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THE LAW AND THE POOR
BY HIS HONOUR JUDGE
EDWARD ABBOTT PARRY
AUTHOR OF "DOROTHY OSBORNE'S LETTERS," "JUDGMENTS
IN VACATION," "WHAT THE JUDGE SAW," "THE SCARLET
HERRING," "KATAWAMPUS," ETC.
"Laws grind the poor and rich men rule the law."
OLIVER GOLDSMITH: "The Traveller."
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE
1914
TO THE MAN IN THE STREET
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,
IN THE PIOUS HOPE THAT
HE WILL TAKE UP HIS JOB
AND DO IT.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
REFERENCES xv
I. PAST AND PRESENT 1
II. THE ANCIENTS AND THE DEBTOR 20
III. OF IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT IN ENGLAND 36
IV. HOW THE MACHINE WORKS 58
V. WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION 76
VI. BANKRUPTCY 106
VII. DIVORCE 125
VIII. FLAT-TRAPS AND THEIR VICTIMS 152
IX. POVERTY AND PROCEDURE 172
X. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 189
XI. THE POLICE COURT 213
XII. LANDLORD AND TENANT 233
XIII. THE TWO PUBLIC HOUSES: I. THE ALEHOUSE 252
XIV. THE TWO PUBLIC HOUSES: II. THE WORKHOUSE 271
XV. REMEDIES OF TO-DAY 285
XVI. REMEDIES OF TO-MORROW 299
INDEX 311
INTRODUCTION
"But, say what you like, our Queen reigns over the greatest nation
that ever existed."
"Which nation?" asked the younger stranger, "for she reigns over two."
The stranger paused; Egremont was silent, but looked inquiringly.
"Yes," resumed the stranger after a moment's interval. "Two nations;
between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as
ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they
were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets;
who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food,
are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same
laws."
"You speak of----," said Egremont, hesitatingly.
"THE RICH AND THE POOR."
BENJAMIN DISRAELI: "Sybil, or The Two Nations."
The rich have many law books written to protect their privileges, but the
poor, who are the greater nation, have but few. Not that I should like to
call this a law book, for two reasons: firstly, it would not be true;
secondly, if it were true, I should not mention it, as I want people to
read it.
You cannot read law books, you only consult them. A law book seeks to set
out the law, the whole law, and nothing but the law on the subject of
which it treats. There are many books on Poor Law, there are hundreds of
volumes about the Poor, and many more about the Law, but the Law and the
Poor is a virgin subject.
It is a wonder that it should be so because it is far more practical and
interesting than either of its component parts.
It is as if poetry had dealt with beans or with bacon and no poet had
hymned the more beautiful associations of beans and bacon. In the same way
the Law and the Poor is a subject worthy of treatment in drama or poetry,
but that that may be successfully done someone must do the rough spade
work of digging the material out of the dirt heaps in which it lies, and
presenting it in a more or less palatable form. When this has been done
the poet or the politician can come along and throw the crude metal into
the metres of sonnets or statutes or any form of glorious letters they
please.
From the very earliest I have taken a keen interest in this subject. I
remember well when I was a schoolboy the profound impression made upon me
by Samuel Plimsoll's agitation to rescue merchant seamen from the horrible
abuses practised by a certain class of shipowner. My father, Serjeant
Parry, was engaged in litigation for Plimsoll, and I heard many things at
first hand of that great reformer's hopes and disappointments.
There were a class of traders known as "ship knackers," who bought up old
unseaworthy vessels and sent them to sea overloaded and over-insured.
Plimsoll, for years, devoted himself to prevent this wickedness. There was
the usual parliamentary indifference, the customary palavering and
pow-wowing in committees until, after six or seven years of constant
fighting, the public conscience was awakened, and, in 1875, Disraeli
produced a Merchant Shipping Bill. But then, as now, there was no
parliamentary time for legislation dealing with the poor, and the Bill was
one of the innocents to be sacrificed at the annual summer massacre.
This would have been the end of all hope of reform had not Samuel
Plimsoll, in a fine frenzy of rage and disgust, openly charged the
Government with being parties to the system which sent brave men to death
in the winter seas and left widows and orphans helpless at home, "in order
that a few speculative scoundrels, in whose heart there is neither the
love of God nor the fear of God, may make unhallowed gains."
This was unparliamentary enough, but it was allowed to pass. It was when
he began to give the names of foundered ships and their parliamentary
owners and, in his own words, "to unmask the villains" who sent poor men
to death and destruction, that he was promptly called to order, and,
refusing to withdraw, left the House.
The result of his outburst was entirely satisfactory. The Government were
obliged to bring in another Bill and to pass it without delay.
Many years later the unauthorised Radical programme of Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain aroused my youthful enthusiasm, and I spent much of my then
ample leisure as a missionary in that cause.
We soon lost our great leader, who went away to champion what he
considered greater causes, but he was one of the first English statesmen
in high places to make his main programme a reform of the law in the
interests of the poor, and he left behind him mournful but earnest
disciples who have not yet found such another leader. The Workmen's
Compensation Act will always, I think, be regarded as one of his greatest
achievements, and mauled and mangled as it has been in the Law Courts it
remains the most substantial benefit that the poor have received from the
Legislature in my lifetime.
Twenty years' service in urban County Courts has naturally given me some
insight into the way in which the law treats the poor and the real wants
of the latter. I agree that such a book as this would be better written by
one who had actual experience of the life of the poor, rather than the
official hearsay experience which is all that I can claim to have had.
I think the great want of labour to-day is an Attorney-General, a man who
having graduated in the workshop comes to the study and practice of the
law with a working man's knowledge and ideals, and gaining a lawyer's
power of expressing his wants in legal accents, raises his voice to demand
those new laws that the poor are so patiently awaiting.
If there be such a one on his way and this volume is of any small service
to him, it will have more than fulfilled its purpose.
Originating in a series of essays published in the _Sunday Chronicle_, it
has grown into a more ambitious project, and is now, I trust, a fairly
complete text-book of the law as it ought not to be in relation to the
poor.
In my endeavour to please the taste of the friend to whom I have dedicated
this book I have dispensed with all footnotes, but I have added an
appendix of references in case there may be any who might wish to test the
accuracy of statements in its pages.
"Thus," as my Lord Coke says, "requesting you to weigh these my labours in
the even balance of your indifferent judgment I submit them to your
censure and take my leave."
EDWARD A. PARRY.
SEVENOAKS,
1914.
REFERENCES
_The number of the page and the number of the line counting from the top
are given in the left-hand column._
INTRODUCTION
PAGE LINE
xi 11 Hansard. 1875. Vol. 225, col. 1823.
xiii 7 Coke's "Institutes." I. "To the Reader."
CHAPTER I
1 3 Job xiii. 5.
4 20 "The Compleat Constable. Directing all Constables,
Headboroughs, Tithing men, Churchwardens, Overseers of the
Poor, Surveyors of the Highways and Scavengers in the Duty
of their several Offices, according to the Power allowed
them by the Laws and the Statutes." 3rd edition. London.
Printed for Tho. Bever at the Hand and Star, near Temple
Bar. 1708.
8 16 "Shakespeare's Europe. Unpublished chapters of Fynes
Moryson's Itinerary, being a survey of the condition of
Europe at the end of the sixteenth century. 1903." At p. 67.
9 24 Smollett. "Roderick Random." Chap. XXIII.
12 6 The Trial of Richard Weston at the Guildhall of London for
the Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, 19th October, 13 James
1st, A.D. 1615. Howell's "State Trials," II., 914.
13 21 Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Edited by Birkbeck Hill. II.
130.
14 29 Boswell's "Life of Johnson." IV. 188.
17 8 _Manchester Guardian_, Saturday, January 24th, 1824.