The cases heard at the Old Bailey offer a vivid, often grim portrait of England and Wales today. What happens when there is no one left to tell these stories?
The question is: “Will it make?” A nice murder will make. A crime involving a celebrity will make. Make the papers, Guy Toyn meant. Toyn is the co-owner of the news agency Court News UK, which reports the stories emerging from London’s criminal courts. In the mix this week was the man who had head-butted Roy Keane: that would definitely make. But the gang murders that routinely fill the Old Bailey, where Court News is based, rarely make. No, a nice murder would be a woman killing a man, ideally a middle-class white woman killing a man. Like the recent case of the primary school teacher who buried her partner in their back garden. That would always make.
Toyn – a towering man of 61 with a voice you can hear through walls – was deciding which courts to visit with a teenage intern who was shadowing him for the week. The 18 courts at the Old Bailey, properly known as the Central criminal court of England and Wales, are the setting for the major criminal trials of Greater London. On offer today, a Tuesday in June, was the usual frantic menu of disturbed human behaviour: in court 12, a case of cocaine-smuggling in a shipment of bananas; in court 11, a man appealing against the refusal of a shotgun licence after he had threatened to kill an employee; in courts 6, 7 and 8, a range of stabbings.
Toyn has worked at the Old Bailey with his business partner and fellow court reporter Scott Wilford for the best part of 35 years. The job hasn’t changed hugely over that time. As an agency rather than a publication, the Court News model depends on selling stories to the national press. Wilford will offer up a report on the first day of a murder trial or a high-profile sentencing and the Daily Mail, say, will put in an order. (Court News makes about £130 for a non-exclusive court report and anything up to £700 for an exclusive story.)
