motivation on the part of the publisher for the appearance of a much expanded
version of the Old Bailey trials. But the similarity between the reports of cases in
the Sessions Paper and the document prepared by the recorder suggests the pos-
sibility that there was some official encouragement behind the expansion of the
published version. Certainly, by the middle of the century, Langbein has shown,
the recorder’s report was based on the OBSP.^76
Whatever the form of his report, the recorder was in a strong position to
shape the way the death penalty was exercised in the capital. His oral summary
of the evidence given in each case was, one must presume, relatively brief—con-
sidering that there were often a dozen or more cases to be presented and that his
report was only one item in an agenda of state business. When there were only
a few cases to be dealt with, the recorder can be found telling the secretary, in ar-
ranging the meeting, that his report would be brief: it would ‘not take up two
minutes time’, he said on one occasion and that may not have been a mere fig-
ure of speech.^77 While the cabinet seems to have discussed some cases in detail,
it is more than likely that they got through the list expeditiously, guided for the
most part by the recorder’s recommendations, whether implicit or explicit.
There are frequent hints of the influential role the recorder played in the cab-
inet discussions: ‘as the Recorder proposes’, is marked on the notes of one of the
sessions; reference to managing the transportation of the offenders he had ‘rec-
ommended... for mercy’, in Secretary Townshend’s words, on those of an-
other.^78 An effort by the Duke of Montagu to arrange a pardon to his liking also
suggests the importance of the recorder’s guidance in these cabinet discussions.
Montagu wrote to the Duke ofNewcastle early in George II’s reign about a man
who had stolen from him and had been condemned to death at the Old Bailey.
He wanted to get him pardoned on condition of transportation—though he
also wanted him to remain ignorant of the pardon until the morning of the ex-
ecution ‘in hopes that the aprehenstion of dyeing may make him confes the
fact’. Montagu said that he had ‘talked with the Recorder about it, who when
the Report is made tomorrow of the condemned malefactors att Council, will
452 William Thomson and Transportation
(^76) Langbein, ‘Shaping the Eighteenth-Century Criminal Trial’, 17 – 18. For the changing character of
the Sessions Papers, see above, p. 372 ; and for the relationship between the printed accounts of trials and
the recorder’s reports in the late eighteenth century, see Langbein, ‘Shaping the Eighteenth-Century
Criminal Trial’, 18 , and Simon Devereaux, ‘The City and the Sessions Paper: “Public Justice” in Lon-
don, 1770 – 1800 ’, Journal of British Studies, 35 ( 1996 ), 469 – 82. Whether or not the longer, more detailed
OBSP had been encouraged by the government, the under-secretaries had come to value the fuller ac-
counts of many trials that the new format was providing. Delafaye complained to Secretary Newcastle
in 1730 , for example, when an account of a trial in the OBSP was not sufficiently useful for his purposes.
It is true that it was an unusual case since the French ambassador was seeking a pardon for a man con-
victed of sodomy. But Delafaye described it as ‘a very bad account’, as though he might have expected
something better—a fuller and more detailed record of the circumstances of the case. He also revealed
that the recorder did not depend entirely on the printed accounts for his report to the cabinet since
Delafaye went on tell Newcastle that he was going to write to recorder Thomson about Laurant
(SP 36 / 20 / 181 – 2 ).
(^77) SP 36 / 22 / 160 ; and see SP 36 / 26 / 72. (^78) SP 35 / 9 / 6 ; SP 44 / 79 A, p. 409.