Essex Court Cases
Apart from Census Returns and BMD certificates, finding references to our working class ancestors such as the ‘ag labs’ of the census returns is very difficult. Newspapers are one possible source where they may be referred to in court cases, either as defendant, victim, or more rarely, as a witness.
This is an ongoing project to create a list of court cases and those involved taken from newspaper reports. Because of the time taken to transcribe, regretfully it is not possible to supply all the details of each and every case. The aim is to provide you with a starting point for further research. The information is linked via each location‘s home page - See our A to Z pages.
The information is supplied in the following format:
- (d) defendant’s name, age and occupation (when given)
- (v) victim’s name, age and occupation (when given)
- (w) witness names, age and occupation (when given)
- Offence
- Place offence committed and places mentioned where the (d), (v) or (w) lived. Some of the defendants may have been from neighbouring parishes not mentioned by name, or itinerant wanderers.
- The court hearing the case.
- The source newspaper.
About the courts: The Assize Court dealt with most serious offences in Essex and in the early part of the 19th century the sentence of the court could be death by hanging, or transportation, thus the database may be of great interest to Australians with convict ancestors. Newspapers covering the most notorious cases would carry detailed testimony of the witnesses, while other cases merely mention the names, offence, place and sentence. The Quarter Sessions generally heard crimes which could not be tried summarily by the Justices of the Peace in the local Petty Sessions. Petty Sessions or County Magistrates Courts covered a number of parishes and dealt with minor offences and held committal proceedings for the more serious offences.
About the newspapers: These newspapers are available at the British Newspaper Library, but a better source would be at the Essex Record Office where copies of the more local papers such as the Essex Standard, Chelmsford Chronicle, Essex Herald and Essex Chronicle would probably have covered many of the cases in great detail. Be flexible over the spelling of names, for then like today, newspapers often get the names wrong!
Further resources:
Essex Record Office for newspapers, and Assize Court and Quarter Session records.
National Archives guide to Assize Records
British Newspaper Library