“1832 — August 3, William Jobling, for the murder of Nicholas Fairless. The body was gibbeted on Jarrow Slake on August 6, and at night on the 31st it was stolen and secretly disposed of by some persons unknown.”

The Durham miner’s death, recorded in The Times, is thought to be the last public gibbeting in England — a notable account in the history of crime and punishment over 200 years.

Today that history, along with the unique archive of The Times Law Reports over more than 200 years, is open to the public as part of the complete contents of the newspaper from 1785 to 1985. Readers can access the Law Reports of the past two centuries through Times Online, in the format in which they appeared in the newspaper, as well as accounts of the most famous cases of the day — Oscar Wilde, Derek Bentley and the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial.

Rose Wild, editor of the Times Archive, said: “As well as the law reports, the history of crime and punishment is played out in letters to the editor, in leading articles and comment pages, court reports and trial transcripts.

Charles Dickens wrote to The Times about the “wickedness and levity” of the crowd at a public hanging in 1849, not “with any intention of discussing the abstract question of capital punishment” but in support of the Government’s proposal to make it “a private solemnity with the prison walls”.

Groundbreaking debates range from the decision to deport convicts to Botany Bay to the death penalty, obscenity laws and the principle of war crimes trials. There are also grim accounts of executions, including the hangings of the Fenian rebels (or Manchester Martyrs) in 1867.

Ms Wild said: “The launch of the archive is a fantastic opportunity to access 200 years of legal history wherever you are, on your own laptop. You can search for specific cases and follow the course of the crime, trial, verdict and sentence, or look up general subjects, the death sentence, for example, and follow how legislation and attitudes have changed.”

A selection of the 100 most colourful and influential cases covered in our Law Reports will be run in a five-part series collated by Professor Gary Slapper, director of law at the Open University, starting today in Law Online. Alex Spence, editor of Law Online, said: “This is an obvious treasure trove for readers and researchers of all kinds but there’s also plenty here to excite lawyers.”

Among the 200 years of Times Law Reports are famous cases such as Donoghue v Stevenson, reported in 1932, the case of the snail discovered in a bottle of ginger beer, which is seminal to the law of negligence, and the 1884 report of R v Dudley and Stephens, about two shipwrecked sailors convicted of murder after killing the cabin boy and eating his flesh.

One of the earliest cases was that of Ormond v Payne, in 1789, which involved a butcher and prince’s coachman. The claimant, George Ormond, was a butcher living at Turnham Green, West London. The defendant, Don Payne, looked after the affairs of the Prince of Wales at Carlton House.

The butcher sued Payne after the prince’s coachman drove into the butcher’s cart, breaking his leg. According to Osmond, the coachman was in a terrible hurry and “in liquor”. The moment the horses were harnessed and he had mounted the box, he “called for a glass of gin, drank it, threw the glass violently upon the pavement, flogged his horses” and sped away. The jury found that Payne was liable for the coachman’s actions and awarded damages of £100.