Criminal Records

[LightandAiry]

I would like to find a criminal record from 1941 - not sure where to start, no idea of where the court case occurred. Has anybody been successful in finding a criminal record from this period?

Thanks in advance

You can search for criminal records on ancestry, I assume other sites have this facility too ?

It might be worth trying newspaper archives to see if you can pin down location.

Criminal records may well not be available for open access due to the sensitive nature of some of the material - even though the criminal may be dead the victims (if there were any) may not.

You could try a newspaper archive search but without further information this maybe very difficult. Try the `brisitsh library newspaper archive index

Thanks for replies - very difficult and sensitive topic. Still some descendants who we think don't know what happened.

Usually records are sealed for 100 years.

1941 is a long time ago but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that if crimes involved children, they could still be alive.

Newspaper archives can be very useful in this regard, even the most minor cases were reported in the past. The problem is that 1941 was in WW2 and just as now, smaller stories are pushed off the news pages. Local papers would be worth a look though.