“We take no note of time
But from its loss.”
_Young’s Night Thoughts._
It is a difficult task to describe to others the everyday affairs of
one’s own life. The difficulty seems to me to arise in discovering what
it is that is new and strange to a person who finds himself for the
first time in a place where the writer has spent the best part of the
last twenty years. The events in a County Court are to me so familiar
that it is hard to appreciate the interest shown in our daily routine by
some casual onlooker whom curiosity, or a subpœna, has brought within
our walls. Still, in so far as the County Court is a poor man’s Court,
it is a good thing that the outside world should take an interest in its
proceedings, for much goes on there that has an immediate bearing on the
social welfare of the working classes, and a morning in the Manchester
County Court would throw a strong light on the ways and means of the poor
and the fiscal problems by which they are surrounded.
An urban County Court is a wholly different thing from the same
institution in a country town. Here in Manchester we have to deal with
a large number of bankruptcy cases, proceedings under special Acts of
Parliament, cases remitted from the High Court, and litigation similar in
character to, but smaller in importance than the ordinary civil list of
an Assize Court. Cases such as these are contested in much the same way
as they are in the High Court, counsel and solicitors appear—the latter
having a right of audience in the County Court—and all things are done
in legal decency and order. The litigants very seldom desire a jury,
having perhaps the idea that a common judge is as a good tribunal as a
common jury, whereas a special judge wants a common jury to find out the
everyday facts of his case for him. I could never see why juries are
divided into two classes, special and common, and judges are not. It is a
fruitful idea for the legal reformer to follow out.
The practice in Manchester is to have special days for the bigger class
of cases, and to try to give clear days for the smaller matters where
most of the parties appear in person. The former are printed in red
on the Court Calendar, and the latter in black, and locally the days
are known as red-letter days and black-letter days. On a black-letter
day counsel and solicitors indeed often appear—for it is a practical
impossibility to sort out the cases into two exact classes—but the
professions know that on a black-letter day they have no precedence, and
very cheerfully acquiesce in the arrangement, since it is obvious that
to the community at large it is at least as important that a working
woman should be home in time to give her children their dinner as that a
solicitor should return to his office or a barrister lunch at his club.
Let me try, then, to bring home to your mind what happens on a
black-letter day.
We are early risers in Manchester, and the Court sits at ten. I used to
get down to my Court about twenty minutes earlier, as on a black-letter
day there are sure to be several letters from debtors who are unable to
be at Court, and these are always addressed to me personally. Having
disposed of the correspondence there is generally an “application in
chambers” consisting of one or more widows whose compensation under
the Workman’s Compensation Act remains in Court to be dealt with for
their benefit. I am rather proud of the interest and industry the chief
clerks of my Court have shown in the affairs of these poor women and
children, and the general “liberty to apply” is largely made use of that
I may discuss with the widows or the guardians of orphans plans for the
maintenance and education of the children, and the best way to make the
most of their money.
You would expect to find the Court buildings geographically in the centre
of Manchester, but they are placed almost on the boundary. Turning out
of Deansgate down Quay Street, which, as its name implies, leads towards
the river Irwell, you come across a street with an historic name, Byrom
Street. The name recalls to us the worthy Manchester doctor and the days
when even Manchester was on the fringe of a world of romance, and John
Byrom made his clever epigram:
God bless the King, I mean the faith’s defender,
God bless—no harm in blessing—the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, and who the King,
God bless us all—that’s quite another thing.
It is a far cry from Jacobites to judgment debtors, but it is a pleasant
thought to know that one lives in an historic neighbourhood, even if the
building you work in is not exactly fitted for the modern purpose for
which it is used.
At the corner of Byrom Street and Quay Street is the Manchester County
Court. It is an old brick building with some new brick additions. Some
architect, we may suppose, designed it, therefore let it pass for a
house. It was built, as far as I can make out, in the early part of last
century, when the brick box with holes in it was the standard form of the
better class domestic dwelling house. Still it is an historic building.
In 1836 it was No. 21 Quay Street, the residence of Richard Cobden,
calico printer, whose next door neighbour was a Miss Eleanora Byrom.
Cobden sold it to Mr. Faulkner for the purposes of the Owens College, so
it was the first home of the present Victoria University. It is now a
County Court. _Facilis descensus._ It still contains several very fine
mahogany doors that give it the air of a house that has seen better days.
You will see groups of women making their way down to the Court, many
with a baby in one arm and a door key slung on the finger. The wife is
the solicitor and the advocate of the working class household, and very
cleverly she does her work as a rule. The group of substantial-looking
men chatting in the street are debt-collecting agents and travelling
drapers discussing the state of trade. These are the Plaintiffs and their
representatives, the women are the Defendants. Here and there you will
see a well-dressed lady, probably summoned to the Court by a servant or
a dressmaker. There will always be a few miscellaneous cases, but the
trivial round and common task of the day is collecting the debts of small
tradesmen from the working class.
I have no doubt that a County Court Judge gets an exaggerated view of the
evils of the indiscriminate credit given to the poor. They seem to paddle
all their lives ankle-deep in debt, and never get a chance of walking the
clean parapet of solvency. But that is because one sees only the seamy
side of the debt-collecting world, and knows nothing of the folk who pay
without process. At the same time, that indiscriminate credit-giving as
practised in Manchester is an evil, no one, I think, can doubt, and it
seems strange that social reformers pay so little attention to the matter.
The whole thing turns, of course, upon imprisonment for debt. Without
imprisonment for debt there would be little credit given, except to
persons of good character, and good character would be an asset. As it
is, however, our first business in the morning will be to hear a hundred
judgment summonses in which creditors are seeking to imprison their
debtors. There are some ten thousand judgment summonses in Manchester
and Salford in a year, but they have to be personally served, and not
nearly that number come for trial. We start with a hundred this morning,
of which say sixty are served. It is well to sit punctually, and we will
start on the stroke of ten.
A debt collector enters the Plaintiff’s box, and, refreshing his memory
from a note book, tells you what the Defendant’s position is, where he
works, and what he earns. The minute book before you tells you the amount
of his debt, that he has been ordered to pay 2s. a month, and has not
paid anything for six months. His wife now enters into all the troubles
of her household, and makes the worst of them. One tries to sift the true
from the false, the result being that one is generally convinced that the
Defendant has had means to pay the 2s. a month, or whatever the amount
may be, since the date when the order was made. The law demands that the
debtor should be imprisoned for not having paid, but no one wants him to
go to prison, so an order is made of seven or fourteen days, and it is
suspended, and is not to issue if he pays the arrears and fees, say in
three monthly instalments. The wife is satisfied that the evil day is put
off and goes away home, and the creditor generally gets his money. He may
have to issue a warrant, but the Defendant generally manages to pay by
hook or by crook, rather than go to Knutsford Gaol, where the debtors are
imprisoned, and as a matter of fact only a few actually go to gaol. Of
course, the money is often borrowed or paid by friends, which is another
evil of the system. The matter is more difficult when, as often happens,
the Defendants do not appear. It is extraordinary how few people can read
and understand a comparatively simple legal notice or summons. Mistakes
are constantly made. A collier once brought me an official schedule
of his creditors, in which in the column for “description,” where he
should have entered “grocer,” “butcher,” etc., he had filled in the
best literary description he could achieve of his different creditors,
and one figured as “little lame man with sandy whiskers.” There are of
course many illiterates, and they have to call in the assistance of a
“scholard.” An amusing old gentleman came before me once, who was very
much perturbed to know if, to use his own phrase, he was “entaitled to
pay this ’ere debt.” The incident occurred at a time when the citizens of
Manchester were being polled to vote on a “culvert scheme” of drainage,
which excited much popular interest.
“I don’t deny owing the debt,” he said, “and I’ll pay reet enow, what
your Honour thinks reet, if I’m entaitled to pay.”