From my trip to the UK National Archives.
No records survive from ‘my’ Joseph Wilkes’ court appearance that led to him being transported to New South Wales. Sadly, all 1817 and earlier Warwickshire Assize court records were destroyed long ago. But I knew there was a chance that there could be some records for ‘the other Joseph Wilkes’, as I tend to refer to him, who travelled to Australia on the same ship as ‘my guy’ after his conviction almost two years later.
So, during my 2024 trip to mine the National Archives in Kew near London I requested the relevant Warwickshire Assizes records.
With slightly trembling fingers I carefully start filing through the large, heavy, leather-bound and fragile volume ASSI 11/1/1.
This is a so-called Crown Minute Book. It doesn’t document in great detail what transpired in court, but you can glean from it some information that you don’t necessarily find in the newspapers, such as the names of the jury or the times of the sessions. This volume must have been written up soon after completion of the session, perhaps based on the judges’ bench books, and the handwriting is the same throughout this section of the book at least.
I quickly come across the page that recorded the beginning of the Lent Assizes of 1819 held in Warwick. With the help of trusty Timeanddate.com I can later decipher the start date of the Assizes as Saturday, 27 March 1819, though that is when the opening ceremony would have been held. The first criminal cases were heard on the following Thursday, 1 April.
Over the next few days, dozens and dozens of men and women accused of all sorts of crimes would appear before the judges, either alone or with their co-accused. The pages note the names of the accused, a very short description of the crime they committed, whether they plead guilty or not guilty, and sometimes the sentence is also noted: “puts guilty – to be hanged,” I read over and over. Though most of the condemned would probably end up having their sentence commuted to transportation.
And then, to my delight I spot the name “Joseph Wilkes”! On Friday, 2 April Joseph Wilkes, William Wood and Jeremiah Robinson appeared before Justice Clarke and a jury of 12 named men, accused of stealing goods that belonged to John Lakin and someone else.
Their court appearance in all likelihood took place in the late morning or early afternoon, based on the information that the sessions at these Assizes generally began at 8am or 9am and theirs was the 6th of 12 cases heard that day, all of them cases involving theft. If the judge sat for seven or eight hours with a lunch break, their appearance may have lasted more or less an hour, given they were three defendants. Wood and Wilkes both pleaded guilty and both were sentenced to transportation for seven years, while Robinson also pleaded guilty but he got away with a prison sentence, probably because he played a lesser role in committing the crime.
While this document isn’t a blow by blow account of the goings-on of that day, it still contains various interesting snippets of additional information that helps me imagine the trial of ‘my’ Joseph Wilkes too.