Have you ever wondered what an archivist does?
In this week’s podcast, NRS archivist Simon Johnson opens up the case papers of Scotland’s supreme criminal court in the early 19th Century.
Case papers from the High Court of Justiciary provide endless research potential, both as a record of individual cases and as a tremendous source of Scottish social history.
Cataloguing these case papers can be a laborious and dirty job but it’s always fascinating and in this talk, recorded on St Andrews Day, Simon looks into the process of arranging and cataloguing a collection from the latter Georgian era of 1800-1830.
He’s also picked out some of the more startling criminal cases that he and his colleagues found – cases involving murder, grave robbing and an insight into the very earliest days of forensic analysis in Scotland.
Throughout his talk, Simon refers to photographs and individual case papers, and you can find a selection of these images below.
The NRS Catalogue is available online, including the High Court records. Click here to start searching…
Case papers from the body-snatching case against James Hogg et al, 1807
Open Book 