To Judge or Not to Judge: Taking a Closer Look at Justice in 18th Century London

After reading several court cases on the old bailey online, let me first say how glad I am to not have lived in 18th century London. I found one case particularly depressing. The opening lines of the trial give a hint at the dismal accounts that follow: “The Ordinary of Newgate, his account of the behavior, the confession, and dying words of the Malefactors who were executed at Tyburn, on... Wednesday the 8th of February, 1743-4.”  Basically, this “Ordinary” fellow reports that of the group of 18 prisoners “lying under sentence of death in the cells of Newgate,” 8 of them seem to have received “his majesty’s most Gracious reprieve for transportation for life.” What’s interesting are the crimes of the 8 who are allowed to live, vs. the crimes of the ones who are sentenced to death.  For example, among the 8 are Samuel Bowring and Henry Barret who assaulted and robbed another man, John Lane. Another of the 8, is Julius Hunt, who assaulted John Doo on the highway, “putting him in fear, and taking from him a leather pouch.”  In fact, most of the 8 cases are some combination of assault and robbery. By contrast, of the remaining 10 who were ordered for execution, robbery seems to be the predominant crime. In fact, as far as I could tell, none of the remaining 10 seemed to have physically harmed anyone.  However, much more detail is given about these men then the other 8, though not about their specific crimes as much as their backgrounds: whether or not their parents were respectable people, how often they attended church, what country they came from, etc.  In fact, the background information of each individual seems to play more of a hand in the sentencing than does the actual crime for which they are on trial.  For example, Joseph Isaacs is a 19 year old who is frequently described as Jewish: “of credible parents, who educated him well in the Jewish way and religion.”  Even though it seems the Ordinary is complimenting his Jewish upbringing here, later Joseph is suddenly described as a “youth of very corrupt principles” who was acquainted with “grangs of thieves, particularly a number of Jews, who are now much more irregular and thievish than they used to be formerly.”  Here, we get a taste of serious racial prejudice that no doubt had a hand in his sentencing, as we see even more blatantly at the end of the Ordinary’s account of Joseph: “I did not much insist upon converting him from his Infidelity, he being most obstinate in their unreasonable Way of thinking, and unwilling to embrace the Principles of Christianity, being fortified in such bad Principles by their Priests and Rabbis coming about them: He pretended to repent and died an obstinate Jew.”

Although the persons in each of these 10 cases seem undeserving of the fatal sentence their crimes brought upon them, the strangest case of these 10 is William Clark, a 50 year old man with a wife and several children, born in Oxford, “of modest, mean parents who... had him instructed in the Christian faith.” The Ordinary goes on to describe him several times as an “honest” man, having a good reputation, frequently attending church, and “not being of such a dissolute, lew’d conversation, as most of these abandoned creatures are.”  Apart from this last snide comment, Mr. Clark is described throughout by the Ordinary as a good person, having never been guilty of robbery or theft, “excepting the robbery for which he died.” Now, this puzzled me greatly that Mr. Clark would be sentenced to death for a one time offense of stealing a few valuables.  However, as I read on, I found a clue as to why he may have received this fate: “This he confessed he did by himself, being tempted thereto by the solicitations of the devil, not being under any want or necessity.”  This statement reveals that the judicial system in 18th century London placed much weight on intent concerning crime (and, I would argue, social standing, pointing back to the Ordinary’s description of Mr. Clark as an “abandoned creature”). 

The biggest difference between the judicial system in 18th century London and today (apart from the obvious “fair trial”) is this idea of an individual versus a collective trial, which (as the cases listed above are testament to), not only makes each case blur into the next one, depriving the individual of a fair trial, but also de-sensitizes those passing sentence to the individual human experience.  This de-valuing of human life is astonishing to me.