Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the City and Liberty of Westminster

Quarter Sessions of the Peace for the City and Liberty of Westminster

The origins of the Justices of the Peace lie in the temporary appointments of 'conservators' or 'keepers' of the peace made at various times of unrest between the late twelfth century and the fourteenth century. In 1361 the 'Custodis Pacis' were merged with the Justices of Labourers, and given the title Justices of the Peace and a commission (see WJP). The Commission (of the Peace) gave them the power to try offences in their courts of Quarter Sessions, appointed them to conserve the peace (within a stated area), and to enquire on the oaths of "good and lawfull men" into "all manner of poisonings, enchantments, forestallings, disturbances, abuses of weights and measures" and many other things, and to "chastise and punish" anyone who had offended against laws made in order to keep the peace.

The justices were helped in their work by parish and court officials, and most particularly by the Clerk of the Peace who was responsible for the everyday administration off the court as well as maintaining a record of its work.

The cases which the justices originally dealt with were offences which could not be dealt with by the manorial court (misdemeanours), but which were less serious than those which went to the Assize Judges (felonies). Misdemeanours included breaches of the peace - assault, rioting, defamation, minor theft, vagrancy, lewd and disorderly behaviour, and offences against the licensing laws.

In 1388 a statute laid down that the court sessions should meet four times a year (hence quarter sessions): Epiphany, Easter, Trinity (midsummer) and Michaelmas (autumn) - two or more justices (one at least from the quorum) were to decide exactly where and when. The Middlesex justices were also empowered to try the more serious cases (including those from Westminster) under the Commissions of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery normally given to the Assize Judges, but these cases were heard at the Old Bailey Sessions House (see classes MJ/GB, OB).

The judicial process began even before the sessions opened with examinations being taken by the magistrates once the crime had been reported by the constable, injured party or a common informant. The accused could then be bailed to keep the peace or to appear at the next sessions, be remanded in gaol before a trial, or acquitted. Once the sessions had opened there was still an examination by a Grand Jury as to whether there was a case to answer, before the trial proper could get underway.

During the sixteenth century the work of the Quarter Sessions and the justices was extended to include administrative functions for the counties. These were wide ranging and included maintenance of structures such as bridges, gaols and asylums, to regulating weights, measures, prices and wages, and, probably one of their biggest tasks, enforcing the Poor Law. The dependence of the justices on officials like the sheriff (High Bailiff in Westminster), the constables, and the Clerk of the Peace to help them carry out their functions (judicial and administrative) cannot be underestimated. As their workload grew, particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, more help was needed and there was an increase in the number of officers appointed for specific tasks, and committees for specific purposes were set up.

Another solution for dealing with increased judicial business was (by an Act of Parliament passed in 1819) to allow the justices to divide in order that two courts could sit simultaneously (see MJ/SB/B and MJ/SB/C). The Middlesex Criminal Justice Act of 1844 decreed that there should be at least two Sessions of the Peace each month, and also that a salaried assistant judge (a barrister of at least ten years experience in the Middlesex Commission) should be appointed. The bulk of the administrative work was carried out on one specific day during the court's sitting known as the County Day; apart from relevant records in the main sessions series' (WJ/O, WJ/SP, MJ/SP), there are uncatalogued records in the class WA. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was clear that the Quarter Session's structure was unable to cope with the administrative demands on it, and it lost a lot of functions to bodies set up specifically to deal with particular areas - the most important of these was the Poor Law, which was reformed in 1834. By the end of the century and the passing of the Local Government Act in 1889, which established county councils, the sessions had lost all their administrative functions. The judicial role of the Quarter Sessions existed until 1971, when with the Assize courts they were replaced by the Crown Courts.

Alongside the aforementioned functions of the Quarter Sessions, was its role as the place of the registration and deposit of official non-sessions records, which needed to be certified and available for inspection (see WR). Much of the routine judicial and administrative work was carried out by small groups of justices during the period covered by the existing records. This was done outside the main court sittings by the justices in their local areas - usually within a Hundred division. Special Sessions were held for purposes such as licensing alehouses (Brewster Sessions), or to organise the repair of the highways. More common were the meetings of one or two justices in what became known as petty sessions and which dealt with issues such as rating, granting of licences, the appointment of parish officers, and the examination of witnesses and suspects prior to the start of the next sessions. Increasingly here the justices also began to determine cases involving minor offences and exercise 'summary jurisdiction'. The inconvenience of using their own homes for this work, and the need for the public to know where magistrates would be available led to the setting up of a 'public office'. The first was in Bow Street, Westminster from about 1727. Following this example, in 1763 Middlesex set up three such offices in the divisions of Ossulstone Hundred nearest to the centre of London. Here two (paid - stipendary) justices would sit each day on an hourly rota basis. It was not until 1792 that the system was officially established by an Act of Parliament, when seven more public offices were set up in Westminster and Middlesex. The Bow Street office, (under John Fielding, and his brother Henry, the novelist, both magistrates for Westminster), had introduced paid constables as early as 1756, and each new public office from 1792 had six constables of their own; these were the forerunners of the Metropolitan Police as introduced by an Act of 1829. In 1828 all courts of Quarter Sessions were allowed to create within each county, divisions for petty sessions, thus formalising any earlier informal arrangements. Although there are occasional references to early petty and special session meetings in the main records (see WJ and MJ), the class of records concerned with such sessions (MSJ) covers mainly the nineteenth century.

The City of Westminster covered an area from Marylebone and Paddington in the north to Pimlico in the south, from Hyde Park and Knightsbridge in the west, to Covent Garden and Soho in the east. The Commission of the Peace to hold separate sessions to Middlesex was first issued in 1618, although the reasoning is unclear; perhaps the fact that Westminster became a city in 1540, and set up a Court of Burgesses in 1585 to deal with its minor cases and moral offences, may indicate a growing feeling of civic consciousness at this time. The Westminster sessions lasted until 1844, when they again became part of the Middlesex courts' sittings, held "by adjournment" several days after the end of the latter's own, when the court literally adjourned or moved to the Westminster sessions house. Thus the Westminster records eventually came into custody of Middlesex.

Prior to 1752 the Westminster sessions met in the Town Court House near Westminster Hall; thereafter in "a building of great antiquity" demolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1805 the Westminster Guildhall was built in Broad Sanctary, and enlarged in 1888 and 1889 before the Middlesex sessions moved there. Lack of space prompted the building next door of the Middlesex Guildhall in 1913.