Trial Accounts

Title page of Boston slave riot, and trial of Anthony Burns, contains an illustration of Anthony Burns.

Boston slave riot, and trial of Anthony Burns (Boston: Fetridge and Company, 1854).

The collection of English and particularly American criminal trials includes over 4,000 published accounts. The collection ranges from the 17th to the 20th centuries, with particular strengths in 18th- and 19th-century trials. It is a great source for trial transcripts, as well as journalistic interpretations of cases which were sometimes tried in public as well as the courtroom. Developments in forensic science and courtroom procedure are on ample display, as well as aspects of social, economic and political history.

View the catalogue of our 2014 exhibition: Emma Molina Widener & Michael Widener. Murder and Women in 19th-Century America: Trial Accounts in the Yale Law Library (New Haven: Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, 2015).

View the catalogue of our 2016 exhibition: Lorne Bair, Hélène Golay, & Michael Widener, Free Tom Mooney! An Exhibition of the Yale Law Library’s Tom Mooney Collection (New Haven: Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, 2016).