Tuesday 16 March 2010

Jedburgh prison indexing under way again

Well Graham is staying with the parish of Jedburgh but is now indexing the prison records. He has already indexed volume one (1843-1848) and it is available on our website. Today he has started work on volume two (1848-1869). Sadly as he’s going through it even wee are being surprised by the number of children and the type of crimes that people have been imprisoned for.

As I write Graham has come across an 11-year-old boy. The date is the 18th of November 1848; his name is Joseph Wilson and he is from Hawick. He has been imprisoned for 60 days, so what was his offence? Theft of tobacco. The entry though tells more information that we would be unlikely to find anywhere else. For example the register tells us he was in good health, he was five feet tall, his weight on admission was 74 pounds (79 pounds on release), his complexion was fresh, his eyes blue and his hair brown. His occupation was a spinner, religion was Protestant and he could read and write (a little). He was tried on the 20th of December 1848. The register also tells us his conduct in prison was good so that’s good news if he’s an ancestor of yours!!

Our hope is to link entries like this to our census database. See what we have done for this example:

1841: http://www.maxwellancestry.com/census/41transcript.aspx?houseid=78901224

1851: http://www.maxwellancestry.com/census/51transcript.aspx?houseid=78905118

1861: http://www.maxwellancestry.com/census/61transcript.aspx?houseid=78918069

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