All Newgate calendars have seemingly a common origin. They are all based primarily upon the Sessions’ Papers, the official publications which record the proceedings at the Old Bailey. There is a complete early series of these session papers in the Library of the British Museum, and another in the Home Office from the year 1730, including the December sessions of 1729. The publisher, who is stated on the title-page to be “T. Payne, at the corner of Ivy Lane, near Paternoster Row,” refers in his preface to an earlier series, dating probably from the beginning of the century, and a manuscript note in the margin of the first volume of the second series also speaks of a preceding folio volume. These sessions papers did not issue from one publisher. As the years pass the publication changes hands. Now it is “J. Wilford, behind the Chapter House, St. Pauls”; now “I. Roberts at the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane.” Ere long “T. Applebee in Bolt Court, near the Leg Tavern,” turns his attention to this interesting class of periodical literature. He also published another set of semi-official documents, several numbers of which are bound up with the sessions’ papers already mentioned, and like them supplying important data for the compilation of calendars. These were the accounts given by the ordinary of Newgate of the behaviour, confessions, and dying words of the malefactors “executed at Tyburn,” a report rendered by command of the Mayor and corporation, but a private financial venture of the chaplains. As the ordinary had free access to condemned convicts at all times, and from his peculiar duties generally established the most confidential relations with them, he was in a position to obtain much curious and often authentic information from the lips of the doomed offenders. Hence the ordinary’s account contained many criminal autobiographies, and probably was much patronized by the public. Its sale was a part of the Reverend gentleman’s perquisites; and that the chaplains looked closely after the returns may be gathered from the already mentioned application made by the Rev. Mr. Loraine, chaplain in 1804, who petitioned Parliament to exempt his “execution brochure” from the paper tax.[140]