The Old Bailey Proceedings and the Representation of Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-Century London

Shoemaker, Robert B.

doi:10.1086/587722

Cited by 67 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…This does not necessarily mean that black prosecutors were, in fact, considerably more successful than prosecutors in general. Since trials that ended in acquittal were often only briefly reported, black prosecutors may have gone unidentified in a higher proportion of cases ending in not‐guilty verdicts than those ending in convictions, thus increasing, at least marginally, their success rates. However, the fact that they achieved slightly more favourable conviction rates not only in minor felony cases but also in more fulsomely reported types of case such as robbery implies that they were at least as successful as other prosecutors, and that (in complete contrast to the situation in Britain's plantation colonies) the Old Bailey took black testimony – and the protection of black people from theft – very seriously.…”

Section: Types Of Crime Black Accused All Accused and Jewish Accusementioning

confidence: 99%

Black people and the criminal justice system: prejudice and practice in later eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London

King

Wood

2014

Hist Res

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This article explores how attitudes to black people were translated into practice by examining how the latter fared as victims, witnesses and especially as the accused when they came to the Old Bailey in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It concludes that there was no significant discrimination against black people as prosecutors and witnesses. Moreover, between 1791 and 1805, when a source containing systematic evidence on the ethnicity of the accused is briefly available, black people probably formed a smaller proportion of the accused than they did of the London population as a whole; and those who were prosecuted were less likely than average to be convicted and more likely to have their charges reduced. Although punishment patterns for black convicts included rather greater emphasis on transportation, an investigation of criminal justice practice in London reveals little or no systematic prejudice towards black people, thus indicating important contrasts with the experience of black people in colonial contexts and with the ways in which other ethnic groups such as the Irish were dealt with at the Old Bailey.The historiography of the black experience in Britain has unsurprisingly emphasized the topic of discrimination, and analyses of ethnic minorities' encounters with the criminal justice system have similarly highlighted the cultural prejudices and 'institutional racism' that have plagued British society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 1 However, more recent historiography has stressed the historic malleability of racism. Since the early modern period, prejudice against non-whites on the basis of putatively innate characteristics has waxed and waned and, then, waxed again.Various assumptions of black inferiority are apparent in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and some historians have similarly placed slavery and racism at the heart of * This article comes out of an E.S.R.C.-funded project on 'Ethnicity, crime and justice in England 1700-1825' (number RES-000-22-2696) in which Peter King was P.I. and John Carter Wood was research fellow. 1 E.g., M. Kohn, Dope Girls: the Birth of the British Drug Underground (1992); I. Brown and R. Hullin, 'A study of sentencing in the Leeds magistrates' courts: the treatment of ethnic minority and white offenders', British Jour. Criminology, xxxii (1992), 41-53; J. Solomos, 'Constructions of black criminality: racialisation and criminalisation in perspective', in Racism and Criminology, ed. D. Cook and B. Hudson (1993), pp. 118-35; C. Waters, 'Dark strangers in our midst: discourses of race and nation in Britain', Jour. British Stud., xxxvi (1997), 207-38.

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Section: Types Of Crime Black Accused All Accused and Jewish Accusementioning

confidence: 99%

Black people and the criminal justice system: prejudice and practice in later eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London

King

Wood

2014

Hist Res

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“…It also affected the summary of the case that the judge produced before asking the jury to deliver the verdict. Shoemaker (2008) demonstrates that testimonies favourable to the defendant and verbal interaction between lawyers and judges regarding legal procedures were notably vulnerable to reduction or omission. The reason for such cuts or summaries was to serve the interests of city authorities since, on the one hand, they weakened the case for the defence and justified to the public the convictions and punishments, and, on the other, prevented criminals from learning means of evading justice.…”

Section: The Sample Corpusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Courtroom interaction between 1760 and 1860

Rama-Martínez

2013

JHP

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This paper explores to what extent and how defendants (re)initiated talk in the English courtroom during the period 1760-1860. Adopting both a qualitative and quantitative approach to the analysis of a sample of the Old Bailey Proceedings, I investigate defendants' moves in terms of their illocutionary force, their addressees and whether there is evidence of change in frequency and format over the period under examination. The achievement of full defence by counsels in 1836 is expected to bring defendants' behaviour closer to what it is like nowadays. In line with this hypothesis, the study shows a gradual decrease in defendants' turn transitions, reporting moves and informing acts over the nineteenth century. However, the turn-allocation technique used to gain the turn as well as the increase of (re)initiating moves and questioning acts produced by defendants over the course of time disconfirms the hypothesis of a more active participation of counsels.

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“…These records reveal much about Londoners' attitudes to the law in the second half of the eighteenth century. Clayton examines the 24‐year career of an eighteenth‐century London pickpocket and prostitute; Shoemaker discusses the reliability of the Proceedings of the Old Bailey in reporting crimes; and Oates charts the fate of over a thousand prisoners following the 1715 Jacobite surrender at Preston. Finally, in two articles Griffin highlights the practice of plant‐ and tree‐maiming as a form of rural protest in late‐eighteenth and early‐nineteenth southern England, while Woodward, also in two articles, surveys the prevalence of burglary and the seasonality of sheep‐stealing in eighteenth‐ and early nineteenth‐century Wales.…”

Section: (Iv) 1700–1850 Peter Kirby University Of Manchestermentioning

confidence: 99%