Appearance at the quarter sessions of eighteenth-century middlesex

London Journal

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 45-52

  Landau, Norma ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0040572940     PISSN: 03058034     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/ldn.1998.23.2.30     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. T.C. Curds, 'Quarter Sessions Appearances and their Background: A SeventeenthCentury Regional Study', inJ.S. Cockburn, (ed.), Crime and the Courts (1977) examines the plaints which produced recognizances binding alleged offenders to appear at Quarter Sessions.
2. Such charges might also be found by the grand jury at Assizes. However, Assizes heard far fewer such charges than did Quarter Sessions, and these charges constitute just a small proportion of the offences heard at Assizes.
3. N. Landau, The Justices of the Peace, 1679-1760 (Berkeley, California, 1984), 245; R.B. Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment: Petty crime and the law in London and rural Middlesex, c. 1660-1725 (Cambridge, 1991), 95; BJ. Davey, Rural Crime in The Eighteenth Century: North Lincolnshire 1740-80 (Hull, 1994), 13-15.
4. J.M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 (Princeton, 1986), 281-282.
5. J.M. Beattie, The Pattern of Crime in England, 1660-1800', Past and Present, 62 (1974); D. Hay, 'War, Dearth and Theft in the Eighteenth Century: The Record of the English Courts', Past and Present, 95 (1982); J.A. Sharpe, Crime in Seventeenth-Century England: A County Study (Cambridge, 1983).
6. J.S. Cockburn and T.A. Green, (eds), Twelve Good Men and True: The Criminal Trial Jury in England, 1200-1800, (Princeton, 1988).
7. P. King, 'Punishing Assault: The Transformation of Attitudes in the English Courts', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 27 (1996), 52.
8. King, 'Punishing Assault', 49; Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 156.
9. D. Hay, 'Property, Authority, and the Criminal Law', in D. Hay et al., (eds), Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (Harmondsworth, 1975).
10. J.M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts-, C. Herrup, The Common Peace: Participation and the criminal law in seventeenth-century England (Cambridge, 1987); P. King, '"Illiterate Plebians, Easily Misled": Jury Composition, Experience, and Behavior in Essex, 1735-1815', in Cockburn and Green, Criminal Trial Jury; P. King, 'Decision-makers and decisionmaking in the English criminal law, 1750-1800', Historical Journal, 27 (1984).
11. J. Langbein, 'Albion's Fatal Flaws', Past and Present, 98 (1983).
12. Besides private prosecutors, constables also made presentments to the grand jury at Quarter Sessions, usually of people offending against laws providing for the maintenance of parish amenities. In Middlesex, the number of such early eighteenth-century presentments was dwarfed by the number of bills of indictment brought by private prosecutors; from the mid-century on, constables brought presentments quite infrequently.
13. London Metropolitan Archive (LMA), MJ/SBB.
14. Some of these clerks' instruction books are LMA, MJ/SBJ, which contain rough notes of the information appearing on bills of indictment brought before Middlesex's grand Jury.
15. Occasionally, and especially in the early eighteenth century, these indices omit defendants to constables' bills of presentment. It is quite probable that, unlike private prosecutors, constables did not appear at the clerks' office before Quarter Sessions met, there to launch proceedings on their bills. Constables, it seems, waited until Quarter Sessions met to do their duty: their presentments are always the last on a list or file of indictments.
16. LMA, MJ/SBB742 (Apr 1716), 85-86. See also MJ/SP 1756, Apr, no. 11.
17. This identification system proceeded down the alphabet from 'a' to 'z' in minuscule, then went to capital letters, then to double minuscule, and so on.
18. Numeration based on recognizances for Middlesex and Westminster in the LMA for: Jan and Feb 1702, n = 345 (WJ/SR1979, MJ/SR1980, MJ/SR1982); Jan and Feb 1756, n = 553 (WJ/SR3047, MJ/SR3048, MR/SR3049); Apr 1797, n = 346 (WJ/SR3610, MJ/SR3611). Seven women who were the principals in recognizances in the 1702 and 1756 samples, and were their own sureties, were not bound for sums which they would forfeit, but were instead bound 'on pain of imprisonment".
19. Those bound in recognizances specifying conditions beyond appearance at Quarter Sessions were just as likely - or unlikely - to be subsequently indicted as those bound in recognizances which did not specify such conditions. This tells against the argument in Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, that recognizances were an 'alternative' to indictment (7-8, 95, 127 and passim). If the recognizance was an alternative to indictment - if, at the time the complainant demanded that his opponent be bound in a recognizance, the complainant had already decided whether he would proceed to indictment - then it is likely that there would be some relationship between the type of recognizance in which the accused was bound and the complainant's subsequent action on his plaint.
20. R. Gude, The Practice of the Crown Side of King's Bench and the Practice of the Sessions, 2 vols. (Littleton, Colorado reprint of London, 1828 edn.), vol. 1,233,235, 237. The Office of the Clerk of Assize . . . Together with The Office of the Clerk of the Peace, 2nd edn. corrected and amended (1682), 174.
21. Either 'respited sine die' or'respited until [the court orders otherwise]'.The latter form of respite was routinely used for the recognizances of those bound on the charge of fathering an illegitimate child who when born would be chargeable to the parish.
22. See, for example, LMA, MJ/SBB1379 (Feb 1786) entries for recogs 11 and 12.
23. Four such letters, dated 30 Mar 1786, are in LMA, MJ/SP 1786, Apr, section E.
24. LMA, MC/F, Expenditure Accounts, entries for 5 Nov 1783 and 7 Nov 1787.
25. The person so bound also paid 4d to the cryer of the court. Public Record Office (PRO) E215/1105; LMA, MC/F, box on fees 1751-1881, account of fees for Feb 1759; MJ/OC/ 19, 320 (Jun 1821). Those who appeared on recognizance to the session specified in the recognizance, and were indicted at that session, did not pay a fee for discharge of their recognizance. However, those who so appeared, and were defendants to bills presented to and rejected by the grand jury, did pay the standard fee. Therefore, the clerks carefully entered, in the Sessions Books' calendars of recognizances, note of the indictment of those in recognizance, but frequently neglected to make note that others so bound had been defendants to bills presented to and rejected by the grand jury. LMA, MC/F, expenditure accounts for 5 May 1783, note on John Jones; MJ/SBB1179 (Apr 1762), entry for recog 117; MJ/SBB1189 (May 1763), entry for recog 22.
26. See entries in the clerk of the peace's fee books, LMA, MC/F, vols 15,16, 32, 33; MJ/SP 1772, July, no. 56, p. 6.
27. LMA, MJ/SP 1772, July, no. 56, quotations from pp. 4, 6.
28. LMA, MJ/SR3611; MJ/SBB1496; clerk of the peace's fee book for fees taken in Quarter Sessions, MC/F, vol. 16; his fee book for fees taken out of Quarter Sessions, MC/F, vols 32, 33. If a respite was granted in Quarter Sessions, the clerks occasionally noted the award on the last page of the Session's Book or on the Book's 'action pages', for which see 42 below.
29. See letters to those in the draft estreat and the affidavits pinned to them in LMA, MJ/SP 1786, Apr.
30. LMA, WJ/SBB815 (Oct 1723), 44.
31. According to Quarter Sessions' order book, the fee for such a continuance was 2s 4d (LMA, MJ/OC/19, 320,Jun 1821). However late eighteenth-century fee books show the clerk receiving 10s 4d for these continuances (LMA, MC/F, vols 15, 16).
32. Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 111-112.
33. Based on the recognizances returned to Quarter Sessions specified in note 18, but omitting the Westminster recognizances for 1756, as the Sessions Books for Westminster's sessions in January and April 1756 have not survived.
34. The bond would be thereafter entered, for the appropriate session, among the recognizances identified by a unique combination of letters calendared near the front of the Sessions Books.
35. LMA, MC/F 'A Schedule or List of Charges taken by the Clerk of the Peace' (1836). The fee could mount as high as £1 17s 4d (MC/F, vol. 16, 14 Jan 1797, entry for Thomas Lamb).
36. LMA, MC/F, schedule headed 'Fees on trying Traverse' [n.d.]. Confession was usually accompanied by a document known as a general release, in which the plaintiff acknowledged that he had received satisfaction from the defendant.
37. See fees taken for 'bail pieces' in LMA, MC/F, vols 15, 16. Martha Yates's bail piece to traverse an indictment for keeping a disorderly alehouse cost her £1 17s Od (MC/F, vol 15, 3 July 1795). Defendants who appeared in court on a recognizance rarely, if ever, traversed their indictment at the same session at which they appeared on a recognizance.
38. LMA, MJ/SP 1754, Box 5, affidavit of Richard Newsham, 22 Sept 1754.
39. Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 101-111.
40. LMA, MJ/SR1980 (Jan 1702), recog 80; MJ/SBB591 (Jan 1702), recog 14; MJ/SBB592 (Feb 1702), recog 139; WJ/SBB590 (Jan 1701), recogs 9, 17.
41. Landau, Justices of the Peace, 182, 187-188.
42. Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 104, posits that justices returned 'agreed' recognizances to Sessions without informing Sessions that these disputes had been settled. Legal manuals agreed that if a recognizance which had been released was returned to Quarter Sessions, the release must also be certified to Quarter Sessions
43. (William Shephard, A Sure Guide for His Majesties Justices of Peace (1663), ch. 44, under 'About a Recognisance', 418-419;
44. William Nelson, The Office and Authority of a Justice of the Peace, under 'Behaviour', 94-95, and under 'Recognizance', 489-491;
45. Joseph Shaw, The Practical Justice of the Peace, 2 vols. (1733), vol. 2, under 'Recognizance', 103-104, 107-109). If such notification of agreement were not returned to Quarter Sessions, then a duplicitous plaintiff could appear at Sessions, and by reiterating his complaint, attempt to receive compensation for an injury for which he had already been compensated. As the records of Middlesex Quarter Sessions contain relatively few statements that disputes had been agreed and so recognizances released, it is likely that the disputes generating most recognizances returned to Sessions had not been settled before Sessions met.
46. Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 102.
47. These recognizances are cited in ibid, 102 nn. 26, 27. LMA, MJ/SR1533, recog 83 and MJ/SBB348, recog 83; WJ/SR2088, recog 3, and WJ/SBB647, recog 3; MJ/SR815, recog 99 and MJ/SBB505, recog 99. The recognizance whose annotation is not noted in the relevant Sessions Book is MJ/SR1294 recog 68, (see MJ/SBB218, recog 68). Shoemaker's n. 26 also cites another recognizance returned to the Westminster Session of Oct 1663 (MJ/SR1275, recog 37). As the Session's Book for this session has not survived, it is not possible to discover whether the clerks recorded this agreement in that Book.
48. Shoemaker also presents a sixth note: LMA, MJ/SP 1721, Feb, no. 33, cited in Prosecution and Punishment, 102 n. 27. However, this note does not identify either of the parties to the dispute to which it refers. As it is quite possible that the dispute had generated an indictment, or a recognizance continued from a preceding session, the note cannot be used as evidence of procedure in cases settled before being heard at Sessions. As the note does not identify the defendant, it is not possible to discover whether the note had been summarized in the relevant Session's Book.
49. The notes are cited in Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 102, nn. 25, 27. LMA, MJ/SP 1711, July, no. 63 and MJ/SBB695, recog 187; MJ/SP 1708, July, no. 43 and MJ/SBB659, recog 19; MJ/SP 1723, Feb, no. 26 and MJ/SBB81O, bond o; MJ/SP 1712, Feb, no. 32 and MJ/SBB702, recog 20.
50. My survey of eighteenth-century Sessions Books found many Books in which there were no such annotations, and no books in which more than five recognizances were so annotated.
51. LMA, MJ/SP 1708,July, no. 43; MJ/SBB659, recog 19: The note stating that the dispute was settled is dated 15 July, while the session began on 5 July. MJ/SP 1712, Feb, no. 32 (dated 28 Feb 1711/12; the session began on Feb 26); MJ/SBB702, recog 20.
52. LMA, MJ/SP 1723, Feb, no. 26; MJ/SBB809, recog 59; MJ/SBB810, bond o.
53. Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 102.
54. LMA, MJ/SR815, recog 99. MJ/SBB505, recog 99: the initials 'NP' appear in the margin and are crossed out, a notation which usually signified an order to commit to New Prison and subsequent retraction of that order.
55. Of the four citations adduced as evidence that those bound in recognizances for disputes which had been settled without recourse to Quarter Sessions had to attend Quarter Sessions, three (LMA, MJ/SP 1707, Oct, no. 7; MJ/SP 1720, Oct, nos. 68a and 68c) refer to bonds to traverse indictments. The fourth citation (MJ/SP 1707, Oct, no. 46) is a note asking that a forfeited recognizance not be estreated, but instead be respited until the next session, when -presumably -someone would appear to pay the clerks' fees. Of the two citations of evidence supporting the assertion that 'sureties worked hard to get defendants to appear at sessions' (108-109, and n. 50), one refers to a bond to traverse an indictment, and the second to a recognizance to prosecute for sedition (MJ/SP 1720, Oct, no. 30; MJ/SP 1719, July, no. 5a, for which see also nos. 5b, 26, 27). See Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 103 n.31.
56. Of the three citations adduced as evidence that justices took action to prevent forfeiture of recognizances, especially if the dispute had been agreed, one (LMA, MJ/SP 1720, Oct.no. 134) is about a bond to traverse an indictment; and the other two (MJ/SP 1720, Sept, no. 34; WJ/SP 1719, Oct, no. 8) are notes requesting that forfeited recognizances, on which there had been no indictment, be respited to the next session. Requests that forfeited recognizances be respited frequently state that no indictment had followed upon the recognizance. Such statements were intended to assure die clerks that respite of the recognizance would not impede administration of the law. See ibid, 107, n.44.
57. LMA, MJ/SP 1720, Oct, nos. 137, 141 (the citations in Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 109 n. 51).
58. The greater part of Shoemaker's, Prosecution and Punishment, is devoted to a statistical analysis of the recognizances returned to the Quarter Sessions of Westminster and Middlesex. That analysis proceeds as if the recognizances returned to Quarter Sessions were, in fact, all the recognizances taken by the justices of Westminster and Middlesex, and so represent the nature and distribution of disputes settled before Quarter Sessions met as well as disputes not so settled.
59. ibid, 105 and n. 39. Wiltshire Record Office, Ace 118/162, entries for 17 Dec 1664 and 9 Jan 1664 [5]. There is only one recognizance taken for Middlesex, and none for Westminster, in diis justice's diary.
60. ibid, 105 and n. 39: recog for 25 Jan 1732/3 and two recog for 31 Dec 1739. See R. Paley, (ed.), Justice in Eighteenth-Century Hackney: The Justicing Notebook of Henry Norris and the Hackney Petty Sessions Book, London Record Society, 28 (1991), entries 63 and 315. It is not clear that the dispute resulting in one of the recognizances taken on 31 Dec 1739, which was returned to Quarter Sessions, had been settled before Quarter Sessions met, and Paley does not classify it as a recognizance released before Quarter Sessions met.
61. Shoemaker, 'Prosecution and Punishment, 105 and n. 39; Hampshire Record Office, 1M53/ 1373. The recognizance Shoemaker instances, that taken on 27 Jan 1701/2, is not annotated as 'agreed'; it is simply crossed out. The recognizance bindingjohn Burgless is also crossed out and it immediately precedes the recognizance Shoemaker instances. That recognizance was not returned to Quarter Sessions.
62. The three recognizances issued by Norris and cited by Shoemaker as 'agreed recognizances' constitute 8 per cent of the recognizances whose issue Norris recorded; the two recognizances Dewey crossed out constitute 7 per cent of the recognizances for Middlesex and Westminster in his notebooks; and Shoemaker's sample of the recognizances issued at Brentford petty sessions shows that recognizances agreed before Quarter Sessions met constitute four per cent of those recognizances. In the era when Kent's justices were returning their 'agreed recognizances' to Sessions, these recognizances accounted for about 40 per cent of all the recognizances returned by urban justices. (Landau, Justices of the Peace, 182.)
63. The Sessions Books indicate that, in the early eighteenth century, very few complainants requested that the dispute be settled at the session at which their opponents first appeared. (For the sample for January and February 1702, see LMA, WJ/SBB590 recogs 44 and 46; MJ/SBB592 recog 17.) Quarter Sessions's records of the mid- and late eighteenth century do not note such arbitration.
64. LMA, MJ/SBB722 (May 1713), 29.
65. Those imprisoned in Newgate would be tried at Middlesex Quarter Sessions if the grand jury found that their offence did not amount to felony. Those imprisoned in Westminster's prison (the Gatehouse) and house of correction (Tothill Fields Bridewell) would be tried at Middlesex's court if their prosecutors chose to present their bills to Middlesex's grand jury.
66. These calendars have frequently served as wrappers for the sessions rolls. By midcentury, the parchment calendars were being accompanied by books of commitments (LMA, MJ/CC/B).
67. For example, LMA, MJ/CC/R76, which is catalogued as a House of Correction's calendar, and seems to be a calendar of those in the House who were to be discharged. It is possible that this calendar was made by the Quarter Session's clerks.
68. LMA, MJ/CP. According to 14 George III c. 20, prisoners acquitted and those against whom no bill of indictment was found or brought had to be set free immediately without paying fees. The county was to pay all their fees up to 13s 4d. Later, 55 George III c.50 exempted from all fees a defendant acquitted by a jury.
69. J. Chitty, A Practical Treatise on the Criminal Law, 4 vols. (1816), vol. 1, 342. Fees from the clerk of the peace's fee books (LMA, MC/F). LMA, MJ/SP 1692, Dec. no. 7 is a form printed for and used as a bench warrant.
70. For instance, Shoemaker's account of procedure at Quarter Sessions does not mention the use of bench warrants. Consequently, his analysis assumes that all defendants appearing at Quarter Sessions arrived there either from a carcéral institution or under recognizance.
71. Based on the 391 defendants to indictments found at Middlesex Quarter Sessions from October 1701 through April 1702 who either appeared in court or secured the respite of their recognizance to appear in court. This count categorizes all who appear in court, when neither in recognizance or imprisoned to do so, as appearing under a bench warrant or certificate.
72. This sample is the indictments found at Middlesex sessions for May and October 1795, andJanuary 1797.
73. The purchase of bench warrants and certificates is noted in the clerk of the peace's fee books that showed which indicted defendants were the targets of bench warrants and/or certificates. As some of the pages in the relevant books were unfit for production, there may well have been more defendants brought to court through bench warrants and certificates than those I have identified.
74. In Kent, for example, sheriffs summoned indicted defendants (for their returned writs of venire facias, see Kent Archives Office, Q/SB 1748,1749), and as Kent's process books of indictments (Q/SPi/\V5, Q/SPi/E2) reveal, those so summoned did indeed appear and plead to their indictments.
75. Office of the Clerk, 189; see also Chitty, Practical Treatise, vol. 1, 350-351.
76. Of defendants to indictments appearing in court though they were neither bound in recognizance nor incarcerated to do so, 87 per cent of those indicted from October 1701 through April 1702 appeared at the session at which the grand jury found the indictment against them. So did 70 per cent of such defendants to indictments in other samples: indictments found at Middlesex sessions for October 1733 through January 1734; October 1753 through January 1754; July 1774; May and October 1795 and January 1797.
77. For the use of bench warrants in Lancashire, see P. Taylor, 'Quarter Sessions in Lancashire in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century: The Court and its Records', Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 139 (1990), 77, 78.
78. I shall devote another article to presentation of the argument that prosecutors at eighteenth-century Quarter Sessions were using indictments to extract compensation from those they indicted.
79. The court of Old Bailey delivered Newgate.
80. LMA, MJ/SP 1722, Dec, no. 54. Unlike other Quarter Sessions, that of Middlesex welded both the commission of the peace and the commission of oyer and terminer (under which latter more serious offences were tried). In other counties, the judges of Assize welded the commission of oyer and terminer.
81. According to Shoemaker, Prosecution and Punishment, 114-115, 'recognizances of indicted defendants, regardless of the offence, were twice as likely to be estreated as defendants who were not indicted when they were bound over'. I did not find this to be the case. Recognizances taken after indictment of defendants indicted at the Middlesex sessions of October 1701 through April 1702 were about 55 per cent more likely to be estreated than recognizances that did not follow upon indictment. However, recognizances taken after indictment in other decades of the eighteenth century (the sample is specified in n. 73), were just as likely or less likely to be estreated than other recognizances.
82. Table 1 is based on the Sessions Books and draft Estreat Books for the relevant years. (LMA, MJ/SBB and MJ/E). Sessions in which failure to appear on a bond or recognizance was excused under the monarch's pardon are excluded from this table. The year labelled '1734' in the table is that for October 1733 through August 1734. The period 1754-1759 omits 1758. This table does not include recognizances to prefer indictments or give evidence. I want to thank Tim Wales for gathering some of the information on which this table is based.
83. London and Middlesex shared two sheriffs.
84. John Impey, The Practice of the Office of Sheriff and Under Sheriff (1817), 132-134.
85. 4 George III, c.10.
86. PRO E368/769, E368/770. It seems quite possible that return of the funds and discharge of the forfeited recognizance followed upon action indicating that those bound had, belatedly, satisfied the demands of the recognizance. (See E368/769, entry for Joseph Rayner, and E368/770, order of November 6 for George Yates, and of November 11 for Timothy Harlow.)