Juries frequently manipulated the punishment through the use of partial verdicts. The punishments available in any particular case were thus circumscribed by the legal status of the offence with which the defendant was charged (which in some cases was influenced in turn by the choices made by the victim or the grand jury). Normally, offences defined by statute could only be punished as prescribed by the relevant legislation. Misdemeanours were punishable by a range of non-capital punishments. While punishment sentences are provided in the Old Bailey Proceedings, for the actual punishments a convict received it is necessary to consult their 'Life Archive'.įelonies defined by common law were originally punishable by hanging, but increasingly from the middle of the eighteenth century, statute law curtailed the use of the death penalty. It is important to remember that the actual punishments convicts received often differed from their original sentences. Introductionįor those convicted at the Old Bailey, judges could choose from a wide range of punishment sentences in this period, though their options were often limited, both by statute and by choices made at an earlier stage in the judicial process. This page describes the types of punishments imposed on convicts at the Old Bailey from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. British Museum Prints and Drawings, number 1935,0522.1.196. , A Fleet of Transports under Convoy (1781). The Digital Panopticon in University Teaching.The Digital Panopticon and AS/A-Level History.The Digital Panopticon and GCSE History.The growth of record keeping about convicts.

The ethics of digital data on convict lives.Convicts and the Colonisation of Australia, 1788-1868.

Guilty Men by Cato the Younger