Want to know what mischief people in London got into from the mid 17th to the early 19th Centuries? Check out The Proceedings of the Old Bailey London 1674 to 1834: A searchable online edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of ordinary people ever published, containing accounts of over 100,000 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.

On this day in 1675:

Three men were this Sessions Indicted for the Felonious taking away of three ounces of Silver from a Refiner , some of them it seem’d used to work at the Refiners house, and therefore were the more strangely suspected to be guilty, and the Silver being offered to be sold, and staid upon suspition, one of the peices was affirmed upon evidence to belong to the Gentleman that lost them, and some other circumstances to clear the Fact, but on the Prisoners part it was alleadged, that one of them had found the said Silver wrapped up in a bag near White-Fryers in Fleet-street, the whole matter being left to the Jury, they were acquitted.