Do any of the legal eagles know if reports are kept of old court cases? I’m looking for as much information as possible from a manslaughter trial held in Leeds January 1978.

Any help appreciated.

Ta

Google with the name of the case? Regina v smith or however criminal cases are done

IANAL, but as far as I understand, details of all court records are considered as public records

Your question intrigued me – I did a bit of Googling, and found the National Archives website. I did an Advanced Search, using the date range 1977 – 1979, and the keywords “Leeds”, “Court” and “Manslaughter”, and came up with the following results:

http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?name=Search&_aq=leeds&_ep=&_or1=court&_or2=manslaughter&_or3=&_nq1=&_nq2=&_nq3=&_cr1=&_cr2=&_cr3=&_dss=range&_sd=1977&_ed=1979&_hb=&_ro=any&_rd=&_rsd=&_red=&_st=adv&_rv=

The National Archives is at Kew, and as well as being able to search online, you can go there in person. However, some records aren’t held at Kew

This is borne out by the specific entry for Leeds Magistrates Court records, which are physically held in Leeds (not surprisingly)
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/a/A13531670

As far as I understand it, for a serious crime like manslaughter, the defendant would initially be charged in the magistrate’s court, but the trial would probably take place in the crown court, so you may need to search in both sets of records

Thinking laterally, it’s likely that such a case would have been covered extensively in the local press. I’m not local to Leeds, but there may be a local paper that keeps an archive. Leeds University may also keep an archive of local press cuttings (or the city library). Being physically in Leeds would definitely help your search!

By the way, shouldn’t this thread be in the Chat forum?

Does any of this help?

Thanks, your Google powers are greater than mine.

The only details I do have so far from a report in the Yorkshire Evening Post written shortly after the incident in January 1978 that says the a person was charged with manslaughter and some discussion about bail being contested but ultimately granted and some coroners reports .
I can’t find further records on either the site you’ve linked or by General googling of the names so perhaps the case never made it to court , I’m not sure how these things work.

I’ve sent an email to the court in the hope they’ll point me in the right direction.

Many thanks

if you’re in Leeds, easiest thing might be to pop down and speak to the clerk of the court/registry (whatever they’re called). imvhe of such people they’re quirky and often “won’t be doing with email” but if you ask apologetically they can be very helpful with pointers. would assume the coroner’s court would have substantive records too as well as the crown court (would it have been the crown court in those days?)

the press report suggestion is also a good one (and migh give you better starting points for court record searches). you used to be able to go to the central library in town and flick through old papers – I don’t know if that still exists – and newspapers used to be sent to Kew for archiving. you might be able to get stuff from Factiva or Lexisnexis media archives (know any students etc that might have a login through Uni?) but they wouldn’t necessarily go back that far.

I know what your saying, I found the court staff really helpful years ago when first looking into this case since then I’ve moved away and got on with the ups and downs of life. The newspaper story actually came from the court staff suggestion to check the newspapers and at that time (c.1990) it was held on microfiche. The report provides some insight but as always raises more questions which may be difficult to resolve.

I think part of the reason I posted was almost to make myself get on and research the case properly, it’s been 30+ years in the waiting so not before time but tbh probably not the best subject for a forum thread.

Thanks again I won’t be posting on this subject again but appreciate being able to use the forum to post intent, even if it was in the wrong forum! 🙂