Can anyone help me to find out the following -

(i) Records with the Metropolitan Police/Scotland Yard about Indian criminals in 19th century London - what sort of crimes they were accused of ? How many arrested and convicted ?
(ii) Old Bailey/court records of hearings against Indian criminals in 19th century London and the nature of the sentences passed on them ?



S.Banerjee

This is an INCREDIBLY hard question, Sumanta, partly because I suspect that the Indian (?Lascar) community in London in the 19th century was not very large anyway.

I have turned it into a separate topic to give it more prominence.
Give me sometime to think about it, and I will get back to you via this forum.

Briefly, I believe that many of the records of the Metropolitan Police for this period are now held by the National Archives. You would need to visit in order to consult the papers and it would be a long job. I do not know if the sort of statistics you are after were ever collated.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/default.htm

However, the records of the Old Bailey are available online and will give you some examples which may be of use:

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

I hope that this is helpful. I am not sure how much depth and detail you need.

Get your library to get get you this article:
Preeti Nijhar, 'Imperial Violence: the Ethnic as a Component of the Criminal Class in Victorian England' in Journal Liverpool Law Review (Publisher Springer Netherlands) Issue Volume 27, Number 3 / December, 2006 (available online)


This Old Bailey page looks specifically at members of the Black community, and Michael Herbert Fisher has analysed those cases for you here.

Otherwse, there's very little on the web - just snippets that you would have to follow up, such as here.

If I were you, I would try to contact some expert.
Try emailing
Preeti Nijhar (at the University of Bangor): s.k.nijhar@bangor.ac.uk
or
Humayun Ansari
or
Michael Herbert Fisher
and ask them.

Be polite, and be aware that some of academics can be extremely nasty people, but if anyone can help you, they will be able to. Some academics are so delighted when they find someone interested in their subject, that they are effusively helpful!