New entries added to our Quarter Sessions index online!
- 2nd March 2017
Regular visitors to the Indexes and Guides section of the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service website may have noticed that the index to our Quarter Sessions papers has grown since Christmas, with the addition of an index to the 1854 papers. This is an increase of over 2,000 entries, now searchable online.
This is entirely thanks to one of our very dedicated volunteers, Mary Lawrance. Since 2007 Mary has worked on Quarter Sessions records from the 1850s, systematically working through the papers, sorting them into order, numbering them and listing them onto a spreadsheet. From this spreadsheet we can find out all sorts of information, for example, in the Midsummer session of 1854 William Counley of Tenbury appeared in court charged with stealing combs, braces, pins, printed books, printed paper and cotton tape – goods belonging to Michael Duffy. He appeared alongside Julia Hunt of Wolverley, charged with stealing half a peck of potatoes belonging to Benjamin Edmonds, a farmer of Blakeshall.
An example of an entry in the Quarter Sessions records.
The collection contains a wealth of information about criminal activity in the county, and is an excellent resource for all kinds of research. We are grateful to Mary for helping us to make them more accessible.
Mary is currently working on the 1855 Sessions papers, which will be uploaded onto the spreadsheet in due course.
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