The Old Bailey

The sessions house of the City of London and Middlesex, standing beside Newgate Gaol on the street called Old Bailey, and the room in which the Admiralty sessions, a commission of oyer and terminer issued under the Offences at Sea Act 1536, tried six of Henry Every's crew from 19 October to 6 November 1696 and William Kidd on 8 and 9 May 1701, before the Piracy Act 1698 moved the characteristic piracy trial out to the colonies.

Also writtenOld Bailey (the street on the western edge of the City of London, outside the line of the Roman and medieval wall); Olde baily (spelling on the Agas map, about 1561); Old Bayly; Old Bailly; Bailey (common orthographic variants, sixteenth to eighteenth century); Sessions House (the standard institutional name of the building); Justice Hall (alternative name for the same building, seventeenth to eighteenth century); the Old-Baily (the form used on the 1696 and 1701 piracy trial title pages); Sessions H. (label on the Rocque and Pine survey of 1746); Central Criminal Court (statutory name of the court on the site from 1834)

Two things carry the name. The Old Bailey is a short street on the western edge of the City of London, running outside the line of the Roman wall. It is also the building on that street: the Sessions House, or Justice Hall, criminal courthouse of the City and of Middlesex, joined to Newgate Gaol, which supplied its prisoners. On the usual account the court here has been the Central Criminal Court since 1834. The street is scenery. The building is the subject.¹

Three commissions, one room

Three jurisdictions sat in the same rooms, and confusing them ruins the record. Two were ordinary: oyer and terminer and gaol delivery for the City, and gaol delivery for Middlesex. The third is why this place belongs in a pirate archive. The Admiralty sessions were a distinct commission for offences on the high seas, issued under the Offences at Sea Act 1536, which put piracy before a common law jury because the civilian Admiralty court could not hang a man by its own procedure. The trial prints say where those sessions sat: Every's men "at the Admiralty sessions, begun at the Old-Baily on the 29th of October, 1696", Kidd "at the Admiralty-Sessions ... at the Old-Baily". The pirates were tried here, not by the Old Bailey's own commission.²

Every's men, 1696

The Admiralty sessions of 19 October to 6 November 1696, the title page's 29 October being a printer's error corrected against the body of the print, tried six men taken out of Henry Every's company: Joseph Dawson, Edward Forseith, William May, William Bishop, James Lewis and John Sparkes. Every was never taken and never stood here. The plunder of the Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai, the Gunsway of the English accounts, had left the East India Company exposed at the Mughal court, and the prosecution appears to have been staged for that audience as much as for a London one.³

A first jury acquitted five of them on 19 October, Joseph Dawson having already pleaded guilty; at a second trial on a fresh indictment on 31 October they were convicted. Five hanged at Execution Dock on 25 November, Dawson reprieved.

Kidd, May 1701

William Kidd's trial ran here on 8 and 9 May 1701, on six indictments: one for the murder of his gunner William Moore, five for piracy. Nine men stood with him: Churchill, Howe, Lamley, Jenkins, Loff, Parrot, Barlicorn, Owens and Mullins. Kidd was convicted and sentenced, and hanged at Execution Dock on 23 May. No pirate condemned in this room died in it; the sentence was carried out downriver.⁴

The French passes taken out of the Rouparelle and the Quedagh Merchant, which would have supported Kidd's case that the Adventure Galley's prizes were lawful, were not produced in court, and are reported to have surfaced among state papers two centuries later.

The Act that emptied the dock

This building's monopoly over piracy trials was broken by statute while Kidd was still alive. The Piracy Act 1698 received royal assent on 11 April 1700 and allowed piracy to be tried "in any place at sea, or upon the land, in any of his Majesty's islands, plantations, colonies, dominions, forts, or factories". From 1700 the characteristic trial of the Golden Age happens at Charles Town, Nassau, Cape Coast Castle or Williamsburg.⁵

The Gambia Castle and the company trades

The Royal African Company's exclusive trade was opened to other subjects by the Act to settle the Trade to Africa of 1698, which made it lawful from 24 June 1698 for any of the King's subjects as well as the Company to trade between Cape Mount and the Cape of Good Hope on payment of ten pounds per centum ad valorem, the duty going to maintain the Company's forts and castles; and by the Asiento signed at Madrid in March 1713 the subjects of Great Britain obtained the contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America. The shipping defended from this bench included theirs. George Lowther sailed out of the Thames as second mate of the Company's Gambia Castle, of 16 guns and 30 men, Charles Russel commander, carrying soldiers under Captain John Massey to garrison a fort on the river Gambia, and in 1721 the ship was carried off and turned against her owners. Massey came home, was committed to Newgate on his own confession and, in the words of the General History, "On the 5th of July 1723, he was brought to his Tryal, at a Court of Admiralty held at the Old-Baily", where he was found guilty, received sentence of death "and was executed three Weeks after, at Execution-Dock". The Old Bailey Proceedings for the July 1723 session carry no trial of Massey; the Admiralty sessions were not printed in that series.⁶

The trade in printed trials

The quarter outside was the printing quarter, and the room manufactured copy. The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, the printed account of the sessions, began in 1674 and ran to 1913, sold at first as cheap pamphlets within days of a sitting, licensed by the City and reported to carry twenty-four pages of verbatim testimony by 1729. The piracy trials were printed separately by the same Ludgate and Stationers' Hall trade: the Every trials for John Everingham in 1696, the Kidd trial for J. Nutt in 1701.⁷

The room itself

The fabric changed under the trials. A sessions house here burned in the Great Fire of 1666. Its replacement, built in 1673, is described as open at ground level on Doric columns, so that air could carry off the gaol fever coming out of Newgate, and that open, cold, half-outdoor room is where Every's men and Kidd stood. It was enclosed and refaced in the 1730s; rebuilt, on the usual account, to George Dance's design in 1774 and wrecked in the Gordon Riots of 1780; and cleared away with Newgate for E. W. Mountford's Central Criminal Court of 1900 to 1907. Nothing of the 1673 courtroom is thought to stand. The oldest protected fabric is about seven metres of Roman city wall in the basement, scheduled as list entry 1018884, grid reference TQ 31816 81314.⁸

Enclosing the court cost lives. In the sessions of May 1750, remembered as the Black Sessions, typhus out of Newgate killed the Lord Mayor Sir Samuel Pennant, two judges and a number of barristers and jurors. Dance's courtroom of 1774 was engineered like a theatre, with raked seating, a sounding board over the dock and a mirror above the prisoner to put daylight on his face. Admiralty sessions went on sitting here long after the pirates stopped coming, as at the trial of William Jemott in February 1812, until the Central Criminal Court took the jurisdiction over in 1834, on the same dating.

What the sources cannot yet give is the inside of the two sessions that matter. Who the commissioners were in 1696 or 1701 is not established, nor whether the printed Proceedings ever covered those sittings, which cannot be tested for 1701 because no Proceedings survive for that year at all, nor whether Robert Culliford stood at this bar and pleaded his pardon, as popular accounts keep repeating. The answers would have to come out of the session minutes in HCA 1 at Kew and the printed trial accounts themselves, and, for 1696, out of a systematic search of the Proceedings. The Massey case rests on the General History alone; no record of the proceedings themselves has been read, and the precise day of his hanging is not verified. The fabric sequence before 1774, including the description of the 1673 building and its Doric columns, is likewise carried from the Old Bailey Proceedings Online project's account of the courthouse rather than from a document of the building itself.

What the evidence does not settle

Commissioners at the 1696 and 1701 Admiralty sessions

Names of the commissioners at the 1696 and 1701 sessions are unknown

Old Bailey Proceedings coverage of the Admiralty sessions

Whether the Proceedings covered the 1696 and 1701 sessions is unsettledLikely

Sequence of the 1696 Every trials

The 1696 Every trial sequence and dates rest on second-hand accountsLikely

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

The Old Bailey is a short street on the western edge of the City of London, running between Newgate Street and Ludgate Hill outside the line of the Roman and medieval city wall; by extension the name attached to the building that dominated the street, the Sessions House or Justice Hall, which adjoined Newgate Gaol and served as the criminal courthouse for the City of London and for the county of Middlesex, and since 1834 the court on this site has been the Central Criminal Court. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period topography: Map of Early Modern London (University of Victoria), Old Bailey (street) and Sessions House entries, mapoflondon.uvic.ca, and Historic England, London Wall: section of Roman wall at the Central Criminal Court, list entry 1018884, for the street, its line outside the wall and the Sessions House as the criminal courthouse of the City and Middlesex (Confirmed); Walter Thornbury, Old and New London, vol. 2, "The Old Bailey," via British History Online, for the constitution of the Central Criminal Court on the site in 1834 (Probable)
Three separate jurisdictions sat in the same rooms and must not be conflated: the commission of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery for the City of London, gaol delivery for the county of Middlesex, and the Admiralty sessions, a distinct commission of oyer and terminer issued for offences committed on the high seas under the Offences at Sea Act 1536 (28 Hen. 8 c. 15), which required piracy to be tried by common law forms on an indictment and before a jury because the civilian Admiralty court could not try it to a capital conclusion by its own procedure; the printed reports of the two great Golden Age trials name this building as the venue of those Admiralty sessions on their title pages. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Trial pamphlets, state records and statute: The Tryals of Joseph Dawson, Edward Forseith, William May, William Bishop, James Lewis, and John Sparkes... at the Admiralty Sessions begun at the Old-Baily on the 29th of October 1696 (printed for John Everingham, 1696; Library of Congress LCCN 19011844, EEBO TCP A63217), and The Arraignment, Tryal, and Condemnation of Captain William Kidd... at the Admiralty-Sessions, held by His Majesty's Commission at the Old-Baily, on Thursday the 8th. and Friday the 9th. of May, 1701 (printed for J. Nutt, 1701; Library of Congress LCCN 18011064), for the venue as stated on the title pages (Confirmed); The National Archives, High Court of Admiralty: Oyer and Terminer Records, HCA 1, 1535 to 1834, and Old Bailey Sessions Papers, PCOM 1, for the Admiralty sessions as a separate commission called by oyer and terminer in London (Confirmed); Offences at Sea Act 1536, 28 Hen. 8 c. 15, for the statutory basis (Confirmed)
Admiralty sessions opened at the Old Bailey on Monday 19 October 1696, the title page's 29 October being a printer's error corrected against the body of the print, and ended on 6 November 1696 for the trial of Joseph Dawson, Edward Forseith, William May, William Bishop, James Lewis and John Sparkes, taken as members of Henry Every's company; Every himself was never taken and never stood in this building, and the prosecution answered the diplomatic crisis that the plunder of the Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai, the Gunsway of the English accounts, had created for the English East India Company at the Mughal court. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Trial pamphlet: The Tryals of Joseph Dawson, Edward Forseith, William May, William Bishop, James Lewis, and John Sparkes for several piracies and robberies by them committed in the company of Every the grand pirate... at the Admiralty Sessions begun at the Old-Baily on the 29th of October 1696 and ended on the 6th of November (printed for John Everingham, 1696; Library of Congress LCCN 19011844), for the venue, the opening and closing dates and the six named defendants (Confirmed); the same source read with the political context for the East India Company motive, which is Probable and which the page states as a reading of the prosecution rather than as fact. The sequence of first trial, acquittal, retrial on a fresh indictment and conviction, and the executions of 25 November 1696 with Joseph Dawson reprieved, is Probable, was not established from the pamphlet itself, and is carried on the page as reported at second hand
William Kidd was arraigned and tried at Admiralty sessions held by royal commission at the Old Bailey on 8 and 9 May 1701 on six indictments, one for the murder of his gunner William Moore and five for piracy, and was convicted and sentenced; nine men were tried at the same sessions, Nicholas Churchill, James Howe, Robert Lamley, William Jenkins, Gabriel Loff, Hugh Parrot, Richard Barlicorn, Abel Owens and Darby Mullins; Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock, Wapping, on 23 May 1701, no pirate condemned in this room having died in it, the sentence being carried out downriver. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Trial pamphlet: The Arraignment, Tryal, and Condemnation of Captain William Kidd, for Murther and Piracy, upon Six Several Indictments, at the Admiralty-Sessions, held by His Majesty's Commission at the Old-Baily, on Thursday the 8th. and Friday the 9th. of May, 1701 (printed for J. Nutt, 1701; Library of Congress, Law Library, Piracy Trials Collection, KD372.K53 K53 1701, LCCN 18011064), for the venue, the dates, the six indictments, the co-defendants, the verdict and the execution at Execution Dock on 23 May 1701 (Confirmed). The non-production of the French passes taken from the Rouparelle and the Quedagh Merchant, and their reported rediscovery among state papers in the twentieth century, rest on Samuel Marquis, "Captain Kidd and the Trial of the Century," Sea History no. 192 (Autumn 2025), are Probable, and are carried on the page as reported rather than as established
The Piracy Act 1698 (11 Will. 3 c. 7), "An Act for the more effectual Suppression of Piracy", which received royal assent on 11 April 1700, allowed piracy to be tried and determined "in any place at sea, or upon the land, in any of his Majesty's islands, plantations, colonies, dominions, forts, or factories", removing the need to ship accused pirates to England and ending this building's practical monopoly over piracy prosecution, so that from 1700 onward the characteristic Golden Age piracy trial is held at a colonial venue such as Charles Town, Nassau, Cape Coast Castle or Williamsburg rather than at the Old Bailey. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Statute: Piracy Act 1698, 11 Will. 3 c. 7, "An Act for the more effectual Suppression of Piracy", Statutes of the Realm vol. 7, via British History Online, british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol7/pp590-594, for the text, the royal assent of 11 April 1700 and the authorisation of trial in the colonies (Confirmed); the same source for the initial limitation to seven years, the continuation of 1706 and the making perpetual in 1719 (Probable). The consequence, that the Old Bailey's dominance in piracy prosecution is concentrated in the 1690s and the first year of the eighteenth century and that it thereafter handled residual and returning cases, is this Archive's own reading of the statute and of the surviving trials
Cases arising from the trade in enslaved people reached this courtroom. George Lowther sailed out of the Thames as second mate of the Royal African Company's ship Gambia Castle, of 16 guns and 30 men, Charles Russel commander, carrying soldiers under Captain John Massey to garrison a fort on the river Gambia; in 1721 the ship was carried off and turned against her owners. Massey afterwards returned to England, was committed to Newgate on his own confession and, in the words of the General History, "On the 5th of July 1723, he was brought to his Tryal, at a Court of Admiralty held at the Old-Baily", where he was found guilty, received sentence of death "and was executed three Weeks after, at Execution-Dock". The Royal African Company's exclusive trade had been opened to other subjects by the Act to settle the Trade to Africa of 1698, which made it lawful from 24 June 1698 for any of the King's subjects as well as the Company to trade between Cape Mount and the Cape of Good Hope on payment of ten pounds per centum ad valorem, the duty being appropriated to maintaining the Company's forts and castles; and by the Asiento signed at Madrid in March 1713 the subjects of Great Britain obtained the contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Near-contemporary print and statute: A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), chapter XII, "Of Capt. George Lowther, And his Crew": Lowther "sailed out of the River of Thames, in one of the Royal African Company's Ships, call'd the Gambia Castle, of 16 Guns and 30 Men, Charles Russel Commander; of which Ship, the said Lowther was second Mate. Aboard of the same Ship, was a certain Number of Soldiers, commanded by one John Massey"; and for the trial and execution as quoted. Statutes of the Realm, volume 7, 1695 to 1701, "William III, 1697-8: An Act to settle the Trade to Africa. [Chapter XXVI]", pp. 393 to 397, read at British History Online: "it shall and may be lawfull to and for any of the Subjects of His Majesties Realm of England as well as for the said Company from and after the said Four and twentieth Day of June... to trade... to and for the Coast of Africa between Cape Mount and the Cape of Good Hope... paying for the Uses aforesaid a Duty of Ten Pounds per Centum ad Valorem". And The Assiento, or Contract for Allowing to the Subjects of Great Britain the Liberty of Importing Negroes into the Spanish America (London, 1713), read in the copy digitised by the Internet Archive (item cihm_28677). The trial venue and the execution rest on the General History alone; a search of the Old Bailey Proceedings for the July 1723 session found no trial of Massey there, the Admiralty sessions not being printed in that series, and the precise execution date of 26 July 1723 is not verified.
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, the printed account of the sessions held in this building, began publication in 1674 and ran to 1913, sold at first as cheap popular pamphlets issued within days of each sitting, licensed by the City of London and expanded to twenty-four pages of verbatim testimony by 1729; the two great piracy trials were printed separately by the same Ludgate and Stationers' Hall trade, the Every trials for John Everingham in 1696 and the Kidd trial for J. Nutt in 1701, and those printed narratives are the objects on which the later literature of Golden Age piracy rests. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period print series and project publication histories: The Proceedings of the Old Bailey (Old Bailey Sessions Papers), 1674 to 1913, Old Bailey Proceedings Online, oldbaileyonline.org, and London Lives, "Old Bailey Proceedings: Accounts of Criminal Trials," old.londonlives.org/static/OBP.jsp, for the beginning of publication in 1674, the run to 1913 and the character of the early issues (Confirmed), and for the City licensing, the expansion to twenty-four pages with verbatim testimony by 1729, the comprehensive reporting required from 1778 and the need for subsidy by 1787 (Probable); the 1696 and 1701 trial pamphlets themselves (Library of Congress LCCN 19011844 and 18011064) for the separate commercial printing by John Everingham and J. Nutt (Confirmed). Whether the Proceedings ever printed the Admiralty sessions of 1696 and 1701 is unsettled and is carried as an open question on the page, no Proceedings surviving for 1701 at all
The sessions house on this site was destroyed in the Great Fire of September 1666 and rebuilt in 1673 as a three storey brick building open at ground level on Doric columns so that air could move through the court and reduce the transmission of gaol fever from Newgate Gaol, and that open, semi-outdoor room is where Every's men and William Kidd stood; it was enclosed and refaced in masonry in the 1730s, rebuilt to George Dance's design in 1774, damaged in the Gordon Riots of 1780 and rebuilt again, and swept away with Newgate for E. W. Mountford's Central Criminal Court, built 1900 to 1907; nothing of the 1673 courtroom survives above ground, and the oldest protected fabric on the site is a stretch of Roman city wall about seven metres long in the basement, scheduled as list entry 1018884 at Ordnance Survey grid reference TQ 31816 81314. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Project scholarship, heritage designations and antiquarian narrative: Old Bailey Proceedings Online project (Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield), "History of the Old Bailey Courthouse," dhi.ac.uk, for the destruction of the pre-Fire sessions house in September 1666 (Confirmed), the rebuilding of 1673 with an open ground floor on Doric columns to ventilate against gaol fever (Probable), the rebuilding by George Dance in 1774 (Probable), and the loss of the earlier courtrooms (Probable); the same source for the enclosing and refacing in the 1730s; Walter Thornbury, Old and New London, vol. 2, for the Gordon Riots damage of 1780 (Probable); Historic England list entry 1359218, Central Criminal Court, for Mountford's building of 1900 to 1907 (Confirmed); Historic England list entry 1018884, London Wall: section of Roman wall at the Central Criminal Court, scheduled 9 May 1974, for the surviving Roman masonry in the basement and the grid reference TQ 31816 81314 (Confirmed)

Title page of "The Arraignment, Tryal, and Condemnation of Captain William Kidd, for Murther and Piracy, upon Six Several Indictments, at the Admiralty-Sessions, held by His Majesty's Commission at the Old-Baily, on Thursday the 8th. and Friday the 9th. of May, 1701", London, printed for J. Nutt, 1701 The single best exhibit this page can carry, because the title leaf itself makes the central point of this record. Law Library of Congress, Piracy Trials Collection (LCCN 18011064; KD372.K53 K53 1701). Public domain.

The Old Bailey, 51.5155, -0.1019. On the map