Find your ancestors in Home Office 23 & 24

In association with The National Archives, Findmypast is excited to release an extensive collection of records from criminal cases, gaols, hulks, prisons, and criminal calendars. England & Wales, crime, prisons & punishment, 1770-1935 is the largest single collection of British crime records online.

HO23,Home Office: registers of Prisoners from National Prisons lodged in County Prisons 1847-1866

As a result of overcrowding in the national prisons, the government had to rent out cells in county prisons. These records hold the details of 13,665 prisoners who were housed in prisons at Aylesbury, Bath, Leeds, Leicester, Northampton, Nottingham, Preston, Reading, Somerset, and Wakefield between 1847 and 1866.

The registers give the following information about the prisoners: age, marital status and number of children, whether they can read or write, and their trade, as well as when and where they were convicted, what their crime was and sentence, the national prison they had been received from, whether they had any criminal history, and where they were removed to and when.

HO24,Home Office: prison registers and statistical returns 1838-1875

There are almost 86,000 records in this set comprising prison registers from Millbank, Parkhurst and Pentonville prisons, as well as annual statistical returns from between 1860 and 1869 for county gaol and juvenile reform schools in England and Wales, arranged by county.

The prison registers provide the following details about each prisoner: age, marital status, and number of children, as well as where the prisoner was received from and when, any previous offences, and where the prisoner was removed to and when. These records are very similar to those of the overflow prisoners kept in county prisons that you will find in HO 23.