Resources - an accidental find

[Megan Roberts]

I have been doing some research into early 19th criminals ... (don't ask), and found that Ancestry have the Lancashire Quarter Session records, but they are so much more than first meets the eye, or that a simple search for ancestors might reveal.

The data set is "Lancashire, England, Quarter Session Records and Petitions, 1648-1908". And when you pull up an original image you will see under the main title a sub-heading looking something like:



What I did not realise until today is that you can click on each part of that sub heading and produce a drop-down menu; such as:



That allows you to browse the data base at will.

The particular page I had arrived at, which was not the one I was looking for, is the record of a resettlement case about James & Betty Rycroft and their children William, Henry, and Sabina, but the only indexing that it is done under is:



These are the parishes involved not the people - so there is no indexing of the people. If anyone wants to check it out, and you have the right subscription:

https://interactive.ancestry.co.uk/68...=4424744_00219

I was planning to go Preston to the archives. (it's only up the road), to look through the Quarter Session records, but instead I can see me spending a lot of time browsing through this unexpected find to see what else it holds.

[Peter Goodey]

That allows you to browse the data base at will.

On the right hand side of the search page is the standard "Browse this collection" facility which is the straightforward way to do what you want to do.

[Megan Roberts]

On the right hand side of the search page is the standard "Browse this collection" facility which is the straightforward way to do what you want to do.

Apologies, but I think that the "straightforward" method assumes a degree of prior knowledge of or at least assumption of what the collection contains - namely court cases. And whilst the description given on the search page is pretty clear, I think that many people, myself included, don't always digest that, and sometimes it is no bad thing to suggest an alternative approach.

For anyone who does not know what the collection contains this is Ancestry's description:

"The Order books and Petitions form part of the series of Quarter Sessions' records held at Lancashire Archives. The Order books record the decisions made at the court and include records of costs of prosecution, filiation and maintenance orders, settlement orders, removal orders, transportation orders, sentences passed on criminals as well as a variety of county administration matters such as setting highway rates, appointing officials and presentments for repairs to roads and bridges. The Petitions were brought to court by those seeking poor relief, settlement, licences for various trades, filiation and maintenance orders, removal orders and payment of costs such as coroners' accounts, solicitors' prosecutions, carting baggage and conveying prisoners to the hulks.

Some of the cases may span multiple pages, so be sure to use the arrow keys to browse surrounding pages to make sure you find all the records for your ancestor."

The last paragraph is notable, as particularly many of those are not indexed. Of course you will also note there are no references to actual trial records - or at least I haven't found those yet, but I am still browsing.