Benjamin Rand: Housebreaking, Downgraded, and Transported
On this day in 1729, Benjamin Rand was tried at the Old Bailey for housebreaking. The charge was serious (housebreaking could mean a hanging), but the jury found him guilty of a lesser offence, and the court sentenced him to transportation rather than death.
The case appears in the Proceedings for 27 August 1729, a session packed with thefts and kindred offences—classic Georgian fare where juries often trimmed capital charges down to something short of the rope. Old Bailey Online
Why it mattered
- Jury mercy in action: 18th-century juries frequently “downgraded” to avoid the gallows when evidence or circumstances felt borderline. Rand’s outcome is a textbook example.
- Transportation as policy: After the Transportation Act (1718), courts used overseas exile as a non-capital but still severe punishment; it soon became routine for property crimes.
- Paper trail: Rand even has an associated petition entry linked to his trial—one of those glimpses of how convicts (or their families) sought mercy after sentence.
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