed as the Central Criminal Court and its jurisdiction extended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Bailey |
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