posted on 2023-06-09, 04:30authored byTim Hitchcock, William J Turkel
This article uses text and data mining methodologies to explore the distribution of text among the 197,000 trials published as part of the Old Bailey Proceedings, 1674-1913. By testing how the Proceedings report trials that resulted from different charges and pleas it argues that historians need to be wary of their use as evidence for eighteenth-century court behaviour. It also demonstrates that the Proceedings give a much fuller account of nineteenth-century trials, and provides evidence derived from the distribution of words between trials for the early and growing importance of “plea bargaining” in the nineteenth century, resulting in a significant transformation in the character of the criminal trial.