Wingham Petty Sessional Division (Lathe of St Augustine, Eastern Divisions)

Records for the following Petty Sessions divisions of the county are deposited at the Centre for Kentish Studies:

Ashford Division PS/A

Bearsted Division PS/B

Cranbrook Division Uncatalogued

Dartford Division PS/D

Faversham Division See PS/US

Malling Division (pre-1974) PS/Ma

Lathe of St Augustine, Home or West Division PS/SA

Sevenoaks Division (Sutton-at-Hone Lower Division) PS/Se

Sheemess Police Court PS/Sh

Sittingbourne Division PS/Si

Lathe of Aylesford, Southern Division, Lower part PS/T

Tonbridge Division (pre-1974) PS/To

Tonbridge and Malling Division (1974-) PS/TM

Tunbridge Wells Division Uncatalogued

Lathe of Scray, Upper Division PS/US

Wingham Division (Lathe of St Augustine, Eastern Division) PS/W

The following Petty Sessions records have been deposited for borough jurisdictions, separately from the other records of those boroughs. (For further borough petty sessions records, see the lists under the respective boroughs.)

Gravesend Borough (Gravesend & Milton parishes) PS/Gr

Maidstone Borough PS/Md

The records of the following Petty Sessions divisions of the county are deposited elsewhere:

Blackheath Division (Lewisham, Greenwich & Woolwich benches) (Copies of some of these records are held at the Centre for Kentish Studies. Blackheath Division records have the reference TR 1758/22/1-10.) Greenwich Local Studies Library

Bromley Division (PS/By) (Copies of some of these records are held at the Centre for Kentish Studies. Blackheath Division records have the reference TR 1758/22/1-10.) Bromley Library

Penge Division (PS/P) Bromley Library

North Aylesford or Rochester Division (excludes City of Rochester) (PS/NA) Medway Archives & Local Studies Centre

The various classes of petty sessional records are catalogued as follows:-

Adoption A or Sa

Correspondence C or Sc

Licences L or Sl

Orders O or So

(May be subdivided into: Probation Op

Lunacy Ol

Warrants Ow)

Miscellaneous Z or Sz

Bail Register Sb

Convictions Sc

Depositions Sd

Examinations Sc

Accounts Sf

("Sa" may be used instead if "Sf" is used for Sessions files, as in PS/SA)

Juvenile Court Sj

Court Minutes Sm

Court Notebooks Sn

Case Papers Sp

Court Registers Sr

Sessions volumes Sv

Means Enquiry Registers Sx

The Justices for the Wingham (or East) Division of the Lathe of St. Augustine met in alternate months at the 'Dog' and the 'Red Lion' in Wingham. Three volumes, 1715-44, are included in this deposit; two others, 1705-15 and 1756-69 are now known to have been offered for sale by Messrs. Hodgson in 1943, and of these the earliest, at least, is in the possession of the present (1954) landlord of the 'Dog'. [Now acquired by KAO.ref PS/W/1A (1971); the volume for 1756-1769 was acquired in 1961 (PS/W/3A). Detailed extracts made from this earliest volume by Wray Hunt are available in the Transcript section of the Archives Office. (see TR 375/1). These extracts include, in addition to normal business, the appointment of a new clerk in 1705, warrants to raise recruits from all able-bodied unemployed, complaints against Quakers for non-payment of church rates, and an order for the parish of Oxney to assist St. Margarets in the relief of the poor, the latter having accidentally lost several ships at sea. Similar business is recorded in the three 18th century volumes deposited [PS/W 1-3].

The monthly meetings were rarely missed except when the date coincided with Wingham Fair (as in 1715 and 1743) and other years or with race meetings on Barham Down (as in 1724 and 1740 and other years).

The most noteworthy local feature of these minute books is the incidence of smuggling. At almost every meeting in the 18th century informations were laid by the Collectors of Excise against persons found to have foreign brandy, rum, tea, etc., in their possession. The penalty was forfeiture and a fine of treble the value. The full fine, however, was frequently mitigated; for example, two fines of £9. 19s. 6d. and £5. 5s. being cut down to 10s. in each case.

An analysis of the business of one year, 1819, shows that the number of smuggling offences had decreased; the main business concerned bastardy, settlement and non payment of rates, while the summary jurisdiction was mainly limited to vagrancy, assault and poaching.

RECORDS LESS THAN THIRTY YEARS OLD ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

Note on adoption records

By law (the Adoption Act 1980) adoption records are closed to public access for 75 years from date of adoption. Persons wishing to trace details of their own adoption should be directed to apply to the relevant magistrates' court and any records or information from records should be released to court officials only.

Beside the registers recording the fact of the adoption, there are individual case papers for some petty sessional divisions. These include application and court order forms, references and reports, correspondence and birth certificates etc, and are highly confidential.

Although the registers should be considered permanent records, it may be advisable in view of their bulk to sample the adoption papers (once the 75 year retention period has elapsed). For further information, consult Records Centre procedure with regard to adoption files held on behalf of Kent County Council's Social Services Department.

COURTS OF PETTY SESSIONS

Meetings of local justices of the peace in monthly or petty sessions were established on a regular footing at a particularly early date in Kent. Lambarde in his Perambulation of Kent (1576) (W. Lambarde, A Perambulation of Kent, reprinted by W. Burrill (1826), pp.22-26) gives the 'Distribution of the Shyre for Execution of Justice', and the lathe and division of the lathe as there described remained the basis for such meetings. Sutton at Hone and St Augustine were each divided into two Divisions and Aylesford into three. The only exception to this rule occurred in the lathe of Scray, where a group of hundreds in the middle of the lathe were conveniently linked with the lathe of Shepway, Ashford being the natural centre. Also the Corporation of Romney Marsh in this Lathe possessed its own Quarter and Petty Sessions (these records are held at East Kent Archives Centre). Kilburne, A Survey of Kent (1659), pp. 304-18, gives a list of the Divisions at that time with the parishes in each division and also any exempt Corporations.

From time to time existing divisions were split for sake of convenience and in 1857 the provisions of the Act of 9 Geo. IV were invoked to examine the whole structure, when the details of revised divisions were entered in the Quarter Sessions Order books for East and West Kent.

Several personal notebooks kept by justices in the seventeenth century which have been deposited in private collections have references to these monthly meetings; Sir Edward Filmer mentions a meeting at Bearsted in 1616 and Sir Thomas Walsingham one at Foots Cray in 1636.

Existing records begin at a comparatively early date and eighteenth-century minute books have survived for ten divisions. During this period administrative business overshadowed the judicial side and licensing, settlement, relief and the control of all forms of local government were the main concern of the justices acting in petty sessions. (D.M.M. Shorrocks, "Eighteenth Century Petty Sessions Records in Kent", Bulletin of the Society of Local Archivists No 14 (Oct. 1954)) Some clerks also recorded the activities of the justices under their other Commissions, such as land tax or recruiting.