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One Way of Collecting a Debt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Extract

Probably few members of the present generation, who shudder at the inhumanity of the old laws allowing imprisonment for debt, realize that it is still allowable under the laws of certain states. In New York and Pennsylvania, for example, a man may be imprisoned for debt incurred by neglect or misconduct in any professional employment. In Nevada, he may lose his liberty for nonpayment of damages arising out of cases of fraud, libel and slander. And in Massachusetts, he may be sent to prison even for ordinary breach of contract if he owes as much as twenty dollars, exclusive of costs, and if his creditor can prove any one of six charges, among them, “that since the debt was contracted the debtor has hazarded or paid money or other property to the value of $100 or more in some kind of gaming prohibited by the law of the State.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1928

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