Manuscripts, in multiple hands, of a collection of sessions papers, many dated in the 1690s but also including an original indictment for burglary dated 1588 and a constable's summons to attend a whipping dated 1818. The papers document legal recourse and testimonies for local crimes, including highway attacks, thefts, and street nuisances; as well as administrative ordinances, reparations for fire damages, and petitions. The collection includes testimonies against a highwayman; testimonies in the case of a theft of the Earl of Ranelagh's jewels; accounts of losses, including financial estimates and lists of household and shop inventories, sustained by tradesmen in fires in Charing Cross and other locations; several petitions concerning watchmen; and a testimony by Anabaptists certifying a baker to be one of their congregation and an honest man. Several of the items in the volume also address women's conduct and regulation of sexual behavior, such as a list of suspected bawdy houses; the punishment of two women for being a bawd and a whore by whipping, public exposure in the marketplace, and the wearing of papers written with their crimes on their foreheads; and testimonies of citizens who bought banned bawdy pamphlets, concerning where and from whom the pamphlets were procured.
