because Thomson chose to engage in the detailed business of the office. When
he complained about the burden he was carrying without significant compen-
sation, he did not exaggerate in at least one respect; that is, his involvement in
the administration of the new Transportation Act. Just as he had been its author,
he became its chief interpreter and administrator—shaping its application in
practice, in line with his convictions about the criminal law. We can explore his
influence best by examining the patterns of jury verdicts at the Old Bailey and
the sentencing practices of the court.
One of the effects of the Transportation Act was to encourage trial juries to
expand the use of partial verdicts—verdicts that convicted the offender of a
lesser charge than that stated in the indictment—even more than they had in
William’s and Anne’s reigns. Between 1714 and the middle of the eighteenth
century, 40 per cent of those accused of property crimes in the City of London
were convicted of a less-serious offence than had been alleged against them,
compared to 25 per cent in the quarter century before 1718 , and even fewer in
the decades following the Restoration.^31 The notable increase in convictions on
reduced charges that the Transportation Act appears to have encouraged
meant that juries continued to save numbers of men and women from the gal-
lows. But the act also made it possible for the judges to impose much stiffer sanc-
tions on more convicted property offenders than ever before. That is certainly
the most important consequence of the transportation system in London in this
period, a consequence, we might note, that was visited equally on men and
women.
With respect to capital offences, there continued to be significant differences
in the way juries dealt with men and women (Table 9. 1 ): 30 per cent of men so
accused were acquitted between 1714 and 1750 , as opposed to 44 per cent of
women; and, of those convicted, a quarter of the men were found guilty of the
capital charge and sentenced to death, as against 9 per cent of women. These
verdicts appear to express jurors’ reluctance to see women hanged in large num-
bers at Tyburn. They were ready to acquit men charged with such offences
when the evidence was not entirely persuasive, or perhaps when the main evi-
dence was being provided by an accomplice or thief-taker, whose motives in
prosecuting in cases carrying a large reward could be called into question.^32
This would help to explain why well over 40 per cent of both men and women
accused of what I have called the ‘serious’ capital offences (mainly those that
threatened violence) were acquitted (Table 9. 1 ). A sharp difference in the jurors’
treatment of men and women charged with robbery and burglary is apparent
in the pattern of guilty verdicts. Almost 40 per cent of the men indicted were
convicted as against a much smaller proportion of women—no doubt because
William Thomson and Transportation 435(^31) For jury verdicts, see Tables 6. 1 and 7. 2 above, and Table 9. 1 below.
(^32) The Gentleman’s Magazine, 2 ( 1732 ), 1029 , reported objections against the size of rewards on those
grounds in 1732.