By the 17th century, all but the most serious civil and criminal cases in Ireland were heard at local quarter sessions, presided over four times a year by justices of the peace: unpaid magistrates drawn from the local gentry and landowning classes. From the early 19th century, however, more minor offences were heard at the petty-sessions courts, which also took on the responsibility of preliminary hearings for more serious cases to be referred to the quarter sessions. With the 1851 Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act the system was substantially professionalised, with trained and salaried magistrates taking over the judicial roles.
No jury was involved at a petty-sessions court hearing, with each case heard by the sitting justice only. Hearings could be daily, weekly or even monthly. At each session, clerks were tasked with issuing the relevant summonses and warrants to the parties involved, to create minutes of cases within dedicated minute books and order books, and to receive payments due for sums owed as penalties for offences, or awarded in civil cases.
Although many historic court records in Ireland were destroyed in 1922 during the Irish Civil War, thankfully the survival rate for records from the petty-sessions courts is high, with some 11,000 volumes for what now constitutes the Republic of Ireland held by the National Archives of Ireland in Dublin.
The specific surviving records are the order books for 1851–1924 (catalogued under CS/PS/1), although there are a small number of earlier 19th-century cases from the counties of Cavan, Clare, Cork, Dublin, Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Roscommon, Tipperary, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow. There are gaps in the coverage, however, most notably for the Dublin Metropolitan Police Court, while in some areas availability may be very limited – for example, for the court at Thurles, County Tipperary, coverage exists for 1909–1913 only.
Within each order book you will find the date of an order made by the justice, the name of the justice responsible, the names of relevant complainants and defendants in a case (including their townland and parish of residence), the names of witnesses, a summary of the complaint as laid out in the summons, and the particulars of an order or dismissal. Entries span two pages, but note that in some registers only the first page has been photographed; where the second is included you may also find whether a fine has been paid, the name of the defendant against whom an order was made, and the signature of the justice.
The range of the cases that were heard at the petty sessions is huge, and your ancestors may well be listed on more than one occasion. If we take the example of Robert Strain of Tullyvinny, a townland in the County Donegal parish of Raphoe, we find that between 1861 and 1867 he appears in the Raphoe court book 17 times. Among the charges brought against him were malicious injury and claims for damage; turning a plaintiff’s cattle into the plaintiff’s stock yard; trespass of horse in crop; carrying off grass; drunkenness on the highway (by far one of the most common offences); fighting on the street; assault by a ferocious dog; and forcible trespass armed with stones.
Surviving records have been indexed by Findmypast in the collection ‘Ireland, Petty Sessions Court Registers’; a further page from Findmypast Ireland lists the coverage available for each court.
FamilySearch, which microfilmed the original records, also offers transcriptions through its collection ‘Ireland, Petty Sessions Court Registers, 1828–1912’. However, the site will steer users towards Findmypast if they want to see the images.
Ancestry also hosts transcriptions and images within its collection ‘Ireland, Petty Session Court Registers, 1818–1919’, and in addition to keyword searches the website facilitates the browsing of individual court books. Despite the title, the full collection starts in 1828; note that records from Boyle, County Roscommon, have been misindexed from 1878 as 1818 (Boyle records actually survive from 1852 onwards).
In 1924 the petty-sessions courts in the Republic of Ireland were replaced by district courts, while in Northern Ireland the system continues in the form of magistrates’ courts. Historic Northern Irish registers are not online, but are held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast; surviving 1840–1995 records are under HA/1.
