Rogues, Rakes and Robbers

Angela Muir

Six years ago, I was sitting in my friend’s flat in a small town north of Madrid, catching up after nearly a year apart.

I told her about an idea for my next academic project, which I was excited to begin. It would involve a new way of working with archival material I already knew well: the Gaol Files of the Court of Great Sessions, held by the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

These records had long been one of my favourite topics of conversation with anyone who would listen, historian or not.

The Court of Great Sessions was the highest court in Wales from the 1540s, when it was established through the Acts of Union, until 1830, when it was abolished and replaced by the Assizes.

The Gaol Files are the records relating to the Great Sessions’ criminal proceedings. I first encountered the records during my master’s, but I did not fully appreciate their potential until my doctoral studies.

My PhD examined illegitimacy in eighteenth-century Wales, and these records helped me access some of the more harrowing and tragic experiences of unmarried pregnant women and the infants born to them.

Their stories survive in pre-trial records such as witness statements, depositions and confessions found in the Gaol Files.

These records offer rich evidence not only about crime and deviance, but also about popular beliefs, cultural practices and everyday life, bringing the past to life as few other sources can.

I told my friend that it was possible to look beyond the grim, heart-wrenching details of people behaving dreadfully and find glimpses of how they lived. I gave her examples such as a love triangle that led to suspected arson, revealing Georgian courtship customs and details of how neighbours might borrow fire as readily as we might ask for sugar or eggs; and suspected murder cases that pull back the curtain on folk beliefs and superstitions.

Deep dive

My plan was to take a deep dive into a large sample of cases from a 100-year period and emerge with a social and cultural history of eighteenth-century Wales, a period that has received surprisingly little attention.

Like my first book, I imagined this would culminate in a work of academic history, because that was what academic historians were supposed to produce. Having recently been appointed to my first permanent lectureship, I was still very much thinking inside the box.

Then my friend asked the question that would change everything: “Why don’t you write a book about this for people like me?” She meant that I should tell these stories for a general readership, not just for academics.

And, as they say, the rest is history.

Rogues, Rakes and Robbers does, I hope, exactly what she suggested. The book consists of thirteen chapters, each exploring a single case or series of related cases tried at the Court of Great Sessions in Wales between 1730 and 1825, placing them in their wider historical context.

In telling these stories of historic true crime, I also tell the story of life in Georgian Wales. Alongside courtship and popular beliefs, the chapters explore ancient Christmas traditions, women’s work, the old poor law, the treatment of the mentally ill, food and drink, the history of the landscape, Welsh place names, and so much more.

Henry Thomas 

The chapter I had the most fun writing is based on the extraordinary confessions of Henry Thomas, who was apprehended in Pontypool on suspicion of stealing a horse from a mountainside more than 70 miles away in Carmarthenshire. Once in custody, he confessed not only to that crime but, over several days, to an entire catalogue of offences committed over the previous five or six years. These included several highway robberies, murder and an astonishing amount of horse theft. In the process, he also alluded to instances of housebreaking and food tampering.

Had he been convicted of stealing that one horse alone, Henry could have faced the gallows. After all, this was the period now known as the Bloody Code, when property offences such as horse theft could carry the death penalty. Henry also implicated a whole cast of named accomplices.

Local magistrates sought the Home Secretary’s advice about what to do with him and his evidence, and were told to take detailed notes and follow every possible lead. His stories were so detailed and outlandish that they almost seemed implausible. Yet all the crimes he confessed to were entirely plausible, and all the people he named really did exist.

Understandably, the case attracted attention and was reported in local newspapers, which captured the rollercoaster of local reactions and events after his trial in ways the Great Sessions records do not.

The full story can be found in Rogues, Rakes and Robbers, alongside the stories of dozens of other ordinary Welsh men and women known to us only because they were caught up in extraordinary events. It is this mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary that I find truly fascinating, and I hope readers enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Rogues, Rakes and Robbers: A True Crime History of Georgian Britain is published by Calon and can be purchased here and in all good bookshops.

---

Get more trusted Welsh news

Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.