The Old Bailey website (visit
link) tells us:
"As trials lengthened and the number of those seeking
to watch increased in the late nineteenth century the courthouse building became
increasingly inadequate. In 1877 a fire forced the City of London to act and
proposals were drawn up for a new building. Owing to the dilapidation of Newgate
Prison next door, which by the 1860s no longer held long-term prisoners, it was
decided to pull down both buildings to make room for a larger building.
After many delays, the new building, designed in the neo-Baroque style by E. W.
Mountford and built at a cost of £392,277, was finally opened by King Edward VII
in 1907. It was lavishly fitted out and adorned with symbolic reminders to the
public of its virtuous purpose. On top of the 67 foot high dome a 12 foot gold
leaf statue was placed of a “lady of justice” holding a sword in one hand and
the scales of justice in the other; she is not, as is conventional with such
figures, blindfolded. Over the main entrance to the building figures were placed
representing fortitude, the recording angel, and truth, along with the carved
inscription, “defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer”.
A quarter view looking southward down the Old Bailey, with the heavily built
frontage of the Central Criminal Court in the centre of the picture. The dome
and statue of 'justice' sits above the main building.
The exterior was faced in Portland stone, while the interior lobbies and a
monumental staircase had Sicilian marble floors, allegorical paintings
representing Labour, Art, Wisdom, and Truth, and ornate mosaic arches. The four
oak-pannelled courtrooms contained space for all those who needed to attend
modern trials, including solicitors and barristers, court reporters, the press
(who by now were the most important conduit to the public for information about
trials), and spectators. Each courtroom had a spacious dock, enclosed by low
partitions, for the defendants, with a staircase leading directly below to the
holding cells. There were now separate rooms for male and female witnesses, and
another for witnesses of “the better class”. Lawyers also had their own room, as
did barristers’ clerks; the latter included a glass wall to ensure they did not
engage in malpractices such as touting for business among prisoners and their
associates. As in the previous building, there was an opulently appointed dining
room for the judges.
At the opening ceremonies, the Recorder of London addressed the King and Queen:
The empty courtroom No. 1 at the Old Bailey with a row of seats for the judges
along the back wall, seats and tables for counsel in the middle, the dock on the
extreme right, and the jury box on the extreme left.
We trust that this building, whilst well adapted for the transaction of legal
business, also possesses architectural features at once dignified and beautiful,
which will make it an ornament to the metropolis of your Empire and a fitting
home for the first Criminal Court of Justice in your Majesty's dominions.
The building was heavily damaged by bombing in 1941 and rebuilt. A modern
extension was added in 1972. Nonetheless, the current building on the corner of
Newgate Street and Old Bailey, which still holds trials of local and national
significance and can be visited, remains at its core the building which was
first opened in 1907."
The History Today website (visit
link) tells more and mentions some of the more famous trials that have taken
place there:
"England and London’s most famous courthouse, in
Portland stone and grand Edwardian Baroque, was opened by Edward VII with Queen
Alexandra, in black velvet, and a panoply of splendidly robed City of London
dignitaries, judges and bishops in attendance. It is on the site of the old
Newgate Prison, some of whose stones were used in the new building, and the Old
Bailey judges still on occasion carry posies of flowers, with which their
predecessors protected themselves against both gaol fever (typhus) and the
prevailing atrocious stench.
The golden statue of Justice on top of the dome, not as usual blindfolded, but
holding her sword and scales, was by F.W. Pomeroy, who also did the figures of
the hooded recording angel flanked by Fortitude and Truth above the main
entrance. The building is officially the Central Criminal Court, but is almost
always known as the Old Bailey, which is the name of the street and comes from a
rampart, or bailey, constructed just outside the wall of the City in Norman
times. The site was occupied in Roman days and there was probably once a
Romano-British temple across the road from today’s court.
The original Sessions House for London criminal cases was built in 1539, at
Newgate so that prisoners could be brought to it easily. The accused was placed
as far away from the judges on the opposite side of the courtroom as possible,
so much so that a mirror and a sounding board were installed to allow them to
see and hear him clearly. The jury started off on either side of the courtroom,
but from the eighteenth century they had a single box to the right of the
accused, where they would confer and decide their verdicts in full view.
When the courthouse was rebuilt in 1673, the ground floor and the courtroom were
left open to the air as a precaution against gaol fever. Spectators flocked in,
but the ground floor was enclosed in 1737, perhaps to limit their numbers as
they could intimidate the jurors. Down to 1860, those who came paid entry fees
to the court officials. When the courthouse was rebuilt again in the 1770s,
witnesses had a separate room to wait in, instead of hanging about outside or in
a nearby tavern, and the jury had a room to retire to. More alterations were
made in the next century and Newgate Prison itself was at last demolished in
1902.
The 1907 courthouse has seen many of the most famous trials in English legal
history. The parade of notorious murderers tried there goes from Frederick
Seddon and George ‘Brides-in-the-Bath’ Smith to Neville Heath, John Reginald
Christie and the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, Peter Sutcliffe. Others brought to book at
the Old Bailey include a corrupt policeman called Goddard, who afterwards used
his ill-gotten loot to found Chessington Zoo, William Joyce (‘Lord Haw-Haw’) and
the Kray brothers. The building was badly damaged in the Blitz in 1941 and a new
extension, opened in 1970, was bombed by the IRA in 1973."