Private Bill Witness Dataset

Parliament’s Archive Collections includes 5,400 volumes of evidence on private bills, relating to the building of roads, railways, canals and other public works, dating from 1835 onwards. This dataset provides an index of the names, occupations and other information about people who gave the evidence that can be found in the volumes, and can be a rich resource for family and local historians. Some of the data also relates to evidence held in other records, such as laid papers and committee books. The information was extracted from the volumes over a 10-15 year period in the 1980s-90s. There may be inaccuracies and inconsistencies within the data.