p-police-msg - 2/4/94 Period law enforcement. NOTE: See also the files: punishments-msg, med-law-art, p-lawyers-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ From: waltern at thoreau.rand.org (Walter Nelson) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Elizabethan Law-Enforcement Date: 7 Jan 1994 19:26:13 GMT Organization: RAND Corporation David Schroeder (ds4p+ at andrew.cmu.edu) wrote: : If someone was murdered in 16th century London, who would have : to be involved, in an official capacity? The Warden of the : specific ward where the murder occurred? The watchmen of : that ward? Some court officials? Please help me out and : point me at some sources for more information... The : library at Carnegie Mellon was strong on printing : information, but I didn't have much luck finding : stuff about Elizabethan law-enforcement. I'm working from memory here, and I invite anyone who is better informed to add or correct, but I think it goes like this. When a murder (or any other unexplained death) is discovered, the coroner (a local notable, not an MD) is called. He convenes a Coroner's Inquest and summons witnesses. Once testimony is given the inquest rules on the cause of death (Murder, death by misadventure, suicide etc). If it is ruled to be Murder, then it falls into the hands of the local law enforcement officials: the Justices of the Peace, the Bailiffs and the Constables. The procedure, at this point, is fairly informal, though I imagine the J.P. would have overall direction of the "investigation". Hopefully, the Coroner's inquest will have pointed to possible suspects. If that was the case, a "hue and cry" would be raised. The town crier would go about ringing his bell and announcing that so-and-so was wanted for unlawful murder, and anyone who happen to see him would be charged to raise a cry, and he would be apprehended by a large, ugly mob. If the malefactor was not immediately obvious, then the system would not function so well. There were no full time detectives (except those charged with tracking down Jesuits and other Catholic troublemakers), and no accepted police procedural. The J.P. and his functionaries, the Bailiffs could gather such clues as they could, but unless someone came forward and said "I sar who done it", the murderer was pretty well off. The Constables primary duty was security and supervising the Watch. The Watch was a group of citizens who would stop those going about after curfew and interrogate them. If the malefactor was stupid enough to be caught by the Watch, and stupid enough to give a suspicious answer, he might be aprehended that way. Also, each Parish had a Beadle, who not only handled orphans and such, but also kept an eye on the neighborhood to make sure everyone was being a good little subject of the Queen. He might also turn up a murderer by asking around. Generally though, it seems like each law enforcement official was pretty much free to conduct his own investigation, in concert or in competition with all of the others. However, when it came time for a Warrant of Arrest, it had to all come back to the J.P. By Wardens, I think you mean the Parish Wardens. These folks generally only concerned themselves with whether people were attending church regularly, but I'm sure if one of them had an opinion, he would feel free to voice it. The position of Sheriff was, by the 16th Century, becoming largely a ceremonial position with concern primarily over tax collection. Of course, if the Sheriff had an idea who done it, nothing would stop him from following up on those suspicions. Walter From: vader at meryl.csd.uu.se (]ke Eldberg) Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Re: Elizabethan Law-Enforcement Date: 7 Jan 94 22:10:59 Organization: Indiana Jones University Apropos law enforcement: One of the medieval Swedish laws stipulates that if someone is found murdered on (or near) a road, and the killer cannot be identified, the shire shall pay the fine. Since the fine was rather heavy, this gave everyone a good reason to go look for the killer. William de Corbie From: HAROLD.FELD at hq.doe.GOV Newsgroups: rec.org.sca Subject: Various and Sundry Date: 10 Jan 1994 18:28:56 -0500 Greetings to all, from Yaakov. Sorry I have not been able to start the in-persona debate I had in mind. Life has gotten a bit hectic lately. I will try to post when I have time to look up my sources. A few comments on recent threads: 4) Coroner's Inquests- My understanding from the English LEgal history course I took last year is that any unexplained death required a suspect and a trial. This was one explanation my Prof offered for the 80% acquital rate in such cases (he counted, going through the cases in the Latin. Apparently, they take up a couple of miles of parchement if laid out end-to-end). Studies of legal history in Criminal law prior to the 18th century tend to be less developed than those in other areas of law because lawyers were not involved in criminal law until then (and, since lawyers do most of the research on the history of the common law, it hasn't been studied). I believe this is true of the period treatises as well. Brachton barely touches the subject. Littleton, of course, is entirely land tenures. The various compilation of student notes (the year books) have few criminal cases (but more than current theory would account for, as our prof pointed out. He is preparing an article on the subject so we got to hear quite a bit about his researches). If I remember procedure correctly, a suspect would be placed in jail until the justices arrived on circuit. The accused would come forth to plea, a jury would be assembled and a verdict would be passed. J.H. Baker, working from the surviving records, estimates that criminal trials took 20 minutes on average. (Possibly 10, he is uncertain from the records how many judges would hear such cases on circuit.) Thats all for now. Yaakov Edited by Mark S. Harris p-police-msg Page 3 of 3