The Law and the Poor

An interesting volume might be written about historical litigants and their deeds of heroism. There was the dour Coggs who let in his friend Bernard over the brandy cask, there...

"We have thought to tie the nuptial knot of our marriages more fast and firm by having taken away all means of dissolving it; but the knot of the will and affection is so much t...

The penal laws of the British Empire are, by foreign writers, charged with being too sanguinary in the cases of lesser offences. They hold that the punishment of death ought to...

Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set In the world's wide fallow; After hands shall sow the seed, After hands from hill and mead Reap the harvests yellow.

Will you walk into my parlour Said the Spider to the Fly 'Tis the prettiest little parlour You ever did espy. The way into my parlour Is up a winding stair, And I have many curi...

When Fielding was made a magistrate for the county of Middlesex in 1748 the popular notion of the office was expressed in the nickname, "The trading justice." He was paid by fee...

"In a lofty room, ill lighted and worse ventilated, situate in Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, there sit nearly the whole year round, one, two, three or four gentlemen in...

In a word we may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal; by the comparison and application of other men's fore-passed miseries with our own like errors and ill...

Whatever you may think about it you cannot travel from Charing Cross to Dijon through the hop-fields of Kent to the vineyards of the Cote-d'Or without admitting that whether the...

Roll on, thou ball, roll on! Through seas of inky air Roll on! It's true I've got no shirts to wear, It's true my butcher's bill is due; It's true my prospects all look blue-- B...

At number seven there's nob'dy lives, they left it yesterday; Th' bum-baylis coom an' marked their things, an' took 'em a' away. They hardly filled a donkey cart--aw know nowt w...

Therefore I counsel you, ye rich, have pity on the poor. Though ye be mighty at the law be ye meek in your deeds. The same measure ye mete wrong or right Ye shall be weighed the...

My thoughts are with the Dead, with them I live in long-past years, Their virtues love, their faults condemn, Partake their hopes and fears, And from their lessons seek and find...

When Absalom cried out in a loud voice, "Oh, that I were made judge in the land that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!" he w...

Pauperism is the general leakage through every joint of the ship that is rotten. Were all men doing their duty, or even seriously trying to do it, there would be no Pauper.

idea was to lock a defendant up in the middle of the trial and keep him there in case it turned out at the end of the proceedings that he owed the money. It was as popular with...

Oh let me pierce the secret shade Where dwells the venerable maid! There humbly mark, with reverend awe, The guardian of Britannia's law; Unfold with joy her sacred page, The un...

43 1 For the story of the Clerkenwell Spinster and the Debtor, see Sir Walter Besant's "London in the Eighteenth Century," Chap. V., "Debtors' Prisons," at p. 562. This volume c...

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...

As to Housing, see "Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners for Inquiring into the Housing of the Working Classes, 1885," and "Report of the Joint Select Committee of the House of...

There are many books on the Workmen's Compensation Act. That by Mr. Adshead Elliott is as clear and comprehensive as any. The Hansard Debates on the Bills of 1897 and 1906 are f...