A STUDY IN LEGAL ADMINISTRATION AND RECORDS SHARON ...

The registrar, assisted by the examiner, prepared most of the documents
that issued from Court of Chancery. Foms of records reflected the sequence of
a court action: "cornplaint, (Le., plaintiff s dedaration); writs of subpoena and
notice of service; defendant's answer; complainant's replication; defendant's
rejoinder; pleas; petitions; orders; motions; 'interrogatories' or 'inquisitions';
afidavits and depositions; exceptions; demurrers; references to and reports of
Masters in Chancery; bills of costs; and finally the decrees or judgments of the
court."30 Each type of record served to cany out the objective of a partiwlar
court procedure.
Concrete steps toward the "archivaln treatment of documents began in
1835 when Charles Fairbanks became Master of the ~olls.~' He initiated the
procurement of funds to be used for arranging, filing, and placing in boxes al1 the
records of Courts of Chancery and Vice-Admiralty. John McGregor, a young
barrister with experience in handling court materials, was engaged 'to arrange
the case files and prepare both a catalogue of causes ... and an alphabetical list
of names of al1 the complainants and defendantsan McGregor expanded a
chronolog ic-numeric scheme of arrangement that had been orig inated by Burrow
or Gautier. All the cases were arranged chronologically, and numbered in that
order. This became the fileclassification system and also an efficient method of
retrieval?
Chancery Court tried its first case in 1751 and the court operated a little
more than one hundred years. As an efkiency measure, in 1855 the legislature