Sub-series - Sessions files

Sessions files (usually one file per session), 1816-1971. The contents of the files vary, but most include indictments from 1816, recognizances from 1838, summary convictions, 1838-1915, statements and depositions from 1852 and printed calendars of prisoners from 1868. There are also rules of friendly societies, 1823-1846, declarations relating to printing presses, 1837-1838, jury lists (with street of residence), 1832-1852 and 1866-1933, maps and papers relating to the closure or diversion of footpaths, 1833 and 1890, a few mid 19th-century papers relating to settlements and apprenticeships, a licence for the New Theatre, 1847, and coroner's inquest verdicts for some years in the period 1895-1933. Some include oaths and and appointments of officers and deputies.

Most of the files numbered KL/C 22/15-265 have been sewn at the head without regard to papers already folded at the left hand margin, some of which are thus rendered partially illegible. Sewing holes in some files show that the documents were originally filed on a single thread through the centre.

Most of the documents numbered KL/C 22/266-283 were originally filed together by session, although groups of similar documents for one or more sessions were sometimes also sewn together and separately labelled (e.g. '1843 Summary Convictions'). Much of this original filing remains, but many of the files had been broken and their contents confused before the late 19th or early 20th century, when the files and loose papers and parchment were stabbed and threaded onto laces which were then tied round the outside of the partly-rolled documents to form larger rolls or bundles, usually one per year, and new wrappers made for them, stamped with the date of the bundle. Because this later filing cut through the text of the documents, preventing their being examined without further damage, the laces were removed in 1995. The order and composition of the bundles has, however, been retained as found. Files or loose documents survive for all four sessions of the year (Epiphany, Easter, Midsummer, and Michaelmas) except where otherwise indicated.