Old Bailey
until 1903 an English which the sittings of the Central Crimcourt or sessions house in London, in inal Court were held for the trial of offenses within its jurisdiction. The judges of this court are the lord mayor, the lord chancellor, the judges, aldermen, recorder, and common serjeant of London . But of these the recorder, serjeant, and recorder, the the judge of the sheriff's court are in most cases the actually presiding judges. Here were tried in 1660, after the Restoration, the surviving judges of Charles I.; and Milton's clasts" and "First Defense" were in the "Iconosame year burned at the Old Bailey by the common hangman. The patriot Lord William Russell was tried here in 1683, Jack Sheppard in 1724, Jonathan Wild in 1725, the poet Savage in 1727, Dr. Dodd in 1777, Bellingham, the assassin of the statesman Perceval, in 1812, the Cato street conspirators Bailey adjoins Newgate Prison, between in 1820. The Old Holborn Viaduct and Ludgate Hill, where the Central Criminal Court now stands.
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Old Curiosity Shop
a novel by Charles Dickens, published in weekly installments in Master Humphrey's Clock during 1840-41. Little Nell and her grandfather are the central figures of the story, although Dick Swiveller, Quilp, and the Marchioness come in for a share of attention.
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Old Dominion
Virginia. In colonial days acts of Parliament relating to the Virginian settlements (which at that time included all the British dominions in North America) always designated them as the "Colony and Dominion of Virginia." In the maps of the time this colony was described as "Old Virginia," in contradistinction to the New England settlements, which were called "New Virginia."
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Old Forge
a borough of Pennsylvania, in Lackawanna co. It is on the Lackawanna river and on the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western railroad. It is the center of an important anthracite region and its principal industries are region the mining and shipping of coal. There are also silk mills. It has an excellent . high school, and other public buildings Pop. (1910) 11,324; (1920) 12,237.
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Old Grimes
the title of an old and well known song by the Honorable Albert G. Greene of Rhode Island . The first verse of the song was not written by Mr. Greene. Its authorship is unknown. In 1822 or 1823 Mr. Greene, then a young man, was attending a law school at Litchfield. A small barber shop in the town was kept by a fugitive slave from Virginia, who had taken the name of his former master, William Grimes. Mr. Greene was in the habit of turning off rhymes at short notice on any and every subject, and when the negro asked for some verses the young student took the old verse beginning, "Old Grimes is dead," and added thereto, humorously mingling praises of the old man's virtues with descriptions of his clothing. The song was published in a Providence newspaper in 1823. Old Grimes is dead, that good old man We ne'er shall see him more He used to wear an old brown coat All buttoned down before. He lived in peace with all mankind, In friendship he was true; His coat had pocket-holes behind, His pantaloons were blue.
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Old Man of the Sea, The
The, in the story of Sinbad the Sailor, Arabian Nights' Entertainments , an old man whom Sinbad undertook to carry across a brook. When he had been hoisted to Sinbad's shoulders he clung so tightly that he could not be dislodged. At last Sinbad succeeded in getting his disagreeable burden drunk and then shook him off. The expression, "old man of the sea," has come to be used in a figurative sense for a bore, or for any sort of inconvenience which cannot be gotten rid of, and more particularly for one who has become a load for his party or who is seriously in the way.
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Old Mortality
the popular name of a Scottish stone mason. His real name was Robert Paterson (1715-1801). He was a native of Hawick, Scotland. His business was that of a stone-cutter. He worked a quarry, making a specialty of the flat slabs used as gravestones in the district about Galloway. These slabs were of suitable size to cover a grave. They were laid flat on the ground. In 1745 he took part in the insurrection of Prince Charlie, the Pretender. He was taken prisoner and carried to England. On his return he became so much interested in the restoration of the Covenanters' graves that he abandoned his family and traveled about Southern Scotland with a kit of tools. Whenever the inscription on a slab above a Covenanter's grave had been worn down by the hobnails of those frequenting the churchyard so as to become illegible, he set to work cutting the letters anew. An account of the old man reached Walter Scott and was taken as the basis of a novel known as Old Mortality. See Covenanter
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Old Probabilities
. See Weather Bureau
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Old Red-sandstone
This group of sandstone lies below the carboniferous strata, and was called "old" to distinguish it from a series of similar strata which occur above the coal-measures. See NEW RED-SANDSTONE.
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Old Town
a town in Penobscot co., Me., near the W. bank of the Penobscot river, and on the Maine Central and Bangor and Aroostook railroads; 12 miles N. N. E. of Bangor. It has extensive water power, and is a center of the lumber industry, having one of the largest lumber mills in the world. Pop. (1920) 6,956.
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Old World
the Eastern Hemisphere, so named in popular parlance subsequent to the discovery of the New World, in 1492.
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Oldcastle
SIR JOHN, LORD COBHAM, as English reformer; born in the 14th century, in the reign of Edward III., and obtained his peerage by marrying the daughter of Lord Cobham. He excited the resentment of the clergy by his zealous adherence to the doctrines of Wyclif, whose works he collected, transcribed, and distributed among the people. Under Henry V. he was accused of heresy; but the king, with whom he was a favorite, delayed the prosecutions against him, and tried to convince him of his alleged errors, but in vain. He was then cited before the Archbishop of Canterbury (1413), condemned as a heretic, and committed to the Tower, whence he escaped into Wales. Four years afterward he was retaken and burned alive in St. Giles' Fields, in December, 1417. He wrote "Twelve Conclusions," addressed to the Parliament of England.
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