An index of the Grand Criminal Court of Justice cases, 1845-1850 : a listing and analysis of this collection in the custody of the Legal Documentation Centre (National Archives of Malta)

Abstract

In 1986, the Banca Giuratale was restored and refurbished, and it was taken over by the Libraries and Archives Department to form part of the project to organise and develop the National Archives of Malta. It was officially inaugurated on 28 October 1988 by the then Minister of Education Dott. Ugo Mifsud Bonnici. Therefore the records (i.e. between the years 1814-1899) of the Grand Criminal Court (GCR) are held at the Legal Documentation Centre in Mdina. This Centre is today an extension of the National Archives of Malta. These legal records are open for research, but no suitable index of their contents exists. The purpose of this long essay is to present the importance of these documents for both historical and legal research, and provide researchers with a useful finding aid to browse these records in a professional way. It was impossible to go through the whole collection; therefore a limit had to be set for the number of files to be included in this work. The part of the collection described in this long essay represents the years between 1845 and 1850. This study will also include a historic-legal overview of the period under study; an archival and preservation analysis of the collection examined; and a thorough study aided with statistics of the Index done for the chosen period. At completion, my work will be presented in print format with attached a digital copy of the database of the Index in question for quick browsing.