appointed for them.^34 It was a matter of the simplest social snobbery that in-
duced the aldermen of the City to fight so hard (and successfully) to exclude the
Middlesex magistrates from attending on equal terms the sessions at the Old
Bailey. As Thomson pointed out, the Middlesex justices had been assigned
places at the Old Bailey, but they could not be accommodated on the bench.
This weakened most of the points the county magistrates made about the im-
portance of their presence in court, and the nub of their argument came down
to their not being treated with the dignity they ought to command.^35
In practice, the sessions were very largely in the hands of the professional
judges and the City recorder, who took turns hearing the more serious cases,
spelled occasionally by the lord mayor and the other City magistrates in atten-
dance who might take some of the more straightforward trials. In his account of
his public activities during his mayoral year in 1756 – 7 , Marshe Dickinson in-
cluded the occasions on which he attended the Old Bailey, distinguishing be-
tween going ‘in private’, without ceremony, and ‘in State’—that is, wearing his
robes of office and attended by members of his household, which he did on the
first days of sessions for the 9 a.m. opening of the court, and occasionally on
other days. Generally, he stayed all day, and from time to time took his turn as
the trial judge. At the July sessions in 1757 , for example, the judges all left after
the dinner recess, and, as he records in his account of his mayoral year:
at the desire of Mr. Justice Clive [he] tryed the Prisoners all this afternoon—haveing ye
favour of Sir John Barnards attendance on ye Bench [an experienced City alderman
and magistrate]—whose assistance I asked yt he wd set me right If he found me in any
wise to Err in my Conduct at this time, being myself not und[er] a Little Concern for fear
I might do amis.^36
A number of other City magistrates were required to be in attendance at
the Old Bailey as part of the quorum, at least at the opening formalities and the
14 Introduction: The Crime Problem
(^34) In 1679 the court of aldermen confirmed that the two rooms on each side of the bench at the ses-
sions house would be so reserved: one for ‘the lady mayoress, Mr. Recorder’s and the aldermen’s ladies
above the chair’, and the other for the ladies of the aldermen below the chair and of the sheriffs (Rep 84 ,
fo. 136 ). In 1696 the ‘boxes’ in the galleries at the sessions house were ordered to be enlarged ‘for the
better reception of the aldermen’s ladies and other ladies of quality’ (Rep 100 , fo. 82 ). The galleries on
either side of the bench at the Old Bailey continued in the eighteenth century to be reserved for the ladies
and friends of the lord mayor and the aldermen above the chair on one side and the sheriffs and alder-
men below the chair on the other. Their servants considered it one of their perks to sell seats in those
galleries (Rep 121 , p. 75 ; Rep 122 , p. 59 ).
(^35) One might add that the government of George I was not likely in 1717 to choose to upset the Cor-
poration of London, nor to resist the opposition of its own solicitor-general, whose argument was essen-
tially that the precedents were against the inclusion of the Middlesex magistrates in the gaol delivery
commission, that the City, not the county of Middlesex, maintained the Old Bailey and Newgate, and
that their presence on the bench was unnecessary so long as they were given places in court. For Thom-
son’s answer to the petition, see CLRO: London Sess. Papers, December 1718 ; and Rep 122 , fos. 3 , 263.
(^36) GLMD, MS 100 , ‘Office of the Mayor: Mansion House Arrangements, 1756 – 1757 ’. Dickinson at-
tended the sessions again the next day, until they ended at 4 p.m., and ‘afterw[ards] dined at the Queens
Arms in St Pauls Church Yard’, presumably with the judges and other magistrates.