The History of the Old Bailey - Expansion

Old Bailey (P1000292) (Photo credit: swh)

Having been resurrected after the Great Fire of London, the Old Bailey court buildings saw significant developments throughout the Georgian period alongside its neighbour, Newgate gaol, until it was completely rebuilt at the start of the 20th century. The second instalment of this article tells this story, arriving at the Old Bailey we know today.

Georgian Developments
The newly rebuilt Old Bailey courts were open to the elements until 1734 to reduce the prevalence of diseases and with good reason it seems. After they were enclosed to improve privacy, typhus became a common problem, accounting for 60 souls in one outbreak alone, the Lord Mayor amongst them. The buildings saw further developments between 1774 and 1824 when a new court was added. Following the fire and up until 1834, the courts had had a limited remit as the court for London’s shire county of Middlesex but, in 1834, the Old Bailey took on responsibility for hearing cases from across England as it became officially recognised as the Central Criminal Court for the first time.

In its role from the time of the Great Fire of London to its designation as the official central court for England & Wales, the Old Bailey was also responsible for hearing all death penalty cases in the capital due the the presence of the neighbouring Newgate prison. Newgate became the holding gaol and the final destination for those awaiting the ultimate punishment and indeed the hangings of convicted prisoners were performed just outside of the gaol and court buildings right up until 1868. The gaol and the courts of the Old Bailey were connected by a passage known as Dead Man’s Walk where crowds of spectators would gather to admonish the guilty party on their short trip to the gallows. The popularity of this spectacle grew to the extent that the court authorities were forced to build an underground passage for the condemned after one single crushing incident in 1807 which killed 28.

20th Century Development
Up until the twentieth century the Old Bailey and its courtrooms were annexed to its much larger next-door neighbour, Newgate prison. In 1902 however the last of the ancient and infamous gaol was finally demolished and in its place the modern Old Bailey was constructed and extended to form the buildings that are much more recognisable to us today.

This new Old Bailey was built in an Edwardian Baroque style by the architect Edward Mountford, the man who was also behind the town halls in Sheffield and Lancaster. It was complete with a ceremonial entrance, still only deemed fit for the Lord Mayor and royalty, as well as the famous dome with its iconic and unmistakable Lady Justice figure stood upon it. The Lady Justice herself (a derivation from the classical goddesses of justice, e.g., the Roman Justitia) was created by the sculptor Frederick Pomeroy with the sword in her right hand and scales in her left to signify the weighing-up of evidence and the application of justice respectively. The new grand Old Bailey finally had its official opening by the reigning Edward VII in 1907.

However, a third of a century later the building suffered extensive damage from German bombing during the London blitz and the building wasn’t fully restored to its former glory until some years into the 50s. The interior of the Great Hall beneath the dome, for example wasn’t completed until 1952 although it was updated to include paintings which reflected its turbulent recent war history, the older history of the city of London as well as key figures in the history of law and justice (and of course royalty). The Blitz wasn’t the last trauma to hit the buildings of the Old Bailey though as they were also damaged by a strategically placed IRA car bomb in 1973 - perhaps a perverse testament to the role that the courts play and their importance in criminal law proceedings in the UK. Visitors to the courts can still see a shard of glass which became embedded in the wall above the main staircase as a result of the explosion.

The final or most recent stage in the development of the Old Bailey complex came the year previous in 1972 when it was extended with the construction of the new South Block boosting its capacity and taking its court count to 19 - a long way from its original incarnation as a single courtroom annexed to the long gone Newgate gaol.

© Stuart Mitchell 2012
If you want to find out more legal services in the capital then you can visit Solicitors London.

The History of the Old Bailey - Background & Origins

English: Plaque Old Bailey Plaque on the wall of the Old Bailey courthouse commemerating the site where the old Newgate prison used to stand (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Old Bailey is one of the most famous institutions relating to law and crime in the UK and perhaps beyond. The building and courtrooms of the Old Bailey have been the stage for many of the country’s highest profile criminal cases down the centuries and so the name, as well as the building with its domed roof and gold statue of Lady Justice, have become symbolic of the judicial system and the courts of London and the UK.

Background
The name the ‘Old Bailey’ is used to refer to what is more accurately the Central Criminal Court for England and Wales (Scotland & Northern Ireland have their own) and the buildings that make up the court complex. The courts are to be found on the edge of the City of London on the corner of the Old Bailey road and Newgate Street.

In its role as a crown court, the Old Bailey has and does witness the most significant and serious criminal cases from around the capital as well as a few, when their specific circumstances warrant it, from elsewhere across England and Wales. As a result it has the highest profile of any criminal court in the country and so it is referred to extensively in popular British culture. The iconic Lady Justice statue atop the domed roof symbolises British justice whilst the functional entrance to the courts in south of Old Bailey has become very familiar to us all from countless news reports down the years.

Early History
The common-use name for the courts is actually taken from the name of the street on which it is found. The name of the street in turn refers to the fact that it was historically the site of the western segment of the old wall, or bailey, surrounding the city of London. The wall originally dated from the Roman occupation and a small portion of it can still be seen in the basement of the Old Bailey court buildings.

The site immediately to the north of the Old Bailey was the location of a gate within these walls which could also trace its origins back to the Roman era and which sat across the old Silchester to Londinium Roman road. The imposing gate buildings, which became known as Newgate, were appropriated to house criminals entering or leaving the city and in 1188 the first incarnation of the infamous Newgate prison was constructed at the gate on the orders of Henry II.

The Old Bailey courthouses evolved as an addition to the Newgate prison whilst the prison complex was developed and improved in the 16th century using funding from the late Sir Richard Whittington (the inspiration behind Dick Whittington). The first record of the actual law court dates back to 1585 although that, along with the rest of the prison complex were destroyed in the 1666 Great Fire of London and whilst the prison was rebuilt in 1672, the courts were not reestablished for a further two years.

© Stuart Mitchell 2012
If you want to find out more legal services in the capital then you can visit Solicitors London.

A Brief Introduction to Criminal Law - Aims

In the UK, as in much of the world, the idea of breaking the law is closely aligned with the idea of committing a crime. However, crimes in truth only result from breaches in criminal law, a defined and restricted area of law which is looked at further in this two part article.

Criminal law can generally be thought of as the law of the land or the law of the state. That is, it refers to the laws that the state puts down in writing, legislature, to protect itself and its citizens. As a result, a breach in criminal law will result in a case being brought by the state (in the UK, the crown prosecution) against the accused offender.

It is helpful to consider criminal law in contrast to civil law, where cases are brought by individual parties against other parties, and which is based on a common law (or case law) framework where the law is not defined in legislature but instead cases are settled in accordance with precedents set elsewhere in the judicial system.

In criminal law a breach which leads to a conviction will, generally speaking, result in a punishment for the offender. These punishments will have a number of aims including one or more of the following:

Retribution - inflicting hardship on the offender to reflect the hardship they inflicted on their victim.
Deterrence - of the offender from committing further crimes as well as other potential offenders
Incapacitation - of the offender to prevent them committing further crimes
Rehabilitation - of the offender so that they can add value to society and to prevent further crimes
Restitution - to restore the legal status of the victim, as is the aim of civil law (see below)

These aims are not mutually exclusive. Incarceration as a punishment, for example, may fulfill the first three and, depending on the nature of their time in prison, the fourth as well.

The aim of retribution for retribution's sake is less popular now despite being key to the development of criminal law down the ages. It originated from a concept similar to restitution but with the aim of restoring a universal balance where the offender should suffer the equivalent consequences as experienced by the victim. This lead to the establishment of institutions to restore this balance, to determine, formalise and measure out the retribution rather than allow personal retributions (vendettas, revenge) within a society which may have gone beyond the scale of the original offence.

The earliest forms of criminal law therefore followed the lines of lex talionis (a punishment to fit a crime) otherwise referred to as ‘an eye for an eye’ (after a passage in the Old Testament/Torah). However, the ideas of ‘turning the other cheek’ from the New Testament and more generally that ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ (‘an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind’) have tempered this philosophy, particularly in the west.

The similar concept of restitution is still the aim of civil law; similar except that civil law aims to restore the legal status of the ‘victim’ as if the offence hadn’t happened regardless of whether that acts as a punishment and/or deterrent and instead of aiming to restore universal balance.

The second part of this article looks at the key concepts that define a crime and criminal law including those of actus reus and mens rea. However for those looking for further advice on criminal or civil law proceedings they should seek professional advice from qualified criminal law solicitors or, for example, family law specialists respectively.

© Stuart Mitchell 2012