New Bibliography: Royal Proclamations statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #LegalHistory

Can anyone confirm that there is no free, individual access to Hein Online's "Slavery in America and the World" collection? I had an individual account, which now doesn't work, and can't see any other way to access it without going through an instititution. #LegalHistory

We're moving our Mastodon account. As our previous provider is shutting down, we've moved to hcommons.social/@bho Gi' us a follow!

More on the Ancestry vs National Records Scotland battle: Ancestry and the NRS - when the corporate genealogy world turns ugly by @chrismpaton.bsky.social scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2025/09/ance... #Archives

This is the Ancestry vs National Records of Scotland decision. There is one mention of the Open Govt License, but opening up the records isn't really discussed. Doesn't seem to have copyright implications, but I can't claim to understand all the details.

I can't find the General Regulatory Chamber decision on this case (probably because I'm completely unfamiliar with such modern matters). Can anyone point me in the right direction? #Archives #Law #FreedomOfInformation #FOI

Does anyone know of a list of early modern and c18th English spellings of words? i.e. a list of alternative spellings, such as 'publick' for publick, 'Wyllyam' for William, and so on? Surely such a thing must have been compiled? #History #LinguisticHistory 🗃️

Another 'weird laws' article: Wirral to scrap 90-year-old ban on carpet beating and ‘wanton singing’ Those ‘sounding a noisy trumpet’ or ‘inciting a dog to bark’ along part of the Merseyside coast will no longer risk arrest www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025... #LegalHistory

Updated: bibliograpy of statutes of the Irish Parliament to 1800. The Virtual Treasury has made the two last volumes ofthe IRO Early Statutes series freely available online statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #History #LegalHistory #IrishHistory 🗃️

New research reveals King George IV profited from slavery in Grenada Experts say finding heightens pressure on the monarchy to confront its historical links to slavery www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a... #History #EnslavedHistory 🗃️

New bibliographic resource: Links to the Journals of the Houses of Commons and Lords of Ireland, to 1800. Plus where to find the parliamentary debates, circa 1776 - 1797. anterotesis.com/wordpress/hi... #History #IrishHistory 🗃️

Some good news: Caribbean LGBTQ+ activists celebrate as court strikes down colonial-era laws ‘Stride in the right direction’ as Eastern Caribbean supreme court rules St Lucia’s laws on gay sex unconstitutional www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a... #LegalHistory #LGBTHistory

The reason historians don’t now use the term ‘witch hunts’ as a generalised term for the prosecution of people for witchcraft is that it implies witchcraft was always prosecuted in a different way compared to other crimes - it wasn’t

#OTD 1st August 1834, the act 3 & 4 William 4 c.73, 'for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies' came into force, turning the enslaved into apprentices and compensating the slave-owners. statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta... #LegalHistory #EnslavedHistory

This book looks very interesting, and is #OpenAccess: Staging Witchcraft Before the Law Skepticism, Performance as Proof, and Law as Magic in Early Modern Witch Trials www.cambridge.org/core/element... #LegalHistory #Witchcraft

Text of the act: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/9... #History #LegalHistory

I think it is hard to underestimate how important this website is for the Rule of Law in the UK. Before 2010, if you wanted to find out what statutes were actually in force you essentially needed a subscription to a very expensive commercial product like Halsbury's Statutes.

Turns out legislation.gov.uk is 15 years old today. How the time flies @jenitennison.com!

Text of the printed act: babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ps... #LegalHistory

Text of the act: statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta... #History 🗃️

My co-editor @jenguiliano.bsky.social & I are excited to share the June 2025 issue of #ReviewsInDH, which features projects that engage with legal sources to challenge conventional understanding of Black history. reviewsindh.pubpub.org/v6-n6

Fixed some links on my Chronological bibliography of British / UK statutes, 1707-1974: statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #LegalHistory

In this age of AI and false citations, any mention of a legal case or public legal instrument should hyperlink to the original. Just as previous generations used footnotes and citations, we should routinely link back to sources.

The act repealing the Elizabethan 'Egyptians Act': statutes.org.uk/site/the-sta... Unusual for being very terse, and for being the only statute to use the term 'a Law of excessive Severity' (in condemning the repealed act). #LegalHistory #RomaHistory 🗃️

A key purpose of the 1824 Vagrancy Act was to punish magical practitioners; it originally criminalised 'every person pretending or professing to tell fortunes, or using any subtle craft, means, or device, by palmistry or otherwise, to deceive and impose' 🔮

The latest on #AI hallucinated court cases in the UK: High court tells UK lawyers to stop misuse of AI after fake case-law citations www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The text of the act: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1970/4... #WomensHistory #LegalHistory 🗃️

#OnThisDay, 29 May 1970, the Equal Pay Act receives Royal Assent in the UK. It's seen as the lasting legacy of Barbara Castle MP and means men and women doing the same job should receive the same pay. #EqualPay #BritishHistory #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️

'BuT wHaT aBoUt ThE aFriCaN sLaVeRs?!' - is the immediate response of those uneducated on the transatlantic trade in enslaved people from Africa (see, also: racists & imperial apologists). So let's do a bit of an examination on the relationship between Britain and Africans🧵 1/

Regnal dating is inherently unstable (one never knows in advance whether a parliamentary session will see a change in monarch, or continue into a new regnal year), but this variant is especially so. #History

#OnThisDay 1199 King John was crowned at Westminster. It was Ascension, a moveable feast. This means - uniquely - that all John's regnal years, by which his documents are dated, are different lengths. And so, even 800 years later, he continues to irritate.

Brilliant: a database of AI legal hallucination cases: www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinatio... Currently at 116 cases! #AI #Law

NEW BOOK: LEGAL WORKERS INQUIRY Read the first ever collection of essays from legal workers about legal work & organsing (Tanzil Chowdhury @jamie_woodcock eds.) Download for FREE (or buy hardcopies with all proceeds going to Notes From Below) notesfrombelow.org/issue/legal-...

An Act Declaring and Constituting the People of England to be a Commonwealth and Free-State: www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/ac... #History #OTD

ESTC back, in beta form, at the Consortium of European Lirbaries. Can't find any other information on this rebuild, on plans for it; and I can't see any licensing / copyright info. #History #BookHistory 🗃️

Requested from, and released by, Google Books, as it is #PublicDomain, this very useful volume: A Bibliography of Parliamentary Debates of Great Britain books.google.co.uk/books?id=nyw... #History 🗃️

Anyone in UK law circles (whether practice, academia, legal activism, etc) - please sign! And if you wish to circulate, here's a short URL for ease tinyurl.com/signlawletter

New to me, another fine collection of historical slavery legislation: US Anti-Slavery Laws Archive Includes maps! usantislaverylaws.org/maps/map.php #History #LegalHistory 🗃️

Just managed to get ChatGPT to hallucinate a historic statute. Fed it the first five clauses, and even though it idenitifed the act, it just made up another five. sections. All sounded plausible, but just wasn't the act itself. #LLMs #NotLegalHistory

Good piece on access to court materials in the US, and non-access in the UK: Why is it easier to access US court documents than UK court documents? by @davidallengreen.bsky.social www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th... #Law #OpenLaw

1885 - year of scandals and legal change. Join @drcisme.bsky.social and me for an online workshop: 1885 and its long shadow: sexual offences in historical context #CFP deadline 16/5. Hosts: OU legal histories research cluster & @britsoci.bsky.social Global Histories & Sociology Study Group

The next British Legal History Conference in Nottingham, 2026: www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/gro... Looking forward to all the #LegalHistory

Enough of these quislings. Abolish the #RoyalSociety www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Mass repeal of obsolete legislation coming up in #Ireland: www.irishtimes.com/politics/202... #History #LegalHistory

This looks like an excellent resource for history of slavery. Easy to use, browse legal texts by subject tags, download transcripts. 👍 #history #legalhistory #slavehistory

This is a great resource: 355 historic statutes on slavery from the Atlantic World, 1661 - 1838. Laws of Enslavement and Freedom in the Anglo-Atlantic World slaveryandfreedomlaws.lib.unb.ca #History #EnslavedHistory #LegalHistory 🗃️

New bibliography: the 6 volumes (mainly in eye-watering gothic type) of John Cay's Statutes at Large: statutes.org.uk/site/collect... #LegalHistory