Private Bill Witness Dataset

Published by:: The National Archives
Last updated:: 05 June 2026
Topic:: Society
Licence:: Open Government Licence

Summary

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.

For more information on opposed private bill committee evidence, see: ‘Witnesses before Parliament: a Guide to the Database of Witnesses in Committees on Opposed Private Bills 1771-1917’, House of Lords Record Office Memorandum No 85 (1997). Please note the information about how to access the database is now out of date. However, access to the Guide is provided here so that users can benefit from the contextual and historical information about witnesses before Parliament that it contains.

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Data links

Link to the data	Format	File added	Data preview
Download Private Bill Witness Dataset , Format: XLS, Dataset: Private Bill Witness Dataset	XLS	04 June 2026	Not available

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