I’m starting to compile a list of online primary sources for crime, criminal justice and law in early modern Britain (and to some extent the American colonies). I was doing this for my course initially, but I will try to get together a fuller list that I can put online, so it will be there in future for me and anybody else who might find it helpful. (I am so glad now to have gone to the trouble of compiling the big bibliography…)
Anyway, here is a working list of stuff already turned up, not yet sorted or evaluated, just to get them in one place to be going on with. I will be very grateful for any more suggestions, anything (scanned documents, transcripts, extracts) between about 1500 and 1800 that relates to England, Wales or Scotland: archival court records; laws and statutes; popular print; moral treatises; images; you name it, I’ll be interested. You’ll see from what’s listed that anything from petty thefts to high treason is welcome. Also, if you know of online diaries, correspondence and the like that contain references to crimes, trials, executions, if only in passing, that might be useful too.
Powys digital history project, crime and punishment section
Old Bailey proceedings
Tyburn Tree: ‘Dying Speeches’ and Other Documents
Complete Newgate Calendar
Wales and the Law (my own stuff)
Outlaws and Highwaymen contents page
Bodleian broadside ballads
16th century ballads
Virtual Norfolk
– Crime and the law
– Gender, sexuality
– Witchcraft and magic
– Popular religion
– The case of John Kettle
– Riot and rebellion
– 18th-century poverty & riot
– Dissent & sedition
– Kett’s rebellion 1549
Hanover Texts witchcraft documents
Witchcraft in Flintshire
The Hogarth Archive
Pirate image archive (also includes documents)
Pirate documents
Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1603-10
Gathering the Jewels (Wales)
– Assault cases
– Theft cases
– Assorted court records
– Juries
– Caernarfonshire Quarter Sessions
Convicts and the Colonies (thanks to Chris Williams!)
The pilgrimage of Grace
The Act against Puritans 1593
The Act against Recusants 1593
Act against Jesuits 1585
Trial of Gunpowder plotters
Trial, royalist plot against Cromwell
Elizabethan proclamation against maintenance of pirates
Habeas Corpus Act 1679
Petition against an illegal alehouse, Gloucestershire
Recognizance, innkeeper, Caernarfonshire
A Caernarfonshire beggar, 1795
Trial for forgery, Wales, 1818
Jury service and an execution, Beaumaris
Corn riots and magistrates, Anglesey
Boswell at Tygate and Newburn
Autobiography of a smuggler
Jonathan Wild
Jack Sheppard
The Beggars Opera
A caveat for cutpurses, ballad
Fielding’s life of Jonathan Wild
Extracts from Dalton’s The Countrey Justice
Blackstone’s Commentaries
Beccaria, Of crimes and punishments
Adam Smith, Lectures on jurisprudence (thanks to Chris Williams)
Colonial America
Springfield courts (MA)
Maryland court
Essex county (MA)
Essex county
Salem witchcraft papers
Virginia courts (scroll down to Original Court Records)
Plymouth Colony court records
Trial of Anne Hutchinson, 1637
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Re: my query about ‘Hanging not punishment enough’ the other day. I believe that it’s in ECCO (Eighteenth-century Collections Online), to which I don’t have access. Is there anybody who could check this out for me? (Natalie of Philobiblon has kindly offered to look in the British Library for me, but I’m not sure that they have it after looking at the catalogue.) And update: I’ve just noticed that I can get access to ECCO in the National Library of Wales, and since I need to go visit the fancy new reading room soon…
Early Modern Notes 
We had ECCO on trial last month but it’s gone now. I heard a rumour somewhere that JISC is thinking of buying it on behalf of everyone. Like a monopoly, a monopsony is a fine thing – if you’re the monopsonist. Adam Smith eat your heart out. Talking of which, Adam Smith’s lecture on jurisprudence is here:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/LFBooks/Smith0232/GlasgowEdition/Jurisprudence/HTMLs/0141-06_Pt03_1766.html
NB – you need to put Elaine Reynolds’ _Before the Bobbies_ into yr big bibliography. But I can’t think of anything else that you’re missing.
Oh, I have quite a few bits and pieces to add… Thanks for that one anyway. I saw it on the OBP bibliography the other day and thought it was something I ought to seek out.
…And I have now done some additions including the Reynolds book.
Useful bit of collecting there! I use the Old Bailey Online in my Approaches course as part of a four week excursion into the history of crime. I find that students are riveted by the topic, but they lack the legal and statistical background to fully appreciate most of the nuances. Of course, the fact that they’re brought up on Canadian history with very little European or English material doesn’t much help. I will be borrowing heavily from your list as I prepare for this year’s go-round!
I’m working on a more comprehensive version to go up on EMR… I’ll let everyone know when that’s ready.
The module I’m teaching could be described as an ‘approaches’ course (we call them ‘skills, sources and methods’), though in-depth rather than general, using a particular theme/type of source materials (there are also modules on, eg, political caricatures, slavery, Icelandic sagas) to introduce students to wider issues about how historians actually study history and interpret sources (in some ways, these modules are also complementary to the more abstract and general 2nd year historiography course) – and hopefully prepare the ground for their 3rd-year dissertation at the same time. The question of how much a) law and b) statistics to throw at them, and how long to take over it – preferably without causing a classroom revolt – is exercising me somewhat at the moment…
Does anyone know how to cite the Old Bailet proceedings MLA style? thanks
Which is MLA style? You could always contact the site direct. There is a citation guide, although I think it has footnoted referencing in mind.