‘The Metropolis on Trial’ will be held at the Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, in July 2008. The conference is being held to mark the launch of the complete online Proceedings of the Old Bailey and Central Criminal Court from 1674 to 1913, which will be available online from April/May 2008.
This represents a major extension of the highly successful Old Bailey Proceedings 1674-1834. The new site will contain fully searchable records of almost 200,000 trials held at London’s foremost criminal court between the 17th and 20th centuries, from the aftermath of the Great Fire to the eve of the Great War. The Proceedings are an unrivalled source of information about the lives and experiences of ordinary and extraordinary Londoners over two and a half centuries of the city’s history, for social, local and legal historians, genealogists, students and teachers, and all those simply interested in London’s past.
The conference will cover a varied range of historical subjects encompassed in the Proceedings, and will also include panels focusing on using the Proceedings as a teaching resource and on the creation and implications of digital history.
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Note: The banner image at the site is a detail from A trial at the Old Bailey in London as drawn by Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin for Ackermann’s Microcosm of London (1808-11), lifted from Wikipedia. You see, it does have its uses.
