Defence practice in the 18th and early 19th-century courtroom discourse: pickpocketing cases at the Old Bailey

In this paper, the author investigates forms of defence employed by prisoners in pickpocketing cases presented at the Old Bailey from 1740 to 1820. The purpose is to show how defence patterns changed in courtroom discourse across the 18th and the early 19th century. In particular, the author will look at: 1) how defendants managed their defence and to what extent their discourse practice affected the final verdict; 2) how the prisoner's role changed as a result of the introduction of the defence counsel and the development of the adversarial system. By drawing upon Bennet and Felman's (1981) classification of defence strategies in modern courtroom, the author will account for the techniques of defence used by defendants and lawyers inspecting similarities and differences. The results will reveal that male and female prisoners generally opted for the reconstruction strategy while lawyers provileged challenge and redefinition. In addition, defendants made a larger use of (negative) polar questions during cross-examination while lawyers mostly relied on declaratives, which exert a stronger control on the answer. In both cases, the defence strategies adopted did not significantly bias the outcome of the trial suggesting that other factors influenced the decision of the jury.