February 2024 Update
It has been a busy month researching Policing the blog prompt for February from the Society of One-Place Studies. This is now the third month of incorporating the blog prompts and it is proving interesting and helpful. This month I have laid the groundwork for further investigation into Crime & Punishment which will be very helpful with the current goal of the study to understand more about what was going on before/after the Swing Riots in the parish. I know what happened to the rioter’s but understanding more about Crime and Punishment will help with their stories.
When it comes to the Penal Institutions the County Prisons have been looked at this month, but in addition more information is needed on Prison Hulks & Penal Colonies. Also when it comes to policing I now have a partial list of Police Officers who served in St. Mary Bourne. I have started this month consulting the Police Examination records to fill the gaps and these give a lot of information about the officers. As many officers were only in the parish for a short period and may not have even lived there they will be missing from the common sources of information such as census and parish registers. Some of the blog posts this month touch on the areas mentioned and as such will benefit from more research.
This new Crime & Punishment section gives more structure to the website and as such a little re-organisation of some older posts is likely to happen in the near future.
Along with the policing work the “behind the scenes” work has continued with more transcriptions done and more added to the people database now with 1685 people in it. This is a huge job that will be ongoing for some time.
Next months blog prompt is Books which will not take as much research as policing but anyone that knows about the history of St. Mary Bourne will know that the list of books about the parish is a large one. With the prolific writing of Dr. Joseph Stevens plus others such as Kathleen Innes it will be a good opportunity to put together a comprehensive list of books and in the process discover if there are any that I don’t currently have.
Thinking of Dr. Stevens, at some point a section on health & well-being will be added to the site, this month mental health has been touched upon in one post but there is a lot to cover in this section that will like Crime & Punishment be helpful. This week I attended a zoom meeting with Hampshire Archives & Local Studies called “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” by Julian Pooley based on Surrey Lunatic Asylum records which reminded me of some Hants Lunatic Asylum records I have in my St Mary Bourne collection, these along with death certificates will tell lots about health and mental health in the parish. Stevens appears on many of these records.
New Posts
- 5 Feb 2024 – Tithe Plot 31 – The Plough Inn
- 7 Feb 2024 – Policing the parish (Part 1)
- 11 Feb 2024 – Penal Institutions (Part 1) – County Prisons
- 16 Feb 2024 – 1841 – Juvenile Offender – Theft & Misconduct in Service
- 21 Feb 2024 – 1846 – Transported for stealing sheep
- 28 Feb 2024 – 1849 – Murder at Dunley