19th century criminal records & transcripts

Hi : I'm researching some dodgy publishers in the mid to late Victorian era, all based in London, who ran into legal issues with the books they put out. The main characters are William Dugdale, who operated in Holywell Street area in the middle of the 19th century, and William Lazenby and Edward Avery who worked later in the century. I've managed some pretty good genealogical work on them, and found some newspaper stories of the time, but have been unable to find their actual police records or transcripts of their trials. In fact, I don't even know where those things are archived. I checked the online search engine of the UK Public Records Archives, but found nothing. Any pointers would be very welcome and much appreciated. Patrick

William Lazenby appeared at the Old Bailey 18 Sep 1876 - the proceedings of the Old Bailey are available on line.

Criminal records fall under the Home Office categorisation, so when you look at the National Archives these records are prefixed by the letter “HO”.

As helachau has said the Proceedings of the Old Bailey 1674-1913 are on line: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/index.jsp. The Old Bailey is the only court where the records are actually on line, but as you will see from the record of William Lazenby’s trial; it was unbelievably short. However, the record also tells us that he committed a similar offence in 1871.

Using the criminal records that Findmypast has you can see that he had an alias of Henry Ashby, and that the charge listed was “obscene pictures”. That trial took place at the Middlesex Quarter Sessions held at Clerkenwell on 17 July 1871. The records for those trials, to the extent that they exist, will be held by the London Metropolitan Archives: www.lma.gov.uk

The details of his crimes and alias have been provided to you in an earlier thread: https://www.british-genealogy.com/fo...ighlight=ashby