Listen :
Availability:
Sorry, this programme is not available to listen again . (why?)
Last broadcast on Thu, 29 Jul 2010, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
Historians struggle to decipher letters and diaries - but what about those who left no record? The poor, those who couldn't write? There is one fantastic source, and it is now online: the Old Bailey Archives.
Through court cases, we can hear the voices of the 18th century - thanks to the speedy court shorthand writers, everyone's speech is recorded, from the posh to the poor. It's the nearest thing we have to a tape recording of the past.
Professor Amanda Vickery presents dramatised extracts from gripping court cases and discusses with fellow historians what they reveal about 18th century society and culture.
In this programme, the voices of children. Even children as young as seven appeared in court in the 18th century, as witnesses, victims - and as criminals. Amanda Vickery presents three cases which capture the voices of children, and open up the reality of their lives.
One reveals the network of relationships in the workhouse, and the cruelty and kindness which coexisted there. The second exposes the vulnerability of teenagers working as apprentices. And the third features a little girl who is sentenced to death - but who then escapes the gallows and makes a long and prosperous life for herself.
With historians Tim Hitchcock, Ruth Richardson and Zoe Laidlaw. Recorded on location in The Foundling Museum.
The Old Bailey online archive
All the cases discussed in the programme can be found in the Old Bailey online archive – a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court. The website makes available a fully searchable, digitised collection of all surviving editions of the Old Bailey Proceedings from 1674 to 1913, and of the Ordinary of Newgate's Accounts between 1676 and 1772. It allows access to over 197,000 trials and biographical details of approximately 2,500 men and women executed at Tyburn, free of charge for non-commercial use.
Guest: Professor Tim Hitchcock
Professor Tim Hitchcock (University of Hertfordshire) who has spent the last twenty years helping to create a 'new history from below' which puts the experiences and agency of the poor and of working people at the heart of our understanding of the history of eighteenth-century Britain. With Professor Robert Shoemaker of the University of Sheffield and Professor Clive Emsley at the Open University he has also created the on-line and entirely searchable edition of the Old Bailey Sessions Proceedings.
Guest: Dr Zoë Laidlaw
Dr Zoë Laidlaw (Royal Holloway, University of London). Her research interests focus on the political, social and intellectual history of the nineteenth-century British Empire. She has published on colonial networks, philanthropic lobbyists, the governance of empire and imperial cartography.
Guest: Dr Ruth Richardson
Ruth Richardson is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in History at the University of Hertfordshire at Hatfield; Affiliated Scholar in the History of Science at the University of Cambridge; and Society of Apothecaries Examiner and Lecturer in the History of Medicine. She is an interdisciplinary historian with particular interests in literature, history, the visual arts and medicine.
Recording details
The programme was recorded on location at the Foundling Museum, which tells the story of the Foundling Hospital, London’s first home for abandoned children.
Broadcasts
-
Thu 29 Jul 201009:00
-
Thu 29 Jul 201021:30
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~37~RS~){kind=small}