Statute Law Repeals - Law Commission - Ministry of Justice

GROUP 10 - LONDON (GREATER)
Southwark and East Brixton court of requests
5.32 A court of requests to handle small debt actions had been established in the
borough of Southwark and neighbouring parishes by statutes of 1748 and 1758. 22
By the early 1800s it became clear that the jurisdictional ceiling needed to be
lifted to expedite debt recovery arrangements and encourage trade in the locality.
5.33 The Southwark and East Brixton Court of Requests Act 1806 23 provided that the
earlier jurisdictional limit in the previous Acts should be repealed, and that a new
court of requests be established with ability to handle debt disputes valued up to
£5 which had arisen in Southwark or the eastern half of the Brixton hundred. The
commissioners were empowered to determine civil disputes and to give
directions as to how judgments were to be honoured and costs paid. 24 The Act
laid down a table of fees payable to the court bailiff, clerks and court officers in
place of looser arrangements which had previously applied to debtors (and
prescribed maximum time limits for holding debtors in the borough compter or
other gaol).
5.34 The 1806 Act was part repealed by the Southwark Court of Requests Act 1823 25
which was itself repealed by the County Courts Act 1846.
5.35 Contemporary paintings and literature indicate that the court of requests sat at
Swan Street in Southwark and was built in 1824 on the site of what today is the
Inner London Crown Court annexe. None of the original buildings in the area
remain, and the court of requests’ jurisdiction was almost certainly overtaken by
the new county court regime. The 1806 Act is now obsolete.
City of London courts
5.36 In the early nineteenth century the courts of King’s Bench and of Common Pleas
- when determining matters arising within the City of London - sat within the
Guildhall apartments, and the City’s court of requests would sit in the Guildhall
chapel (no longer used for divine service), which adjoined the Guildhall building.
Neither of these venues was suitable for their judicial purpose. The City
corporation decided that the chapel site and the land occupied by the (also
redundant) Blackwell Hall cloth market and warehouses should be used to build
new court buildings.
22 The statutes were 22 Geo.2 c.47 (1748) and 32 Geo.2 c.6 (1758), both repealed in 1846
on the formation of the new county courts system.
23 46 Geo.3 c.lxxxvii (1806).
24 Actions for recovery of wages fell within jurisdiction, but actions based on disputed land
title or arising on a deed were precluded, as were actions relating to matters arising
outside the court’s boundaries, and those arising from will disputes and matrimonial and
ecclesiastical causes.
25 4 Geo.4 c.cxxiii (1823).
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