We are pleased to report that the 2023 update to has been awarded the 2024 Mary Dudziak Digital Legal History Prize by the American Society for Legal History.
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey is a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,752 trials held at London's central criminal court, and 475 Ordinary’s Accounts of the lives of executed convicts. This expansive database offers insight into the changing composition of offences tried over time, how suspects were apprehended, how cases were brought to court, the trials themselves and the outcomes of trials.
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey has recently undergone a major update. Version 9.0, developed by , Professor Emeritus of Digital History, University of Sussex, and Robert Shoemaker, Professor Emeritus of Eighteenth-Century British History, University of 91Ö±²¥, and their project team, is a reboot of a landmark in the field of digital legal history. This new iteration makes the site more accessible and sustainable. Version 9.0 allows for more user interaction and manipulation of data through Elasticsearch and in response to feedback from scholars who have used this dataset since 2003. These enhanced searching features include the presentation of results in a macroscope format as well as more categories to allow for more advanced statistical modelling. Version 9.0 also features seven new background pages, including four showcasing legal history. The committee applauds Drs. Hitchcock and Shoemaker and their team for this substantive and sophisticated upgrading of a project that continues to break new ground in the field of digital legal history.
This award is tribute to all the hard work the (DHI) has dedicated to the upkeep and improvements of the site over the last 20 years. We’d like to extend particular recognition to Jamie McLaughlin who is a Senior Research Software Engineer for the DHI.