By John Hoskins
Trial of a bombing in London that was switched to Winchester. This isa picture of the court room in Old Great Hall.. THE 1847 Winter Assizes at Winchester opened on a unique note - an apology from the judge. Mr Justice Erskine probably harboured the same feelings as those who had travelled across the county for the sessions, though in truth his journey would have been longer, necessitating his arrival in the city 24 hours earlier on New Years Day. Appeasing grumbling jurymen, he explained the Quarter Sessions had twice sat since the summer to clear the workload in the hope it would have been completed by Christmas but the number of prisoners and cases there and at the Assizes had been far greater than expected.
FOR hundreds of years, individuals – all male, unpaid and with no requirement for legal training – were rubber-stamped as JPs onto the Commission of the Peace, to run local government and sit in judgement in the lower courts. The only condition was that they owned freehold land of a certain value (latterly £100), and had the approval of the Chancellor (in practice the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire) who awarded a dedimus potestatem writ (meaning ‘we have given the power’). Lists of hundreds of JPs who were appointed to the Commission are held in the Hampshire Record Office under headings such as ‘Our most dear Cousins and Councillors’. The one for 1836 covers seven large sheets and represents the great and the good of the county.