The Old Bailey, of London, England, has a database of the cases it’s sat on:
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.
At some obscure level, I find this disturbing:
The Digital Panopticon: The Global Impact of London Punishments, 1780-1925
This new AHRC funded website traces the lives of 90,000 convicts sentenced at the Old Bailey between 1780 and 1875, linking Old Bailey trials to relevant entries in fifty databases of criminal justice and civil records, including the census. The ‘Life Archives’ allow users to discover both the pre- and post-trial histories of Old Bailey convicts. They allow users to see differences between the punishment sentences handed down by the court and the punishments convicts actually experienced, and make it possible to compare the impact of the punishments of imprisonment and transportation on convicts’ lives.
A physical panopticon looks like this:
Image Credit: Designing Buildings
The central tower houses the guards on duty, and the surrounding walls have the prisoner cells. The concept of privacy, as dubious as some would see it for the inmates, disappears. Some prisoners suffered mental breakdowns.
Sure, I get that the Old Bailey people are trying to say nothing’s hidden, but it sends shivers up my spine.
