Where can I find more detailed prison records - Stroud, England?

Question

My great-grandmother was an illegitimate child and it's not clear if the man her mother later married is her father or not.

Winifred Lyida O'Brien

BIRTH 30 OCT 1896 • Stroud, Gloucestershire, England

Mother:

Ann Norah O'Brien
BIRTH ABT 1860 • St Pancras, Middlesex, England
DEATH 16 JAN 1923 • Exeter, Devonshire, England, United Kingdom

Potential Father:

George Edward Goode
BIRTH 13 APR 1866 • Duddeston, Warwick, Warwickshire, England
DEATH Unknown

1901 census

https://www.ancestry.ca/sharing/16562936?h=72ff1d&utm_campaign=bandido-webparts&utm_source=post-share-modal&utm_medium=copy-url

1911 census

https://www.ancestry.ca/sharing/16562931?h=9b8cba&utm_campaign=bandido-webparts&utm_source=post-share-modal&utm_medium=copy-url

Norah O'Brien had 5 illegitimate children and was co-habituating with George for a while. He went to jail after the marriage in 1901 for a lack of child maintenance payments.

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/sharing/16623972?h=d3b944&utm_campaign=bandido-webparts&utm_source=post-share-modal&utm_medium=copy-url

Name:   George Edward Goode
Age:    46
Record Type:    Nominal Prisoners' Registers
Birth Year: abt 1866
Birth Place:    Birmingham
Conviction or Committal Date:   28 Jun 1912
Gaol or Prison: The County Gaol
Gaol or Prison Place:   Gloucester, Gloucestershire, England
Discharge Date: 31 Jul 1912

Where can I get more details or court records about why he went to jail?

Answer 1

Gloucestershire Archives have an online catalog for the material they hold, but you would need to visit to consult the documents, unless they're in the set that Ancestry has digitised.

Newspapers are often a very good source for court proceedings -- and the more juicy proceedings would be reported much more widely than you might think. There's a report of Edward being charged with deserting his wife Nora in the Gloucester Citizen (and in the Gloucester Echo) in February 1911; in October 1911 he was summoned for being in arrears on a maintenance order for his wife; he was again summoned in Dec 1913; and I may have missed some articles. The British Newspaper Archive is a good place to search -- FindMyPast has the same papers but the search engine is not as flexible.