West Kent Quarter Sessions Records

The lists included cover all the County Quarter Sessions records found at Maidstone Museum in 1964. They are essentially working lists and are neither edited for formal publication nor indexed. The one engrossed Sessions Roll (QM/SR1) found among these papers has been included in the Calendar of early Quarter Sessions Rolls, 1596-1605, already issued. These records were transferred to the County Archives Office in February 1965. They form an independent collection of early Sessions Records, antedating the comparable series in the official collection which had been recorded from as early as the 1801 Report on Public Records. For this reason the catalogue mark QM/ has been assigned to retain the link with Maidstone.

It seems likely that these records were inadvertently stored in the same strong room at Maidstone Town Hall as the records of the borough Sessions and therefore became dissociated from the remainder of the County series at a relatively early date. When the County records were transferred to the office of the Clerk of the Peace in 1827 this early accumulation was unrecognized, nor was it apparently known in 1800 when the records were in the hands of the Deputy Clerk of the Peace and were noted by the Commissioners.

The significance of some of the records was recognized, though strangely not their proper provenance, when in 1926 Miss K. S. Martin examined the records of Maidstone borough and produced a volume Records of Maidstone. Unfortunately not only did Miss Martin fail to appreciate the full significance of what she was examining, it would also appear that she broke up such original files as survived and completely methodized the records into categories of document so that although an approximate chronological order of indictments, recognizances, depositions and so forth can be followed, all relationship between the classes has been lost and even any certainty of the Sessions to which particular cases relate.