Thousands of Britons, Americans and a fair few Australians began searching an online archive yesterday for news of the nefarious dealings of their distant ancestors in Victorian London.
Records of trials at the Old Bailey throughout the 1800s and early 1900s have been placed online, from infamous murders to bungled bicycle frauds, all catalogued into a searchable archive.
Almost 200,000 can now be accessed free of charge online after the Central Criminal Court in London doubled the number of case records published on its website.
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, accessible at www.oldbaileyonline.org.uk, allows users to view details of every criminal trial from 1674 to 1913.
Searchable by keywords or categories such as crime, verdict and punishment, the records are supplemented by more than 190,000 digital images of original court documents.
Yesterday the site was creaking under the strain as people logged on, punched in their family name and waited for news of how and when it had been blackened by an unscrupulous ancestor.
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