Wild Goose Trials: Bizarre Cases from the Old Bailey
60 Years of Trials Linked to Geese
When I was studying for my undergraduate degree, one of my lecturers introduced me to the Old Bailey Proceedings Online archive, which is essentially a digitised record of all surviving Old Bailey Proceedings from 1674–1913, with close to two hundred thousand trials and details, including two and a half thousand cases that ended in executions at Tyburn (link provided at the end for those who wish to have a peruse).
The way the site works is that you can search trails by keywords, including crimes, sentences, names and dates (a fun thing to do if you are bored is search for cases involving your own name — I found eight involving someone with the same first and last name as me in the nineteenth century, with charges of assault and burglary).
This article explores some of the cases that came up when the keyword was ‘goose’.
Most of the cases were, as expected for theft (of a goose, funnily enough), but some of them were quite surprising…
John Gibbons, 13th October 1680
The earliest reference to a case involving as goose comes in 1680 and is not a trial for theft. No, this was a murder trial.
