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The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly referred to as the Old Bailey after the street on which it stands, is a criminal court building in central London, one of several that house the Crown Court of England and Wales.
Oct 5, 2024 · Old Bailey, byname of the Central Criminal Court in London. It is perhaps the best known of several buildings housing the Crown Court, which handles the most serious criminal offenses in England and Wales.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- It's Not A Bailey
- It's Not All That Old
- Justice Is Not Blind
- Underground River
- Dead Man's Walk
- Charles Dickens Was Inspired Here
- Famous (and Less Famous) Trials
- OH, and Strictly No Phones...
The name 'Old Bailey' comes from the street on which the court is located. The road marks the route of the City's original fortified wall (or 'bailey'). 'Old Bailey' is only a nickname for what's really called the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales. Old Bailey sounds better.
There's been a jail on this site for over 1,000 years, and a court since the 16th century (serving the old Newgate Prison). Various fires and attacks have seen the court rebuilt again and again, and the famous domed Old Bailey we now know only opened in 1907. Some of the bricks in the Old Bailey's façade are repurposed from the demolished Newgate P...
The 22-ton, 3.5m tall figure of Lady Justice is the Old Bailey's crowning glory — clutching the sword of retribution in her right hand, and the scales of justice in the other. But contrary to the well-worn adage, this particular Justice is not blind(folded). Apparently the inside of the Old Bailey's dome is "incredible", but it only gets to be seen...
Delve into the depths of the Old Bailey's former coal room, and you'll find a hatch in the floor, beneath which is a ladder leading down to the culverted River Fleet. It's said that prison reformer Elizabeth Fry once collected water here for inmates, although how much good drinking from what was basically a sewer did them, we're not sure.
A grizzly remnant of Newgate Prison is 'dead man's walk'. This is a series of archways which become increasingly smaller, through which condemned prisoners were led through on their way to the gallows. Check out this Stephen Fry documentary below, from 22 minutes in. In 1868, at the last public hanging here, 20,000 people came by tube.
As a young court reporter, Dickens was a regular as the Old Bailey, and the tales he heard sometimes inspired his own fiction. Take this report of convicted thief Thomas Knight, deported to New South Wales, who then returned to England — just like Magwitch in Great Expectations.
Some of the country's most notorious trials have happened at the Old Bailey, including those of the Krays (Ronnie quipped to the judge: "If I wasn’t here, I could be having tea with Judy Garland."), Doctor Crippen, the Yorkshire Ripper and Ruth Ellis — the last woman to be executed in the UK. Dig into the archives, and you find some lesser-known, b...
You can visit the Old Bailey every weekday* for free. However, you'll have to ditch your phone somewhere first. You can't take in into the courts, and there's nowhere to leave it outside. *Reduced court sitting in August
- Will Noble
The Old Bailey is a criminal court sitting in central London. Since 1834 it is properly referred to as the Central Criminal Court, but its former name, derived from the building in which it sits,...
5 days ago · The Old Bailey—that part of the street opposite to Newgate—became the scene of public executions in 1783, on the 9th of December in which year the first culprit suffered here the extreme penalty of the law. Before that time the public executions ordinarily took place at Tyburn.
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913. A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,752 trials held at London's central criminal court, and 475 Ordinary’s Accounts of the lives of executed convicts.
Jun 9, 2013 · The Old Bailey has 18 courts which are usually busy trying some of the most serious crimes in the country. But one of Mr Henty's biggest concerns is whether the giant 1967 boilers, which...
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