Chapter Thirteen

• Author: Richard D. Schneider
• Pages: 121-144

 

Cae irtee

   in the Victorian era the Old Bailey was,

according to a writer of the time, associated with “ugliness, greasy

squalor, crime of every description, in a cold, bleak-looking prison,

with an awful little iron door, three feet or so from the ground,” as well

as “trial by jury, black caps, bullying counsel,” a “visibly aected” judge,

prevaricating witnesses, and a miserable, trembling, damp prisoner in

the dock, the Old Bailey, or rather the Central Criminal Court held at

the Old Bailey, was at the same time held to be

par excellence, the criminal court of the country. In it all the excellences

and all the disadvantages of our criminal procedures are developed

to an extraordinary degree. e Old Bailey juries are at once more

clear-sighted and more pig-headed than any country jury. e local

judges, that is to say, the Recorder and the Common-Sergeant, are

more logical, and more inexible, and better lawyers, than the corres-

ponding dignitaries in our sessions towns. e counsel are keener in

their conduct of defenses than are the majority of circuit and session

counsel; and at the same time the tone of their cross-examinations is

not so gentlemanly, and altogether they are less scrupulous in their

method of conducting the cases entrusted to them. e witnesses are

more intelligent and less trustworthy than country witnesses. e of-

cers of the court keep silence more eciently, and at the same time

are more oensive in their general deportment than the ocers of any

other court in the kingdom. And lastly, the degree of the prisoners’

guilt seems to take a wider scope than it does in cases tried on circuit.

More innocent men are charged with crime and more guilty men es-

cape at the Old Bailey than at any other court in the kingdom; be-

cause the juries, being Londoners, are more accustomed to look upon

 . 

 

the niceties of evidence from a legal point of view, and in many cases

come into the jury-box with exaggerated views of what constitutes a

“reasonable doubt,” and so are disposed to give a verdict for the pris-

oner, when a country jury would convict.

Known since  as the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey

is England’s most important Crown court. e court may try crimes

from any part of the country. e courthouse was originally built in

, rebuilt in , and demolished in . Today the Old Bailey sits

on the site of the Newgate Prison. e Central Criminal Court was

established in  and empowered to try treasons, murders, felonies,

and misdemeanours, as well as oences committed on the high seas

and matters previously tried at the Admiralty sessions.

To get a feel for the courthouse and the courtroom, the follow-

ing excerpt is particularly helpful. e depictions that follow, while

perhaps typical of the day-to-day operation of the court, would not

capture the greater solemnity attached to a trial of the importance

of M’Naughten’s with the distinguished counsel and presiding jurists.

Nevertheless, it does give us an unusually colourful picture of the Old

Bailey as it was in Victorian London.

e Old Bailey! Ugly words . . . associated (in a Londoners’ mind, at

all events) with greasy squalor, crime of every description, in a cold,

bleak-looking prison, with an awful little iron door, three feet or so

from the ground, trial by jury, black caps, bullying counsel, a “visibly

aected” judge, prevaricating witnesses, and a miserable, trembling,

damp prisoner in the dock. e Old Bailey . . . or rather the Central

Criminal Court, held at the Old Bailey . . . is, par excellence, the crim-

inal court of the country. In it all the excellences and all the disadvan-

tages of our criminal procedures are developed to an extraordinary

degree. e Old Bailey juries are at once more clearsighted and more

pig-headed than any country jury. e local judges . . .that is to say, the

Recorder and the Common-Serjeant . . . are more logical, and more

inexible, and better lawyers than the corresponding dignitaries in

our sessions towns. e counsel are keener in their conduct of de-

fences than are the majority of circuit and session counsel; and at the

same time the tone of their cross-examinations is not so gentlemanly,

and altogether they are less scrupulous in their method of conducting

the cases entrusted to them. e witnesses are more intelligent and