Criminal Registers Published by Ancestry

Court Trial Records of 18thC and 19thC England and Wales Go Online

Aug 19, 2009

The first UK collection to be indexed by the Ancestry World Archives Project, the Criminal Registers, are invaluable to researchers of family, social and legal history.

Launched online on 3 August 2009, the Criminal Registers of England and Wales, 1791-1892, consist of some 279 volumes scanned and indexed at the National Archives by Ancestry technicians and World Archive Project contributors. The History website Ancestry is proud to present this collection which contains a wealth of information on late 18thC and 19thC criminal trials in England and Wales: charges, sentences, dates of execution and sometimes personal details on individual prisoners.

The database is searchable by name, birth, residence and keyword (for example type of sentence, profession, etc.)

What’s in the Ancestry Criminal Registers?

The Criminal Registers made available at Ancestry website contain some 1.4 million criminal trial records with 900,000 sentences of imprisonment, 97,000 transportations and 10,300 executions. Researchers of family history can find out the fate of those of their ancestors who fell in the wrong side of the law; social historians can gain an insight into the legal system and social stratification of Georgian and Victorian times.

The England & Wales Criminal Registers, 1791-1892 collection which is part of the Court, Governmental and Criminal Records section of Ancestry include:

Sometimes descriptions of the accused were included: a certain John of “fair complexion, much pockmarked, brown hair, grey eyes” was sentenced to death in 1801 for the rape of a ten-year-old girl”; a Martha Adams, 22, “shallow complexion, black hair, hazel eyes” was acquitted of stealing in April 1798.

Information from criminal trial records may lead to other records, such as Prison Registers and Transportation Records and the researcher is advised to consult the National Archives online research guide "Tracing 19th and 20th Century Criminals".

Famous and Common Criminals of England and Sentences

The records of the English and Welsh Criminal Registers contain information about famous criminals of the late 18th and 19th centuries: John Bellingham, the assassin of British Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, was tried and sentenced at the Old Bailey on 15 May 1812 and executed three days later. He remains the only person to have assassinated a British Prime Minister.

The would-be assassin of Queen Victoria, Roderick McLean, was tried in Berkshire, England on 18 April 1882 for high treason, “acquitted on the ground of insanity” and “kept in strict custody in gaol until HM’s pleasure shall be known”. Others perished for years in prison or in the Tasmanian penal colony for stealing onions or table linen; many were sentenced to death for cutting trees, poaching, stealing from shipwrecks or destroying turnpike roads and picking pockets.

Offenses and Punishment in the Criminal Registers

These were times when justice was rough and swift; men, women and children were charged and sentenced for offenses ranging from pickpocketing and stealing rabbits to attempting to assassinate Queen Victoria; more than 200 offenses carried the death penalty, including “being out at night with a blackened face” and executions were a public spectacle. Many convicts were transported to Van Diemer’s Land (today Tasmania, Australia) condemned to a life of hard labour.

Offenses that appear in the online Criminal Registers include larceny (or theft), embezzlement, fraud and forgery. Larceny offenses consisted 80% of all committals to trial. Until the early 19th century most larceny crimes were capital offenses punishable by death, transportation, or whipping. From 1808, a series of Acts reduced the capital larceny offenses.

David Philips, Crime and Authority in Victorian England: The Black Country 1835-1860, Rowman & Littlefield Pub. Inc., 1978.

The author wishes to thank Ancestry for providing her with a press pass to review the Collection.

The copyright of the article Criminal Registers Published by Ancestry in Historical Archives is owned by Lito Apostolakou. Permission to republish Criminal Registers Published by Ancestry in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.