Five bound volumes of Sessions Papers covering the period 1730-1743.

£12,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

An impressive run of reports on trials and executions in and around London in the first half of the 18th-century. The Sessions Papers are clearly designed to be both a record of the activities of the law courts but also an entertaining account of some of the most shocking and salacious cases including highway robbery, street theft, sexual assault, and arson. Each issue records the number of defendants pardoned, imprisoned, transported, “burnt in the hand” and whipped. The reports of the executions at Tyburn include details of the condemned last words, their behaviour, and occasional attempts at escape. Most issues also contain numerous adverts for recently published books and (often fanciful) medical treatments. The first issue of the earliest Sessions Paper collected here notes that the size of the publication has now changed (to a small quarto format) to enable the publisher to report on the trials in the “fullest and clearest manner”, improve the quality of the printing, and enable them to be bound in long runs (as here) in “handsome” volumes. The Sessions of the Peace includes numerous accounts of criminal cases often told in a breathless manner and reproducing much of the speech of the witnesses and defendants in court. At the trial of Joanna Wakefield alias Johnson, for example, she is accused or robbing a John Moran who explained to the court: “The Prisoner, I take to have Robb’d me of my Watch, for I went with my Master to the Castle Tavern in Drury Lane, and he havin

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