Ross Poldark goes to Bodmin Assizes

Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark
 BBC production 2015.

Ross Poldark finds himself fighting for his life at the Bodmin Assizes this weekend. The Assize Courts ran in England from the 13th century right up to 1971 when they were replaced by Crown Courts. For most of English history the criminal courts system in England fell into three categories:

1. Magistrates’ courts where minor offences were dealt with in ‘petty sessions.’ These made up the  vast majority of criminal cases during the 1700s . Magistrates were themselves unpaid officials who were drawn from the ranks of the wealthy, and were expected to defend the English law as amateurs. As a result, many magistrates were easily corrupted. In London, Horace Walpole believed that ‘the greatest criminals of this town are the officers of justice’.

Sir William Blackstone, Judge.

2. Local county courts where trials were held four times a year at the ‘quarter sessions.’ For more serious crimes such as rape or murder, cases were referred to Crown courts, who sat at quarterly assizes in large towns or at the Old Bailey in London. For the ordinary citizen, trials at these higher courts were hugely intimidating experiences. Business was conducted in Latin. Few of those accused had a defence barristers until the end of the century, and witnesses were usually examined directly by the judge and sometimes by members of the jury. The vast majority of cases lasted for only a matter of minutes, and it was not uncommon for dozens of cases to be heard in a single day.

3. Assizes where the most serious criminal trials were heard twice a year by judges appointed by the monarch who travelled around a ‘Circuit’ of towns dispensing justice. Bodmin in Cornwall was on what was called the ‘Western Circuit’ which covered Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset. The lent assizes were held at Winchester, Salisbury, Dorchester, Exeter, Launceston, Taunton and Bristol, and were generally attended in that order. The summer assizes were held at Winchester, Salisbury, Dorchester, Exeter, either Bodmin or Truro, and either Wells or Bridgwater, and were generally attended in that order.

Fictional Judge Buller in Garrow's Law, BBC.

Bodmin Gaol, was built in the late 18th century and was the first British prison to hold prisoners in separate cells although this did not mean each prisoner had their own cell, those awaiting trial as well as convicts were often held in cells up to 10 at a time.

During the 18th century criminals and law breakers were often celebrated in popular culture and seen as local heroes. Stories of daring criminality were reported in printed pamphlets, books and newspapers, and generated high levels of public interest across the country.

Highwaymen, in particular, were held in high esteem by many people. Tales of highway robbery often became the stuff of folklore and legend, and several highwaymen became celebrities in their own lifetime. When street robber Jack Sheppard was hanged in 1724 after making four escapes from prison, 200,000 people attended his execution and when the celebrated 18th-century highwayman John Rann was acquitted of a charge of theft in 1774 he was mobbed by a crowd of adoring admirers as he left court in London.
But anyone being brought before a court of Assize was usually in serious trouble.


Over fifty prisoners were condemned at the Bodmin Assize Court and were hanged in the prison. The prison was also used for holding convicts sentenced to transportation; a punishment that was like a living death to many as they never saw their family or their home ever again.

Henry Fielding

18th-century law enforcement was very different from modern-day policing. The prosecution of criminals remained largely in the hands of victims who organised their own investigations and constructed the case against the accused. Every parish was obliged to have one or two constables, who were selected every year from the community. Service was unpaid and done in the appointee’s spare time. Many simply paid for substitutes to stand in for them. However, from the 1750s this system of local policing was strengthened by a more professional force of officers. In 1751 London magistrate Henry Fielding founded the Bow Street Runners, who for the first time provided a permanent body of armed men to carry out investigations and arrests in London.

The 18th-century criminal justice system relied heavily on the existence of the ‘bloody code’. This was the list of crimes that were punishable by death - by 1800 there were over 200 capital offences. Guilty verdicts in cases of murder, rape and treason - even lesser offences such as poaching, burglary and criminal damage - could all see the accused at the gallows. Executions were elaborate and shocking affairs, designed to act as a deterrent to those who watched. Until 1783 London executions took place at Tyburn eight times a year, where as many as 20 felons could be hanged at the same time.

Judges also had at their disposal a range of other unsavoury punishments including transportation to the American colonies and later in the century to Australia and those convicted of lesser crimes could be fined, branded on the hand with a hot iron, or publicly shamed by being whipped ‘at the cart’s tail’, or being set in the pillory. The pillory was not an easy option. After many years of successfully plying her trade as the keeper of a ‘Disorderly House’ otherwise called a brothel in St James London, Elizabeth Needham was fined 1 shilling and required to stand twice in the pillory in 1731. She was so severely pelted on the first occasion that she died two days later and never completed her sentence.



Sources:
https://www.bl.uk/georgian-britain/articles/crime-and-punishment-in-georgian-britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodmin_Jail
http://www.bodminjail.org/