Wolverhampton Borough Quarter Sessions

The collection includes:

Record books and indexes

Sessions books

Registers of orders for costs

Appeal book

Registers of recognizances

Registers of probationers and prosecutions

Session rolls

After-trial Calendars of Prisoners

Recorders' note books

Correspondence

Financial records

Please note that Coroners' Inquests are closed for 75 years, other records are closed for 30 years. Please ask staff for advice if you require access to records within the closure period.

In 1864 Wolverhampton was granted its own Borough Quarter Sessions which officially opened on 30 June. Inititally the court met at offices in Garrick Street but from October 1871 the court met at the new Town Hall in North Street. They normally met four times a year at the following times: Epiphany, Lent or Easter, Midsummer, and Michaelmas. However from around 1869/1870 the court began to meet five times a year with the fifth session, Trinity, held in May. This seems to have been due to friction between the Borough Quarter Sessions and the County Quarter Sessions and Assizes at Stafford (administered by the landed gentry). Although Wolverhampton had its own Quarter Sessions prisoners were still held at Stafford Gaol and if they remained there during the Summer Assizes some of the landed gentry declared that they would try all prisoners held there. It was decided to hold an intermediate sessions just before the commission of assize, and so clear the gaol of all persons committed by the Borough.

Under the Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1855 (18-19 Vict. Ch. 126), confirmed by the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879 (42-43 Vict. c. 49), the Justices of Petty Sessions were required to send depositions and case papers to the Clerk of the Peace at the subsequent Quarter Sessions. Similarly under the terms of Wolverhampton Improvement Act, 1869 (32-33 Vict. Ch. XXIV) the summary convictions of the Borough Justices were filed with Quarter Sessions who could act as a court of appeal. The Stipendiary Justice, appointed by Act of Parliament in 1846, also deposited summary convictions with the Quarter Sessions. Both of these Justices' papers are filed together as Convictions in the Session Records (see section H).

The Quarter Sessions courts were finally abolished in 1971.