The city and the sessions paper: Public justice in London, 1770-1800

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 466-503

  Devereaux, Simon ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84949116363     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/386119     Document Type: Article

References (138)

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2. The Dictionary of National Biography, ed. LeslieStephenson and Sidney Lee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921-22), 14:510-11.
3. Corporation of London Records Office (CLRO), Repertories of the Courtof Aldermen, vol. 216, p. 567, September 29, 1812.2
4. M. Dorothy George, London Life in the XVHIth Century (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner,1925);
5. George Rude, Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century: Studies in PopularProtest (London: Collins; Fontana Press, 1970), pt. 3.
6. Hanoverian London, 1714-1808 (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1971).
7. John H. Langbein, "The Criminal Trial before the Lawyers," University of Chicago Law Review 45 (Winter 1978): 263-316, and "
8. Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial:A View from the Ryder Sources," University of Chicago Law Review 50 (Winter 1985):1-136;
9. J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 1660-1800 (Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press, 1986), chap. 7;
10. Stephan Landsman, "The Rise of the ContentiousSpirit: Advocacy Procedure in Eighteenth-Century England," Cornell Law Review75 (March 1990): 497-609;
11. J. M. Beattie, "Scales of Justice: Defense Counsel andthe English Criminal Trial in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," Law and HistoryReview 9 (Fall 1991): 221-67.
12. Peter Linebaugh,The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London: AllenLane; Penguin Press, 1991).
13. Ian R. Christie, "British Newspapers in the Later Georgian Era," in his Myth andReality in Late-Eighteenth-Century Politics, and Other Papers (London: Macmillan,1970), pp. 313-15, 323-26;
14. Jeremy Black, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century(London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 80-81, 99-108.
15. Robin Myers and Michael Harris (Oxford: OxfordPolytechnic Press, 1982), pp. 6-15.1.
16. A. G. L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies: AStudy of Penal Transportation from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia and otherParts of the British Empire (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), chaps. 1-2;
17. C. Beattie, Crimeand the Courts, pp. 560-618;
18. Wilfrid Oldham, Britain's Convicts to the Colonies,ed. W. Hugh Oldham (Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1990).
19. Beattie, Crime and the Courts, chap. 9;
20. A. Roger Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775 (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1987), chap. 1.
21. Richard Herrick Condon, "The Reform of EnglishPrisons, 1773-1816" (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1962), chap. 5, pp. 160-74, 189-98.
22. Yale Journalof Law and the Humanities 5 (Winter 1993): 51-78.
23. Linebaugh, pp. 363-65.;
24. V. A. C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Executionand the English People, 1770-1868 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 52-54, 602-4.
25. (Gentleman's Magazine 56[1786]: 264).
26. The Cabinetand the Management of Death at Tyburn after the Revolution of 1689," in The Revolutionof 1688-89: Changing Perspectives, ed. Lois G. Schwoerer (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992), pp. 218-33.
27. Its operation between 1800 and its abolition in 1837is discussed in Arthur Aspinall, "The Grand Cabinet, 1800-1837," Politico 3 (December1938): 333-44;
28. John Fortescue,ed., The Correspondence of King George III from 1760 to 1783 (London: Macmillan,1927-28), nos. 4325, 4399, 4446.
29. Horace Twiss, The Public and Private Life of Lord ChancellorEldon (London: John Murray, 1844), 1:398-99.
30. Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3d ser., vol. 13, col. 987, June25, 1832).20
31. Journals of the Court of Common Council, vol. 70, fols. 141-42, November13, 1778.
32. Fenton Bresler, Reprieve: A Study of a System (London: George C.Harrap, 1965), pp. 42-43;
33. Gatrell (n. 13 above), pp. 550-65.
34. Arthur Aspinall, ed., The Later Correspondence of George HI (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1962-70), no. 508, Sydney to George III, April 20, 1789.
35. CLRO, Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 74, fols. 281-82, November20, 1782.
36. Gurney's "Proposals Humbly Offeredto the Consideration of The Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, the Court of Aldermen,and the Common-Council of the City of London; for Changing the Mode of Publishingthe Sessions Paper (1778),"
37. Guildhall Library, London, Broadside (B'side) 30.71.
38. CLRO, Journals of the Court of Common Council, vol. 70, fols. 141-44, November 13,1778.
39. (Lord Sydney to the lord mayor, February 2, 1787,PRO, HO 43/2, pp. 202-3;
40. Similar conferences occurred in 1789 and 1791 (Gentleman's Magazine 59 [1789]: 951-1045;
41. CLRO, Court of Aldermen: Committees Minute Books, 1791-94, pp. 34-43[my thanks to Greg Smith for this source]).
42. The procedure for pardon that prevailed outside London is discussed in Beattie,Crime and the Courts (n. 4 above), pp. 431-34;
43. J. M. Beattie, "The Royal Pardonand Criminal Procedure in Early Modern England," Historical Papers/Communicationshistoriques, 1987, pp. 9-22.38
44. H. Dundas to recorder, February 11, 1792, HO 13/8, p. 396;
45. recorder to [H. Dundas], February 15, 1792, HO 47/15;
46. Beattie, Crime and the Courts, pp. 362-76;
47. Beattie, "Scales of Justice," pp. 232-36 (all n. 4 above).
48. Peter King, "Decision-Makers and Decision-Making in the English Criminal Law, 1750-1800," Historical Journal27 (March 1984): 37-48;
49. Beattie, Crime and the Courts, pp. 439-49.
50. Journals of the Court of Common Council, vol. 72, fols. 275-77, October21, 1790;
51. Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 84, fols. 267-68, December7, 1792.51
52. CLRO, Journals of the Court of Common Council, vol. 73, fols. 381-82, October24, 1793;
53. Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 87, fol. 74, April 29, 1795.52 In 1782.
54. CLRO, Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 74, fols. 77-78, March 20, 1782;
55. Journals of the Court of Common Council, vol. 70, fols. 254-55, June 6, 1787;
56. Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 87, fols. 344-45, November 25, 1795).
57. see his Bureaucratic Mercy: The Home Office andthe Treatment of Capital Cases in Victorian Britain (London and New York: Garland,1992), pp. 202, 225, quote on p. 225, n. 80.54
58. CLRO, Common Council: Minutes & Reports, 1822-23, p. 100, September 26,1822.
59. Guildhall Library, London, B'side 30.71;
60. CLRO, Journals of the City LandsCommittee, vol. 70, fols. 141-44, November 13, 1778.56
61. CLRO, Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 85, fol. 317, February 7, 1794.
62. Upon the Question at the Session at the Old-Bailey, On Saturday,the 16th of September 1775, Whether Margaret Caroline Rudd ought to be tried (London:Martha Gurney, 1775), p. 8.
63. The offending account appears at OBSP, September 1775,pp. 493-98.
64. (Joseph Redington and Richard Arthur Roberts, eds., Calendarof Home Office Papers, 1760-1775 [London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office,1878-99], 2:564-65; 3:147-49, 373-76, 601-4; and 4:133-49, 278-94, 531-45).
65. Beattie, Crime and the Courts (n. 4 above), pp. 538-48;
66. W. Eden to recorder of London, November 29, 1775, PRO, SP 44/91, p. 437.
67. Stephen R. Conway, "The Recruitmentof Criminals into the British Army, 1775-81," Bulletin of the Institute of HistoricalResearch 58 (May 1985): 48-52.
68. Dictionary of National Biography, 8:13.65 Annual Register 18 (Chronicle 1775): 174; Gentleman's Magazine 45 (1775): 549;
69. London Magazine 43 (1775): 602.
70. The most detailed account of the debate can befound in the Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser (November 16-18, 1775).
71. William Purdie Treloar,Wilkes and the City (London: John Murray, 1917), pp. 174-87, 193-205;
72. JohnSainsbury, "John Wilkes, Debt, and Patriotism," Journal of British Studies 34 (April1995): 189-95.
73. Wilkes and Liberty: A Social Study of1763-1774 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
74. John Brewer, "The Wilkites and the Law, 1763-74: A Study of Radical Notionsof Governance," in An Ungovernable People: The English and Their Law in the Seventeenthand Eighteenth Centuries, ed. John Brewer and John Styles (London: Hutchinson,1980), pp. 128-71.
75. Annual Register 14 (Chronicle 1771): 142-43, 193-95.
76. John Cannon, ed., The Letters of Junius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 428(October 17, 1771).
77. David Hughson, London Being an Accurate History and Description ofthe British Metropolis and Its Neighbourhood, to Thirty Miles Extent, from an ActualPerambulation (London: J. Robins; Albion Press, 1805-9), 1:602-3.
78. Treloar, pp. 124-25.
79. Gentleman's Magazine 41 (1771): 423, 471.
80. Two months later, the lord mayordemanded that Wilkes and Bull surrender their keys to the galleries in the Sessions House,turning them over to his own servants for their own personal profit (London Magazine39 [1771]: 617-18).
81. Peter D. G. Thomas, "TheBeginnings of Parliamentary Reporting in Newspapers, 1768-1774," English HistoricalReview 74 (October 1959): 623-36, and "
82. Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 33 (May 1960): 87-98;
83. Rude,Wilkes and Liberty, pp. 155-65;
84. Robert R. Rea, The English Press in Politics, 1760-1774 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), chaps. 12-13.
85. William C. Lowe, "Peersand Printers: The Beginnings of Sustained Press Coverage of the House of Lords in the1770s," Parliamentary History 1 (1988): 248.
86. Annual Register 17 (Chronicle 1774): 157-58;
87. London Magazine 42 (1774):509.77
88. The details of physical alterations to the Sessions House are recorded in CLRO,Journal of the Committee for Rebuilding Newgate, 1767-1785.
89. Thomas Pennant, Some Account of London, 2d ed. (London: Robert Faulder,1791), p. 232.
90. Wayne Joseph Sheehan,"The London Prison System, 1666-1795" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1975),p.
91. James C. Oldham, ed., The Mansfield Manuscripts and the Growth of EnglishLaw in the Eighteenth Century [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992],1:115)
92. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1767-69), 4:127-41;
93. Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Gossman (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press,1979), pp. 189-93.
94. CLRO, Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 77, fol. 70,September 14, 1785.
95. Archdeacon Francis Blackburn et al., A Collection of Letters and Essays in Favourof Public Liberty First Published in the Newspapers in the Years 1764, 1765, 1766,1767, 1768, 1769 and 1770 by an Amicable Band of Wellwishers to the Religious andCivil Rights of Mankind (London, 1774), 3:230;
96. Douglas Hay, ' 'The Laws of God and the Laws of Man: Lord George Gordon andthe Death Penalty," in Protest and Survival: The Historical Experience: Essays for E.P.Thompson, ed. John Rule and Robert Malcolmson (London: Merlin Press, 1993), esp.pp. 69-72.
97. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations in this and the subsequent paragraph arefrom CLRO, Small MS box 4, no. 47/398, February 17, 1787.
98. CLRO, Repertories of the Court of Aldermen 129, pp. 368, 376-77, September 29 andOctober 7, 1725.
99. CLRO, Journals of the City LandsCommittee, vol. 112, fol. 243, January 24, 1821.
100. Guildhall Library, London, B'side 30.71;
101. CLRO, Journals of the City LandsCommittee, vol. 70, fols. 142-44, November 13, 1778.
102. CLRO, Journals of the Court of Common Council, vol. 72 fols. 275-77, October21, 1790.
103. CLRO, Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 82, fols. 237-39, 265, 282,November 3, 17, and December 1, 1790.
104. CLRO, Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 84, fols. 194-95, September19, 1792.
105. OBSP, December 1792, p. 56, and December 1793, p. 112.
106. CLRO, Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 84, fols. 267-68,December 7, 1792.
107. Gentleman's Magazine 62 (1792): 508-10, 1052, 1146-47.
108. PaulLangford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689-1798 (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1991), pp. 98-118.
109. Report of the Committee of the Society for Carryinginto Effect His Majesty's Proclamation against Vice and Immorality, for the Year 1799,Together with a List of the Members (London, [1799]).
110. Joanna Innes, ' 'Politicsand Morals: The Reformation of Manners Movement in Later Eighteenth-CenturyEngland," in The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the LateEighteenth Century, ed. Eckhart Hellmuth (London and Oxford: German Historical Institute;Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 57-118;
111. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783 (New York: Knopf, 1989).
112. Joanna Innes, " The Domestic Face of the Military-FiscalState: Government and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain," in An Imperial State atWar: Britain from 1689 to 1815, ed. Lawrence Stone (London and New York: Routledge,1994), pp. 96-108.
113. R. K. Webb, The British Working Class Reader, 1790-1848: Literacy and SocialTension (London: Allen & Unwin, 1955), chap. 2;
114. Richard D. Altick, The English CommonReader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1957), chap. 3, and pp. 322-32;
115. G. A. Cranfield, The Press andSociety: From Caxton to Northcliffe (London: Longman, 1979), chaps. 4-5.
116. Donald Thomas, A Long Time Burning: The History of Literary Censorship in England (London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969).
117. Georges Lamoine, ed., Charges to the Grand Jury, 1689-1803, CamdenSociety, 4th ser., vol. 43 (1992), p. 452.
118. Steve Chibnall,"Chronicles of the Gallows: The Social History of Crime Reporting," in The Sociologyof Journalism and the Press, ed. Harry Christian, Sociological Review Monographs, no.29 (Keele, Staffordshire, 1980), esp. pp. 192-202.
119. Samuel Richardson, The Apprentice's Vade Mecum; or, Young Man's Pocket-Companion (London, 1734), pp. 9-33.
120. Literature and Crime in Augustan England (London andNew York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 72-74.
121. Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and Its Administrationfrom 1750 (London: Stevens & Sons, 1948-68), 3:27-28.
122. Villainy Display 'd in All Its Branches, 4vols. (London, 1768), pp. i-ii.
123. Interestingly, this book was advertised in the SessionsPaper (OBSP, February 1771, p. 158);
124. For the license for The Cheats of London Expos'd; or the Tricks of the Town laid opento both sexes (London, 1769)
125. Colquhoun, A Treatise of the Police of the Metropolis, 7th ed., revised(London: J. Mawman et al, 1806; reprint, Montclair, N.J.: Patterson Smith, 1969), p. 27;
126. Radzinowicz, 3:296-98.107
127. Patrick Colquhoun, "Observations on the Plan of a Police Gazette-submittedto Magistrates in general by Earl Spencer," BL, Althorp Papers, G260.
128. The pertinent letters to the Treasury proposing such publications are J. Beckettto G. Harrison, March 18, 1814, PRO, HO 36/17, p. 316;
129. Jeremy Bentham, Draught of a Code for the Organization of the Judicial Establishmentin France (1790), in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Bowring (1838-43; reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1962), 4:316-17.
130. CLRO, Journals of the City Lands Committee, vol. 97, fol. 145, November 19,1805.
131. Randall McGowen, "The Image of Justice and Reform of the Criminal Law inEarly Nineteenth-Century England," Buffalo Law Review 32 (Winter 1983): 117-22;
132. Beattie, "Scales of Justice" (n. 4 above), pp. 250-58.
133. CLRO, Small MS box 4, no.47/398, February 17, 1787.
134. David D. Cooper, The Lesson of the Scaffold: The Public Execution Controversyin England (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974), chaps. 3-7, passim;
135. Randall McGowen, "Civilizing Punishment: The End of the Public Execution in England," Journalof British Studies 33 (July 1994): 257-82;
136. Douglas Hay, " Property, Authority and the Criminal Law," in Hay et al., Albion's FatalTree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Allen Lane, 1975),pp. 17-63.
137. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan(New York: Pantheon, 1978);
138. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: ThePenitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York: Pantheon, 1978).