Voices From The Old Bailey
BBC Radio 4, Thursdays at 9am, repeated at 9.30pm. 15th July – 5th August.
Historians struggle to decipher letters and diaries – but what about those who left no record, the poor, those who couldn`t write?
In this new series, Professor Amanda Vickery presents dramatised extracts from gripping court cases and discusses with fellow historians what they reveal about 18th century society and culture. Through court cases, we can hear the voices of the 18th century – thanks to the speedy court shorthand writers, everyone`s speech is recorded, from the posh to the poor. It`s the nearest thing we have to a tape recording of the past.
All the cases discussed in the programme can be found in the the Old Bailey online archive www.oldbaileyonline.org – a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
The website makes available a fully searchable, digitised collection of all surviving editions of the Old Bailey Proceedings from 1674 to 1913, and of the Ordinary of Newgate's Accounts between 1676 and 1772. It allows access to over 197,000 trials and biographical details of approximately 2,500 men and women executed at Tyburn, free of charge for non-commercial use.
We recorded all the programmes in the series on location in eighteenth century buildings around London..
Samuel Wale: The Hanging Of John Perrit
Amanda Vickery was the presenter of Loftus’ highly successful A History of Private Life on Radio 4 last year. She is the prize-winning author of The Gentleman's Daughter (Yale University Press, 1998) and Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (Yale University Press, 2009). She is Professor of Modern British History at Royal Holloway, University of London and lectures on British social, political and cultural history from the 17th century to the present.
For more information about Amanda’s work see www.amandavickery.com
Producer: Elizabeth Burke is an award-winning radio producer; she has made many features and documentaries for Radio 4 and Radio 3, winning repeated Sony Awards. She has also worked as a Commissioning Editor for Radio 4 and as Editor of the Bristol Features Unit. She is now freelance and makes programmes through Loftus Audio.
Music: Jeremy Barlow found all the authentic ballads used in the series. They were performed by Thomas Guthrie and Gwyneth Herbert, with Sharon Lindo on violin.
Actors: The cast of readers includes actors Simon Tcherniak, Euan Bailey and Madeleine Brolly.
© Loftus Audio 2010
Loftus Audio Ltd no. 6471982 registered in England
Vat Registration No: 927 7811 91
Registered Office: 27 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3BL
