Online Privacy

The Devon Record Office has been awarded a grant of £32,000 by the National Archives Cataloguing Grants Programme.  This award will fund a project - entitled The Right to Remain Silent? - to catalogue, digitize and index some of the office’s most important and extensive records.

The records of the Devon Quarter Sessions courts form a complete and unbroken series which dates from 1592 until the courts were abolished in 1971, and is the earliest uninterrupted series of such records in the country.  The cataloguing grant will allow us to catalogue the sessions rolls dating from 1734 to 1804.

The records contain the raw material of the business transacted at the sessions.  There are writs, bills and depositions relating to criminal cases, papers concerning the removal of vagrants, petitions from bankrupts, coroners’ bills and reports on roads and bridges needing repair.  In addition, the 19th century rolls contain reports on lunatic asylums in the county, crime statistics and lists of county police constables and officers.  

The fact that Devon is a maritime county with strong links with the Royal Navy and was heavily involved in overseas trade is reflected in the documents.  Many of the people passing through the county were travelling long distances, not only from other parts of Britain but from the colonies and from Europe as well, and some of them appear in the sessions rolls as a result of being arrested as vagrants or for criminal behaviour.  The coroners’ bills mention sailors who were killed by falling from rigging in the dockyard at Plymouth or who drowned at sea.

A project archivist will be employed from the second half of 2012 to catalogue the sessions records, and digitizing and indexing will follow.

Once the project is complete it will complement work done by the National Archives in making criminal records available online.  It will also link in with projects already carried out in other counties to catalogue sessions records, thus enabling students to have a wider overview of topics of national relevance, such as the implementation of the poor laws and the treatment of criminals.

For further information, please contact Irene Andrews, Access and Service Development Manager, on 01392 384318 or Irene.andrews@devon.gov.uk