Defences

Old Bailey Online Prisoner Defences 1751-1900

This dataset is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence

Introduction

This dataset has been created from Old Bailey Online (OBO) XML data. It consists of all prisoner defence statements that could be identified in trials in the Old Bailey Proceedings between 1751 and 1900. The dataset has been created primarily in order to explore the Voices of Authority research theme of the Digital Panopticon project. It's made available here for other researchers who may find it of interest.

The data covers a period in which the English criminal trial (for felonies) profoundly changed: in the mid-18th century few lawyers were involved and the trial was conceived as a direct encounter between victim as prosecutor, and the defendant who was expected to conduct their own defence. By 1900, lawyers were in charge, and trial procedures were increasingly bureaucratic.

For more information on trial procedures and the Old Bailey, please refer to the background information at http://www.oldbaileyonline.org.

Data creation

In addition to using OBO data as its direct source material, the dataset would not have been possible without the Old Bailey Corpus (OBC). OBC has added linguistic tagging to about a quarter of the Proceedings sessions, and this restructuring has made it possible to see speech data within the Proceedings in new ways. Thus, it became much clearer from OBC that prisoner defences (and, indeed, prisoners' statements more generally) are quite consistently labelled in the Proceedings text, and that defences tend to appear in certain places and forms that could be identified and extracted from the full OBO data for text mining and linguistic analysis.

Structured data from the OBO has then been added to the texts: all available defendant personal information (including gender and age), and offence, verdict and sentence categories, to make it possible to explore the effectiveness of particular kinds of defence narrative, or variations by gender or type of offence.

Data table

This is version 1.0 of the data (March 2017).

file: obo_defences_v1.tsv

Notes:

• normally there is one statement per defendant per trial, but there can be more than one
• statements such as "I leave my defence to my counsel" or "I am guilty" have been left in the data, even though they are not exactly defences
• sometimes prisoners put in written defences that were read out in court, or non-English speakers' defences were communicated through an interpreter; I have excluded these where they are indicated

Field label	Description
uid	unique identifier in the dataset
trial	OBO trial ID
p_no	paragraph number in the trial
def_id	OBO defendant ID
sess_date	OBO session date, YYYYMMDD
trial_def_count	number of defendants in the trial
prefix	words immediately preceding the statement, usually "Prisoner's Defence" or similar.
txt	the statement
word_count	count of words in the statement
given	given name of defendant
surname	surname of defendant
gender	gender of defendant
age_years	age of defendant (NULL if not present)
occupation	occupation of defendant, as described in the trial report
offcat	OBO offence category
offsubcat	OBO offence subcategory
vercat	OBO verdict category
versubcat	OBO verdict subcategory
puncat	OBO sentence category
punsubcat	OBO sentence subcategory

Offence, verdict and sentence categories and subcategories

Offences

offcat	offsubcat
breakingPeace	assault
breakingPeace	barratry
breakingPeace	libel
breakingPeace	other
breakingPeace	riot
breakingPeace	threateningBehaviour
breakingPeace	vagabond
breakingPeace	wounding
damage	arson
damage	other
deception	bankrupcy
deception	forgery
deception	fraud
deception	other
deception	perjury
kill	infanticide
kill	manslaughter
kill	murder
kill	other
kill	pettyTreason
miscellaneous	concealingABirth
miscellaneous	conspiracy
miscellaneous	habitualCriminal
miscellaneous	illegalAbortion
miscellaneous	kidnapping
miscellaneous	other
miscellaneous	pervertingJustice
miscellaneous	piracy
miscellaneous	returnFromTransportation
royalOffences	coiningOffences
royalOffences	other
royalOffences	religiousOffences
royalOffences	seditiousLibel
royalOffences	seditiousWords
royalOffences	seducingAllegiance
royalOffences	taxOffences
royalOffences	treason
sexual	assaultWithIntent
sexual	assaultWithSodomiticalIntent
sexual	bigamy
sexual	indecentAssault
sexual	keepingABrothel
sexual	other
sexual	rape
sexual	sodomy
theft	animalTheft
theft	burglary
theft	embezzlement
theft	extortion
theft	gameLawOffence
theft	grandLarceny
theft	housebreaking
theft	mail
theft	other
theft	pettyLarceny
theft	pocketpicking
theft	receiving
theft	shoplifting
theft	simpleLarceny
theft	stealingFromMaster
theft	theftFromPlace
violentTheft	highwayRobbery
violentTheft	other
violentTheft	robbery

Verdicts

vercat	versubcat
guilty
guilty	chanceMedley
guilty	insane
guilty	lesserOffence
guilty	manslaughter
guilty	pleadedGuilty
guilty	pleadedPartGuilty
guilty	theftunder100s
guilty	theftunder1s
guilty	theftunder40s
guilty	theftunder5s
guilty	withRecommendation
miscVerdict
miscVerdict	noAgreement
miscVerdict	postponed
miscVerdict	unfitToPlead
notGuilty
notGuilty	accidentalDeath
notGuilty	directed
notGuilty	fault
notGuilty	noEvidence
notGuilty	nonComposMentis
notGuilty	noProsecutor
notGuilty	selfDefence
notGuilty notGuilty	noEvidence
specialVerdict

Sentences

puncat	punsubcat
corporal
corporal	pillory
corporal	privateWhipping
corporal	publicWhipping
corporal	whipping
death
death	burning
death	deathAndDissection
death	drawnAndQuartered
death	executed
death	hangingInChains
death	respited
death	respitedForPregnancy
imprison
imprison	hardLabour
imprison	houseOfCorrection
imprison	insanity
imprison	newgate
imprison	otherInstitution
imprison	penalServitude
imprison	preventiveDetention
miscPunish
miscPunish	branding
miscPunish	fine
miscPunish	forfeiture
miscPunish	militaryNavalDuty
miscPunish	sureties
noPunish
noPunish	pardon
noPunish	sentenceRespited
transport