The Old Bailey's Lady Justice wears no blindfold, on purpose
Atop the dome of London's most famous criminal court stands a gilded Lady Justice holding sword and scales, and her eyes are uncovered. The court explains that she was never blindfolded originally, and that her maidenly form is meant to guarantee impartiality on its own.
The court takes its nickname from its street, which traces the line of London's ancient wall and its bailey, or fortified enclosure. A courthouse is first recorded there in 1585, beside Newgate Prison, apparently funded through a bequest from the medieval Lord Mayor Richard Whittington for improving the jail. After the Great Fire of 1666 it was rebuilt in 1674 deliberately open to the weather, to stop disease spreading. When it was enclosed in 1734 to keep spectators at bay, typhus followed; an outbreak in 1750 killed 60 people, among them the Lord Mayor and two judges.
Between 1674 and 1834 more than 100,000 criminal trials were heard there. In 1834 it became the Central Criminal Court, covering London, Middlesex, parts of neighbouring counties and crimes on the high seas. A law of 1856 let high-profile cases be moved there from elsewhere, first so the suspected poisoner William Palmer could be tried away from his native Staffordshire, where feeling ran too high. Public executions took place in the street outside until May 1868, and locals nicknamed the court The Gate, short for Newgate.
The present building by Edward Mountford was finished in 1902 and opened by Edward VII in 1907 on the site of the demolished prison. Over its entrance runs a plea to defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer. Bombed in the Blitz, its Great Hall reopened in 1952, and a modern South Block was added between 1968 and 1972.
Old customs survive. Every judge there is addressed as My Lord or My Lady, and the City's Lord Mayor may join the bench, so a judge sitting alone traditionally takes a chair to one side in case he arrives. Fiction loves the place, from A Tale of Two Cities to Rumpole of the Bailey.
Source: Old Bailey
