Blog
20 Feb 2013Find your criminal ancestors in our new Crime, Prisons & Punishment records
We’ve just launched our latest groundbreaking collection: over half a million historical records of criminals and their victims.
Today marks the culmination of our two-year project to scan and transcribe original records from The National Archives. We’ve made the records available online for the first time, and findmypast.co.uk is the only place you can view these fascinating documents.
Click to enlarge
The Crime, Prisons & Punishment records will be crucial to your research as they contain information about your ancestors that isn’t available in other records. They really give you a sense of what kind of person your ancestor was and you could even find a photo of them!
We’re launching our collection with records for the period 1817-1931. We’ll add new records in the coming months to bring the total to more than 2.5 million records for the period 1770-1934.
On the right is a record from the collection – click on the image for a larger version.
The record tells the story of charwoman Charlotte Smith, also known as Elizabeth Smith. Charlotte was convicted of being a habitual drunkard in 1903 and sentenced to one month of hard labour.
As well as two photos, the record also provides a detailed physical description: Charlotte was 5ft 5 inches tall with a stout build, fresh complexion, oval face, dark brown hair and blue eyes. She had a slightly pug nose and scars over left eyebrow, right cheek, right side of neck, left side of lower lip and palm of left hand.
It’s time to find how many criminal ancestors are in your family tree…
Search Crime, Prisons & Punishment records now
please find villans in my family history
find criminals past history
When open link that ?
I wait hear soon my familys past happen Crimes
Hi,
Seems to be a number of problems when searching .I type the name in, tick the box for variants and click search and there are a number of names there.I click on one name this is ok so far, but when I then click to go back to search results I do not get the variants ofthe nmae and when I go back to to the next page the tick in the box has gone so have to tick box again to look for variants of a spelling of a name .Also on one of the names I checked I ticked the box for variants I had 15 pages .I clicked on page 2 but no names so it looks like there is something wrong with the tick variants box unticking it self.
Hi Tina,
We’ve made some improvements since yesterday, including fixing the variants problems you were having. Have another go and let us know how you get on!
Thanks,
Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)
Hi Jess,
It is now working ok. many thanks
Tina
There’s some excellent stuff in here.
I would appreciate knowing whether you’ll offer the facility to correct names – there are a significant number of typos in the HO140 series covering Jersey, simply because the transcription system isn’t familiar with valid local names.
Hello James,
Glad you’re enjoying the records!
Thanks for your query – we will introduce transcription error reporting for the Crime, Prisons & Punishment records in the coming months. In the meantime, please email any corrections to our customer support team who will pass them on for you:
support@findmypast.co.uk
Many thanks,
Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)
Hi, Jess
It’s great to have these records available, and we look forward to other great datasets coming this year.
It’s particularly nice to see the new dataset being made available to all your World subscribers at the same time (.com, .ie and .com.au as well as .co.uk). But I’m confused about the fact that there seem to be some new records (in the Herts and Canterbury collections for instance) which seem to have been made exclusively available to your .co.uk subscribers. Is FMP having a hard time treating all World subscribers equally?
With thanks, and with congratulations again on this new dataset,
Jim
Hi Jim,
Thanks very much!
Fear not – all the new records we publish on findmypast.co.uk will become available on .com, .ie and .au. The nature of the records determines how soon we can publish them on our international websites, but we always aim to share them across all the findmypasts as soon as we can.
Many thanks,
Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)
I’d hoped for a photo but was still thrilled to find a record for my great great grandfather William Tuppin (Tuppen)born 1832 and his youngest son Alfred (18). Alfred was convicted of stealing 12 tame ducks along with James Beck in 1890. William (58) was found not guilty of receiving the ducks and discharged. William had lost his wife Louisa 4 months earlier and the family were clearly experiencing hard times. I’m a little curious though that your index also points a William Tuppen Labourer aged 18 to this same record. William the blacksmith aged 58 would be the correct record.
Hello Clancy,
Fantastic, what a find! Thanks for letting us know about your discovery.
It looks like the other William Tuppen is linked to the image in error – please could you drop our customer support team an email with the details in, so they can take a look for you?
support@findmypast.co.uk
Many thanks,
Jess (findmypast.co.uk digital content manager)
I found one in the 1870′s, a drunken wife beater who did 6 months for his crime. His grand daughter, my gran, would have been horrified
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