deal with thefts, robberies, and burglaries committed elsewhere when stolen
goods had been brought to London for disposal.
The commissions that empowered the court to try any and all criminal
charges were addressed to the lord mayor ofLondon (who presided, at least for-
mally), the magistrates of the City, the recorder, the common sergeant (the
elected legal adviser to the common council), three judges of the high courts,
and other officers of state. Although cases from Middlesex, including Westmin-
ster, constituted over time an increasingly large proportion of the Old Bailey
calendar, the county’s magistrates were not included in the gaol delivery com-
mission. This was clearly a source of resentment, and from time to time the
magistrates of Middlesex made efforts to correct an obvious irritant. The City
authorities had long taken the view that since Newgate and the Old Bailey were
in the City and were maintained at the City’s expense, the Middlesex magis-
trates had no right of attendance. They had successfully excluded them, at least
in the seventeenth century, and the fact that the Middlesex magistrates were in-
cluded in the commissions of gaol delivery for a few years in the 1680 s while the
City’s charter was suspended, provided precedents that, in the eyes of the alder-
men of London, more condemned than supported the county magistrates’ later
efforts to get some of their number onto the Old Bailey bench.^31 The Middlesex
magistrates had been once again excluded after the Revolution of 1689 —with
perhaps some exceptional appearances^32 —and their further efforts to establish
their right of attendance were again successfully resisted by the City. The
Middlesex magistrates petitioned the lord chancellor in 1717 to have some of their
number included in the next gaol delivery commission, but an answer drawn up
by William Thomson, the recorder of the City and George I’s solicitor general,
kept them at bay. The case for including the magistrates who had taken the
Middlesex depositions and examinations was overwhelming. But much more
important and decisive than narrow legal and procedural arguments were the
social realities and assumptions at work. The aldermen of London were all
drawn from the financial and mercantile plutocracy.^33 They were not likely to
mix readily with magistrates they regarded as their social inferiors and who,
rightly or wrongly, were reputed to be corrupt and money-grubbing. Nor, it
seems certain, would their ladies. Among other things, the sessions of gaol de-
livery at the Old Bailey were social occasions in the City, as were the assizes and
quarter sessions in the counties. And, as at all social occasions, where one sat
and with whom one associated were matters of crucial importance. The wives
and guests of the mayor, the aldermen, sheriffs, and recorder sat in reserved
galleries if they chose to attend, and rooms on either side of the bench were
Introduction: The Crime Problem 13(^31) Bowler (ed.), London Sessions Records, x.
(^32) As in April 1716 , or so the printed Proceedingsof that date suggests.
(^33) For the wealth, occupations, and social standing of the City aldermen in the middle decades of the
eighteenth century, see Rogers, ‘Money, Land and Lineage’.