How do I trace the record of a prisoner in warding and liberation books of a burgh tolbooth or jail?

Records relating to burgh prisons and tolbooths consist mainly of warding and liberation books, which record the incarceration and release of individual prisoners with few other details. These are rarely indexed, except where they have been indexed by staff or volunteers in the appropriate record office or published and indexed by an antiquarian society. Warding and liberation books for burgh tolbooths and prisons tend to be with the burgh records, normally held by the appropriate local authority archive service. In the case of several Fife burghs, the records are held by St Andrews University. Another exception is the case of Edinburgh Tolbooth, whose warding and liberation books, 1657-1816, are held by the National Records of Scotland (HH11).

The search may be time-consuming depending on the number of prisoners handled by each tolbooth or jail, and records prior to 1750 can be difficult to read because of the nature of the handwriting for that period.