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Hierarchy Browser Number8001/3/3/1
TitleWorcester City Quarter Sessions Rolls and Bundles
DescriptionThe Quarter Sessions (Petty Sessions, later Magistrate's Court) rolls contain all documents used and created by the courts in their extensive duties. This includes holding trials for petty offences or referring them to the Assize Courts, awarding licenses for slaughterhouses, public houses etc, and dealing with infrastructure such as highways and their tolls. Sessions were held quarterly, around Easter, Midsummer, Michaelmas and Epiphany. These are the original documents presented in or produced by the Court. A typical box may contain including: convictions; overseers' forms concerning paupers; testimonies; depositions; writs; parish returns of poor people and lunatics; letters; jury lists and oaths; calendars of prisoners, bastardy cases; bankrupts and lists of those convicted at previous sessions; complaints; indentures; Chaplain's Reports on the Gaol; settlement and removal orders; licenses; accounts for prosecution costs incurred; recognizances and forfeited recognizances.

Unfortunately these have been subjected to extensive flooding. Exposure to damp has caused damage such as causing parchment pages to stick together, ink on paper to run, and small outbreaks of (now inert) mould. A minority of the rolls and bundles are unusable, but many have suffered minor damage that may mean parts are illegible but the documents are usable with care. Most are extremely dirty, some have become caked in mud that required a conservator to remove. The conservator separated, cleaned and flattened the bundles and the majority are fragile but usable, though there has been some information loss. A few documents were too badly damaged to be repaired and remain unusable.
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