Legal London in 1900: The Old Bailey

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The widening of Ludgate Hill was accomplished in a quarter of a century; and the rebuilding of the Central Criminal Court at one time bade fair to be as dilatory a process.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century a committee of the Common Council reported that the Central Criminal Court ought to be pulled down and rebuilt, but nothing came of it.

In 1892, after periodical discussions, another committee was appointed to decide upon a site, which question it settled; but the first practical outcome of the original report was attained only in 1900, when Mr. E.W.T. Mountford's designs for the edifice were selected and accepted by the Corporation.

Meantime, in 1901, the old Court, defiant of improvement and change, still existed, and on the first day of every session the sheriffs in procession escorted thither the skilled Rhadamanthus who presided over the dread tribunal of crime, composed of Judges, Recorder, the Common Serjeant, the Lord Mayor, and Aldermen.

No record exists as to when the first trial of criminals took place at the Old Bailey.

Even the origin of the familiar name is open to dispute; it may mean the vallum or ballium, ie an open space adjoining the city wall; it may be a corruption of bail-hill, a place of trial by a bailiff.

Anyhow, the "Bailey" has been so called for generations past, and its 1900 designation, the "Central Criminal Court," authorized by Act of Parliament in 1884, had not been readily taken to.

Little less than one hundred years earlier, the building as it then stood was enlarged and reconstructed, partly on the site of the old Surgeons' Hall where Oliver Goldsmith failed to pass his examination, replacing a Court which had been seriously damaged, if not destroyed, in 1780, during the Lord George Gordon Riots.

Into its dock, by way of a covered passage leading across the yard from Newgate, with which prison it was so closely connected, a procession of miserable wretches, session after session, continuously passed; a few to regain their liberty; many to go out convicts for life; a dismal remnant convicted on the capital charge of murder, and, in the past, of highway robbery and much more trivial offences, to return to the condemned cells, thence

.....into the night
Alone with Death to journey; never more
In mortal guise to breathe and see the light.

As an example of an old-fashioned Justice Hall the Central Criminal Court was unique.

Its dreary waiting-rooms, desolate corridors, and vault-like staircases were appropriate environments of the low, gloomy, box-shaped Court itself.

The dock was immediately below the stuffy public gallery, from whose front row only could any view of the prisoners be obtained, and that only a back one.

Jury-box and witness-box were to the left of the dock; counsels' seats facing, not the Judges, but the jury, were to the right; and thus the twelve "good men and true" were able, without turning, to see and identify all the parties concerned.

The Bench was rather an imposing affair, with ample accommodation for its numerous occupants; the chief seat, behind which upon a crimson background a sheathed and gilded sword was suspended, being beneath a wooden canopy surmounted by the Royal Arms.

Although since 1841 a special system of ventilation had been in use, the atmosphere of the Court, especially in damp, warm weather, and when a cause celebre was on, and unwashed, ill-clad humanity poured in and packed itself as close as sardines in a tin, a mephitic vapour arose suggestive of the time when the sweet herbs spread in front of the dock had a utilitarian mission, and nets laid before the Judges were not merely ornamental; and bringing to mind the fact that in the eighteenth century, so awful were the sanitary conditions of Newgate, that the Lord Mayor, two Judges, an Alderman, many jurymen and witnesses, during one session caught the dreaded gaol-fever and died.

Of memorable trials, the annals of the Central Criminal Court are full.

The most notable that had taken place within the walls of the present building, i.e. since 1809, were those of:

Bellingham, for the killing of the Prime Minister Perceval
Thistlewood and the Cato Street conspirators
Fauntleroy the forger
Greenacre, for the slaughter of his sweetheart
Oxford, for shooting at the late Queen
Courvoisier, for killing Lord William Russell
Francis, for an attempt upon Her late Majesty's life
Manning and his wife for murder
the seven pirates of the ship Flowery Land
Barrett and others for the Clerkenwell prison explosion
an Italian for the Hatton Garden fatal stabbing case (when there were three distinct trials, ending in the acquittal of the accused)
Risk Allah Bey, v. the Daily Telegraph, for libel
the Stauntons, for the Penge murder
Madame Rachel, for obtaining money under false pretences;
George Henry Lamson for poisoning his crippled schoolboy cousin
the "Cannon Street murder" of Sarah Milson, a mystery still
the parties implicated in the great Turf frauds (the trial lasting ten days)
Hannah Dobbs, for the murder of Miss Hacker, whose body was found in a house in Euston Square - another mystery!

and in the years up to 1900, Milsom and Fowler, between whom, during the trial, a terrible struggle took place in the dock, when Milsom could only be released from his accomplice's murderous grip, by the exertions of eight stalwart warders; and Prince, for the assassination of William Terriss.

The Old Bailey had produced a special class of barristers who seldom practised elsewhere; many had gained their reputation there, and some, the beginning of immense fortunes; among the former being Serjeant Sleigh, Montagu Williams, QC, and Serjeants Ballantine and Parry.

But it was not a cheerful place for a career; and an Old Bailey counsel needed to be, if not a cynic, a philosopher.

Next: Legal London in 1900: County of London Sessions