Historic public general statutes
The work of historians of all flavours is influenced by the legislation in force at the time of their research. For family historians, the lives of our ancestors were strongly impacted by the laws in place during their lives. Working conditions were regulated, public order was a frequent subject of legislation, education was governed by laws. Perhaps more fundamentally from a research perspective, the traces our ancestors left in the archive - the records describing them and their lives - were frequently governed by legislation passed by Parliament. For Scottish family historians, the core records we rely on that form the heart of our research - registers of births, marriages and deaths, and census records - were defined in detail by the legislation underpinning the administrative systems that produced them.
For these reasons (and many others) what are termed public general statutes - Acts of Parliament or more loosely laws - are fundamentally important for historians, family or otherwise.
Collections of these statutes were published throughout the nineteenth century, and today many of these collections have been digitised and made available online. But they can be difficult to find, and time consuming to find the relevant statues within digital volumes that in some cases run to a thousand pages and more. We ourselves have occasionally been frustrated trying to find the text of relevant legislation when researching. We therefore decided it might be useful to publish a comprehensive list of these statutes, together with direct links to the text of the legislation.
You will sometimes see a citation of a law given as something like "3 & 4 Vict C 97". This is a standard shortcut, providing a unique identifier to a statute (in this case the Railway Regulation Act). This format is quite often seen in court, legal and prison records, and is actually quite straightforward to understand - the "3 & 4 Vict" is called the Regnal Year and refers to the Parliamentary session held in the 3rd and 4th years of the Reign of Queen Victoria, so 1840, while the "C 97" refers to Chapter 97, that is the 97th statute passed in that sitting. In some cases you might see an extended form of this reference, pointing to the Section number within the statute.
Our index at present covers all Public General Statutes from 1801 to the end of Queen Victoria's long reign in 1901. There are 10,621 statutes in the listings. It includes the Short Title, the Regnal Year, the Calendar Year and the Chapter Number, the Long Title, as well as a link to the text of the statute, and is arranged alphabetically by Short Title, then chronologically. While we have checked every link initially, it's possible there's the odd broken link among them, so please contact us to let us know.
Many thanks to John Levin of The Statutes UK Project for assistance with the Long Titles, and for the inspiration to provide these deep links.
For these reasons (and many others) what are termed public general statutes - Acts of Parliament or more loosely laws - are fundamentally important for historians, family or otherwise.
Collections of these statutes were published throughout the nineteenth century, and today many of these collections have been digitised and made available online. But they can be difficult to find, and time consuming to find the relevant statues within digital volumes that in some cases run to a thousand pages and more. We ourselves have occasionally been frustrated trying to find the text of relevant legislation when researching. We therefore decided it might be useful to publish a comprehensive list of these statutes, together with direct links to the text of the legislation.
You will sometimes see a citation of a law given as something like "3 & 4 Vict C 97". This is a standard shortcut, providing a unique identifier to a statute (in this case the Railway Regulation Act). This format is quite often seen in court, legal and prison records, and is actually quite straightforward to understand - the "3 & 4 Vict" is called the Regnal Year and refers to the Parliamentary session held in the 3rd and 4th years of the Reign of Queen Victoria, so 1840, while the "C 97" refers to Chapter 97, that is the 97th statute passed in that sitting. In some cases you might see an extended form of this reference, pointing to the Section number within the statute.
Our index at present covers all Public General Statutes from 1801 to the end of Queen Victoria's long reign in 1901. There are 10,621 statutes in the listings. It includes the Short Title, the Regnal Year, the Calendar Year and the Chapter Number, the Long Title, as well as a link to the text of the statute, and is arranged alphabetically by Short Title, then chronologically. While we have checked every link initially, it's possible there's the odd broken link among them, so please contact us to let us know.
Many thanks to John Levin of The Statutes UK Project for assistance with the Long Titles, and for the inspiration to provide these deep links.
