Two years ago Hawkings published Railway Ancestors: A Guide to the Staff Records of the Railway Companies of England and Wales 1822‐1947 (RR 95/513) which not only examined at some length the various types of relevant records involved, but also the 988 separate railway companies which coalesced in the Big Four in the 1920s, and eventually into British Railways under the postwar Labour Government. That work was awarded the prize for the best generalist reference work reviewed in 1995 by Reference Reviews. In this softcover edition of a book first published in 1992, for railwaymen read criminals, and for the railway companies read the various types of criminal and prison system records. In research, form, and treatment, the two books are very much alike, sharing the same high levels of study and investigation, the same determination to interpret complex and difficult documents and procedures, and illustrating the same sort of detective skills and use of case studies.
Providing a guide for all those wishing to thread their way through the maze of criminal records, family, social, criminal and legal historians, Hawkings examines over 20 different aspects of the criminal justice system and its documentation by means of individual examples. These are not just selected cases: they were once living people caught up in the legal system, some irredeemable out‐and‐out criminals, others simply caught up in the harsh standards and circumstances of daily life when it was almost impossible to avoid constant brushes with the law. Close investigation of prisons and prison life, criminal registers, calendars of prisoners, petty sessions and juvenile offenders, criminal lunatics, transportation to America and Australia, Home Office warrants and correspondence, and the records of the Director of Public Prosecutions, etc., end with a case study of Thomas Hartnell convicted of robbery with violence at Somerset Assizes, Taunton, 24 March 1875.
Tracing and outlining Hartnell’s criminal career through the documented record, Hawkings researches in the assize records, the Pentonville Prison Register, where he discovers a photograph, and in the registers of Woking prison. At the end of his six years sentence Hartnell was certified insane and transferred to Broadmoor. Hawkings picks up the trail in Home Office Warrants and, as all pauper lunatics were the responsibility of the county, in the Somerset Quarterly Sessions and from the records of the Somerset Asylum (now in the Somerset Record Office). Besides details from the Somerset Lunatic Asylum Male Case Book, Hawkings found rich pickings in the Poor Law Union correspondence. A questionnaire answered and signed by Hartnell’s father also survives. Released from the Somerset Asylum in April 1881, Hartnell was soon in trouble again, being found guilty of being disorderly and refusing to quit licensed premises in June 1883 at Wiveliscombe Petty Sessions, and of breaking and entering his father’s house and stealing various items, for which he was sentenced to six months with hard labour in Shepton Mallet Prison. What happened to him after his discharge has yet to be discovered. A further 18 pages of excerpts from the essential documentation follow as Hawkings brings to life Hartnell’s prolonged encounter with the law.
Hawkings similarly peppers his text with actual examples in his other chapters. In “Prisons and prison life”, which considers gaols and houses of correction; prison hulks; Government prisons (female convicts, tickets of leave, penal servitude); the 1877 Prison Act and the Prison Commission; and Juvenile Offenders, he includes a dietary sheet, a report on the state and condition of the Bridewell at Abingdon, a sick report from Ilchester Gaol, detailed reports of the cases of eight individual prisoners, returns of male and female convicts released under Orders of Licence, and correspondence from Sir William Harcourt, Home Secretary, 1880‐85, to Queen Victoria. Over a hundred pages are taken up with a bibliography, a glossary, and eight appendices, encompassing advice on using the records; calendars of prisoners, prison records, and prison registers and journals in county record offices; criminal records of the Courts of Great Session at the National Library of Wales; records in the Public Record Office (12 categories); criminal records held in police archives up to 1900; criminal records currently held by the Prisons Service; Courts of Jurisdiction (by county);and existing prisons in England and Wales in use prior to 1900. Even the most exacting reviewers, reference librarians, or its many potential users, could not reasonably expect a more comprehensive or exhaustive guide.
