What we'll work on

We'll go over some common pitfalls in navigating 18th century primary sources and how you can avoid them.

This way, further explorations on your own will hopefully be more successful and interesting, and less frustrating.

Caroline Derry (2017) ‘Female Husbands’, Community and Courts in the Eighteenth Century, The Journal of Legal History

"Women who, thus disguised, enlisted in the armed forces featured most often both in news reports and in popular culture, and were frequently lauded rather than condemned....For example, Sarah Penelope Stanley, honourably discharged from the Ayrshire Fencible Cavalry when her sex was discovered, was still in male dress when she came before a London court charged with theft..." 7 
 

7. G.T. Crook, The Complete Newgate Calendar, vol.iv, London, 1926, 221–222.

Let's start with a seemingly clear-cut case: you have a specific name, you can use the scholar's citation to find the source they cite, you can look at that source to get more information.

Following a specific historical actor across sources

Search Burney for
Sarah Penelope Stanley

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection

1. Start in Tripod: tripod.swarthmore.edu
2. Choose Database Finder
3. Search Database Finder for Burney
4. Connect using the yellow S icon

Finding news articles

We see that Stanley was tried at the Old Bailey: 

What happens if you search Proceedings of the Old Bailey for Sarah Penelope Stanley?

"Accordingly, in the period between the Rigby trial [1698] and the 1720s a new sentence emerged in the courts, ‘attempted sodomy’ or ‘assault with intent’ (where ‘assault’ was a technical term, not necessarily implying
any use of physical force)" (Noel Malcolm, "England after 1700" in Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe, 342)

Another use of Advanced Search in Old Bailey: Browsing for cases 

• Looking at multiple cases, you'll start to notice patterns and understand them more easily
   
• Helps you learn the terminology and often inconsistent spelling (within and across cases)

  • Names spelled inconsistently: “surname of Eleanor Karavan…was recorded variously as: Kirvan, Caravan, Kirvin, Kervin, Keirvin, Karavan” (was tried at least twice in the 1780s)

Browsing cases in Old Bailey

sodomy

sodomitical (e.g. "sodomitical practices")

sodomite (-s)

buggery  (also: buggary, buggered, bugger)

unnatural (e.g. "unnatural sin," "unnatural crime")

abominable sin

molly  (also spelled: molley)

molly house (also: molley house)

Terminology and spelling variations:
examples from Old Bailey trials

Reading cases & terminology:

• Old Bailey Proceedings value as a historical source

• How to Read an Old Bailey Trial
• Historical Thesaurus (Oxford English Dictionary)
  • Example: People→Person→Man→nouns

Search for: molly house 

You get 97,000+ records...but they're irrelevant.

Getting better results in Old Bailey

Choose Edit Query

Change your search to:
"molly house" | "mollies"

Getting better results in Old Bailey

Let's look at result #2,
Gabriel Lawrence

Who was the proprietor of the molly house mentioned in the trial?

How would you find out if there were records for her in Old Bailey?

Manion, Jen. Female Husbands: A Trans History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 17.

Search Burney for
Mary Hamilton

Filter your results by Publication Date: 1746

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection

1. Start in Tripod: tripod.swarthmore.edu
2. Choose Database Finder
3. Search Database Finder for Burney
4. Connect using the yellow S icon

Finding news articles

Locating London's Past
Mapping Project

Reach out for support with your research

Simon Elichko

selichk1@swarthmore.edu

Make an appointment (bit.ly/selichk1)