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PRISONS - LONDON 1856

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Reece

Reece Report 27 Feb 2012 09:13


Help, please in finding which prison a bigamist was sent to and how to find his discharge after a one year sentence.

We have a newspaper report and sentence from the Old Bailey February 1856.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Reece

Researching:
Jones, (Wales) Morris, Rivett, Harris, Northamptonshire, Crabb(e), Cleal, Tizzard (Dorset/Somerset) Whiteman, Sargent, Gaymer in Sussex.

DazedConfused

DazedConfused Report 27 Feb 2012 12:23

Your main problem will be finding which prison he was sent to.

Not all prisoner then (and more so now) went to a 'local' one.

And many prisons only kept their records for the minimum 3 years after release.

In London, Wandsworth has an archive only because no-one bothered to throw out the old paperwork.

And although sent for 1 year he may have been released early.

Sorry to be all doom and gloom, but this is a really hard part of genealogy to find out, along with finding where an ancestor might be buried.

I wish you luck.

You could post his name on hereand maybe someone may have some info for you.

Cheers PP :-)

Researching:
We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars, Oscar Wilde New avatar, my dad age about 3/4 months, could have been worse, it could have been the awful nude on a rug!!

Reece

Reece Report 27 Feb 2012 12:47

Hello PigletsPal,

Thanks very much for your reply - yes, this is a difficult one!

Regards,
Reece

Researching:
Jones, (Wales) Morris, Rivett, Harris, Northamptonshire, Crabb(e), Cleal, Tizzard (Dorset/Somerset) Whiteman, Sargent, Gaymer in Sussex.

Kuros

Kuros Report 28 Feb 2012 10:53

We found out which prison my great-grandfather went to by searching the records of the assizes where he was sentenced. These are kept in Shrewsbury record office and he went to jail there. You could perhaps try searching similar records. My great-grandfather got six months with hard labour for stealing a cockerel! It seems your ancestor was unlucky. Many people got away with bigamy.

Reece

Reece Report 28 Feb 2012 19:13

Hello Annie G.,

Yes, thanks for your message. Sentenced at the Old Bailey to be confined for one year so there may well be some record there on just where he was sent.

I heard to day that the "wife" did marry and have a family and lived to be 93! No trace yet of the man in question but he did add a second surname to his original one when he "married" and, who knows, probably another one after that.

Thanks again.
Reece

Researching:
Jones, (Wales) Morris, Rivett, Harris, Northamptonshire, Crabb(e), Cleal, Tizzard (Dorset/Somerset) Whiteman, Sargent, Gaymer in Sussex.