Legal London in 1900: County of London Sessions

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The county of London Sessions, held north of the Thames at Clerkenwell, and south of it at Newington Causeway; the Surrey Sessions with headquarters at Kingston, Surrey; and the Middlesex Quarter Sessions centred at the Guildhall, Broad Sanctuary, Westminster, were in a sense local representatives of the Central Criminal Court in 1900.

But these County Sessions dealt also with a variety of matters - such as licensing, assessments, condemnation of food-stuffs, etc, almost frivolous in comparison with the graver cases that, in common with the parent Court, they adjudicated upon.

The two most interesting, as a matter for study, were at Westminster and Clerkenwell.

The former Court-house adjoined the Westminster Hospital, and overlooked St. Margaret's church and the Abbey.

It stood upon the site of a church erected in 1805, which had replaced a market-house built fifty years previously on ground once occupied by the ancient Sanctuary.

There it was that Queen Elizabeth, the wife of Edward IV, took refuge while the victorious Earl of Warwick was marching upon London, and there she gave birth to the ill-fated Edward V.

Close by the Sanctuary was the Almonry, where, says tradition, William Caxton set up the first printing-press in England.

The old Court-house, associated with the Tichborne trial, was of the usual stuffy, badly-arranged type; but the new building in 1900 was of pleasant appearance, not unlike that of a country villa, and is up-to-date in all essentials.

Next: Legal London in 1900: County Session Courts: Clerkenwell