Description
By Malcolm Hall
Murders and Misdemeanours in Gloucestershire deals with the trials heard at the twice-yearly Gloucester County Assizes during the period 1820 to 1829. These were presided over by ‘Circuit Judges’ who travelled between the different county towns performing their judicious duty.
Naturally the punishments awarded varied depending upon the crimes committed. Murders and thieves – particularly horse thieves – could expect the rope, though others could hope for a reprieve. Such a remission would automatically add them to the list of convicts to be deported to the penal colonies in Australia. Alternatively, convicts might expect a spell in Gloucester Gaol or in one of the county’s Houses of Correction, with hard labour and floggings often thrown in for good measure.
All the trials were reported in the local newspaper of the day (the Gloucester Journal) at considerably greater length than is the case today. It is these reports that are reproduced in this book. Through them, we meet the different characters in each case: the counsel, deployed their rhetorical gifts on behalf of the prosecution or defence; the learned judges, no less eloquent in their lengthy and often emotional addresses to the jury or to the condemned: the many witnesses, summoned to add their accounts to the story of the alleged offence; and lastly the accused themselves, silent for the most part and waiting to learn if they were to leave as free men or as convicted felons.
For those condemned to the ultimate sanction, the Journal also provides us a detailed description of their last moments on the scaffold, an almost-theatrical performance which never failed to attract a vast enthralled audience.