Wednesday 20 February 2013

FindmyPast releases English and Welsh criminal records

The British FindmyPast site (www.findmypast.co.uk) has released over half a million records concerning criminals in England and Wales, and their victims, as sourced from the National Archives at Kew (www.nationalarchive.gov.uk). This initial collection covers 1817-1931 - two million more records will follow, to take the collection from 1770-1934.

For further details visit www.findmypast.co.uk/content/news/crime-prisons-punishment.


(With thanks to Amy Sell from FindmyPast @amy_sell)

UPDATE: I've found that there are some Scots cases also  in the Admiralty records, and thanks to Audrey Collins for flagging up some Scottish criminal petitions are also included (see http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/Details?uri=C8881)

Chris

Pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, through Pen and Sword (30 April 2013), or purchase early at Who Do You Think You Are Live 2013 in London. For my other genealogy books, please visit  http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for my online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.

3 comments:

  1. What they don't mention is the coverage within the periods in question... On the TNA Catalogue for Series HO 140, it gives the list of pieces that have been digitised, and there are lots of holes. Piece 196 (e.g.) is "After-trial calendars ... Shropshire; Somerset; Staffordshire; Suffolk; Surrey; Sussex" for 1899 and is not digitised. Reading the FMP press release would give you the impression that their HO140 stuff covers all of 1868-1929. Even reading the TNA notes may not be enough as I don't know if TNA have full visibility of progress within Brightsolid.

    Oh - and it's crashed... Bit poor that, given that Brightsolid did a good job with releasing the 1911 census so far as I remember.

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    1. FindmyPast have tweeted on the crashes that searches are timing out due to high demand. On what is included, I've noticed the Admiralty records include some Scottish cases also.

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  2. What is the difference between this set of records & Ancestry's 'Criminal registers from England and Wales for the years 1791-1892'I get more hits here than I do on FMP.

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