The Old Bailey Goes Hi-Tech
In a move which should eventually see all trial cases online going back to 1674, a group of universities have got together to set up a new online Old Bailey service using official documentation. Sheffield, Hertfordshire and the Open University have joined forces in a ground breaking move which will save time and expense for the raft of historians in the UK.
Until this service was made available the only way to investigate the Old Bailey hearings (going back to 1674) was via microfiche, a process which took researchers literally days and months to get the information they were after. However things have changed now and we see that 200,000 cases are covered on the site, which holds 120 million words and 110,000 pages, bringing the cases at the famous Old Bailey up to 1913.
While the majority of the information so far is a mixture of digital images of the actual court documents, those who have used the site are very impressed by the quality. As you might expect, the service hit the headlines in a blaze of glory and crashed the website!
There are many ways in which this excellent service will help historians and researchers of today, but there is also the potential for schools and universities with students now able to compare court life from nearly 400 years ago to that of today. On the surface the traditions many be the same and the look may be the same, criminal trends and sentences have changed radically over the years. Perhaps those days of years gone by may not have been as peaceful and safe as we often assume!
There are plans to continue adding court data to the site and bring it as up to date as possible, with may suggesting that it will become a mainstay for education and research buffs. The internet and the 17th century Old Bailey coming together, now who would have thought that!
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