Disclosure: Please note this post contains affiliate links.
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I have spent some fascinating hours this last week searching in a set of new British family history records before they got released. As part of my business relationship with TheGenealogist I write family history articles for them and so I was commissioned to put one together on the new criminal records that were joining those already on their site. This will be of interest to those of you searching for black sheep ancestors in your English family tree. To see what I found when let loose in the records follow the link to the article at the end of this post!
Here is the Press Release from the team at TheGenealogist (Disclosure: contains my affiliate links.)…
TheGenealogist has enlarged its Court & Criminal Records collection so that even more black sheep ancestors can now be searched for and found on its site. With a new release of records you can unearth all sorts of ancestors who came up against the law – whether they were a victim, acquitted, convicted of a minor offence or found guilty of a major crime such as murder.
These fully searchable records cover HO77 – The Home Office: Criminal Registers, England and Wales and ADM 6 – The Registers of Convicts in Prison Hulks Cumberland, Dolphin and Ganymede with indexes from The National Archives.
- Uniquely this release allows you the ability to search for victims of the crime (Over 132,000)
- Hunt for people using their name or alias, or look for an offence
- See images of the pages from the books and registers that reveal even more fascinating information about the individual
As these records cover a vast range of transgressions we are able to find men and women who stole small items such as shirts, potatoes, boots etc. We can also discover people who had married bigamously, forged money, uttered a counterfeit half-crown, burgled, murdered or were accused of many more other crimes. One example of a number of unusual offences found in TheGenealogist’s new release, is that of Christian Crane, tried in February 1811 – ‘Being a person of evil fame and a reputed thief’ was adjudged to be ‘a rogue and vagabond’.
These records, joining those already available within TheGenealogist’s Court & Criminal collection, will reveal the sentence of the court handed out to our ancestors. Judgements can be seen to vary massively from a fine, a short imprisonment in Newgate, a public whipping, a longer spell inside, or the ultimate sanction of death.
Other ancestors were sentenced to be ‘transported beyond the seas’ and TheGenealogist already has many registers of convicts sent to Australia between 1787 and 1867. Joining them in this new release are the ADM 6 records for convicts who were waiting to begin their voyage to the penal colonies in Australia and were locked up on a number of Prison Hulks.
You can search for your lawless ancestor at www.thegenealogist.co.uk
Or see the article I wrote for them after I was able to do some research in the new records:
https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles
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