Parish settlements and the practice of appeals ... / Jellinger C. Symons.

  • Symons, Jelinger C. (Jelinger Cookson), 1809-1860.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Parish settlements and the practice of appeals ... / Jellinger C. Symons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    303/377 (page 252)
    Rem oval of Scotch, Irish, Isle of Man, and Isle of Scilly, Jersey or Guernsey paupers.—These paupers are remov- Denman, C. J.—“ I think that Oldbury having since become a separate township, it is not estopped by that order. [The order unappealed against prior to the division ] If it were so, persons removing a pauper under circumstances like the present might settle him in whichever district they chose to select. When the former order was made, the parish was the party charged ; now it is the township of Oldbury.” * * * “ It seems to me that if this township is an ancient division, which might formerly have main¬ tained its own poor, then when it obtained the right to have officers of its own, and to provide for its poor separately, it became liable to maintain those paupers whom it would have supported if it had been a separate divi¬ sion at an earlier period.” Williams and Coleridge, JJ., concurred; Patteson, J., dubitante, held that “ If Oldbury could be so discharged as to a third parish, any parish, by dividing itself, could get rid of the liability to maintain paupers which had then removed to it. On the other hand, if an estoppel arose here as to one district, it would as to more ; and if a parish separated itself into a number of divisions, any one of those, under circum¬ stances like the present, might conclude any other.” The order of the sessions, which had upheld the removal, was then quashed. In jR. v. Tipton an error was made as to the township from which the pauper’s mother was sent to a workhouse to be confined, and, therefore, in the township selected as the settlement; but the case was wholly decided on the grounds above stated. Lord Denman, C. J., gave the judgment of the court after deliberation. u The question is, whether she (ihe pauper) gained a settlement in the latter township by such birth ; and that must depend upon this, how far before such subdivision each township ought to be considered as connected with or independent of the parish for purposes of settlement. Generally speaking, they are not so connected; any act by which a settlement may be gained has no reference to the township in which it may be acquired, but to the parish only.” [Reference was then made to R. v. Oldbury, and to the prior case of R. v. Oakmere, 5 B. i Aid. 775, where a birth in a place extra parochial was held to give no settlement after it had been made a township.] “ To sustain the order of removal into the township of Hales Owen, we must hold that a settlement by birth was gained equally in the parish and each of the townships composing it, for which we find no warrant of direct authority or analogy in the law of settlement. It has been suggested as a difficulty, that unless we so hold, the parish by sub¬ division will get rid of settlements, and that persons who would otherwise have gained them may have none. A similar result, under circumstances nearly the converse of the present, happened in the case of R. v. Inhabitants