¹ Steinfeld, R., The Invention of Free Labour: The Employment Relationship in England and American Law and Culture, 1350–1870 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991)Google Scholar, and Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar; Hay, D. and Craven, P., “Introduction,” in Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955, ed. Hay, D. and Craven, P. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004)Google Scholar, and “The Criminalization of Free Labour: Master and Servant in Comparative Perspective,” Slavery and Abolition 15, no. 2 (August 1994): 71–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steinberg, M., “Capitalist Development, the Labor Process, and the Law,” American Journal of Sociology 109, no. 2 (September 2003): 445–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deakin, S., “The Contract of Employment: A Study in Legal Evolution,” Historical Studies in Industrial Relations 11 (Spring 2001): 5Google Scholar.

² Steinberg, “Capitalist Development”; Woods, D. C., “The Operation of the Master and Servants Act in the Black Country, 1858–1875,” Midlands History 7 (1982): 93–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. Steinberg, “The Labour Contract and Justice and Exploitation in Local Courts: The Case of Mid-Victorian Hull” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association, 13 November 2003, Baltimore, Md.). For multiple examples from the former British Empire, see Hay, and Craven, , eds., Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955Google Scholar.

³ Hay notes that Parliament passed ten different statutes providing imprisonment for breach of contract between 1720 and 1792. For the increasing harshness of these acts, see n. 5 below. Hay, Douglas, “England 1562–1875: The Law and Its Uses,” in Hay, and Craven, , eds., Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955, pp. 82–86Google Scholar.

⁴ 4 Geo. IV, c. 34. Hay, D., “Master and Servant in England: Using the Law in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Private Law and Social Inequality in the Industrial Age: Comparing the Legal Cultures of Britain, France, Germany and the United States, ed. Steinmetz, W. (London, 2000,) pp. 227–29, 238Google Scholar; Hay, “England 1562–1875”; Hay, D. and Craven, P., “Master and Servant in England and Empire: A Comparative Study,” Labour/Le Travail 31 (Spring 1993): 175–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hay and Craven, “The Criminalization of Free Labour”; Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour, pp. 47–51.

⁵ The most frequently cited causes for this change in orientation of the law include the combination of new master and servant acts, changes in the social composition of the magisterial bench, and the construction of new gaols and bridewells. Woods's account relies upon newspaper reports, a source likely to underreport wage claims brought by workers. The unknown quantity of wage cases handled by courts of request and the new country courts also has to be considered. Hay and Craven, “Introduction,” p. 8; Hay, “England 1562–1875,” pp. 101–5; Hay, “Master and Servant in England,” pp. 230–31, 240–43, 255–57; Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour, p. 480; Woods, “Operation of the Master and Servant Acts,” p. 102; Steinmetz, W., “Was There a De-juridification of Employment Relations in Britain?” in Steinmetz, , ed., Private Law and Social Inequality in the Industrial Age, p. 102Google Scholar. On the changing social composition of the magistracy, see: Challinor, R., Radical Lawyer in Victorian England: W. P. Roberts and the Struggle for Workers' Rights (London, 1990), pp. 71–73Google Scholar; Foster, D., “The Social and Political Composition of the Lancashire Magistracy, 1821–1851” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Lancaster, 1972)Google Scholar, and “Class and County Government in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire,” Northern History 9 (1974): 48–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knipe, J., “The Justice of the Peace in Yorkshire, 1820–1914: A Social Study” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Southern California, 1970)Google Scholar; Phillips, D., “The Black Country Magistracy, 1835–1860: A Changing Elite and the Exercise of Its Power,” Midlands History 3 (1976): 161–90Google Scholar; Woods, D. C., “The Borough Magistracy and the Authority Structure of Black Country Towns, 1860–1900,” West Midland Studies 12 (1979): 22–26Google Scholar, and “The Operation of the Master and Servants Act,” pp. 93–115; Zangrel, C., “The Social Composition of the Country Magistracy in England and Wales,” Journal of British Studies 11, no. 1 (1971): 113–25Google Scholar; Swift, R., “The English Urban Magistracy and the Administration of Justice during the Early Nineteenth Century: Wolverhampton, 1815–1860,” Midlands History 17 (1992): 75–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Godfrey, B., “Judicial Impartiality and the Use of the Law against Labour,” Crime, Histoire, and Societies 3, no. 2 (1999): 57–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steinmetz, “Was There De-juridification of Industrial Relations in Britain,” pp. 265–312.

⁶ Hay and Craven, “Introduction,” pp. 31, 36–37.

⁷ Orth, J., Combination and Conspiracy: A Legal History of Trade Unionism, 1721–1906 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar.

⁸ Challinor, Radical Lawyer, chap. 7; Challinor, R. and Ripley, B., The Miners’ Association: A Trade Union in the Age of Chartists (London, 1968), chap. 6Google Scholar; Fynes, R., The Miners of Northumberland and Durham: A History of Their Social and Political Progress (Wakefield, 1873), chaps. 7–8Google Scholar; Colls, R., The Pitmen of the Northern Coalfield: Work, Culture and Protest, 1790–1850 (Manchester, 1987), pp. 64, 73, 293–94Google Scholar; Steinberg, “Capitalist Development,” and “The Labour Contract”; Woods, “The Operation of the Master and Servant Act”; Warburton, W. H., History of Trade Union Organization in the North Staffordshire Potteries (London, 1913), pp. 44–46, 90–98, 105Google Scholar.

⁹ Steinberg, “Capitalist Development,” pp. 461–70.

¹⁰ Robert Steinfeld has examined high-court litigation in master and servant cases from an earlier period, but he neglects struggles that do not appear in the reported cases and does not explore the social contexts, strategies, and coordination that produced union-funded challenges to master and servant prosecutions. Simon, D., “Master and Servant,” in Democracy and the Labour Movement: Essays in Honour of Donna Torr, ed. Saville, J. (London, 1954), pp. 160–200Google Scholar; Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour, chap. 4.

¹¹ Frank, C., “‘Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice': Trade Unions, Lawyers, and Magistrates, 1842–1862,” (Ph.D. thesis, York University, 2003)Google Scholar, “‘He Might Almost as Well Be Without Trial’: Trade Unions and the 1823 Master and Servant Act—the Warrington Cases, 1846–47,” Historical Studies in Industrial Relations 14 (Autumn 2003): 3–43Google Scholar, and “The Defeat of the 1844 Masters and Servants Bill,” in Hay, and Craven, , eds., Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562–1955Google Scholar.

¹² Fyson, R., “The Crisis of 1842: Chartism, the Colliers' Strike, and the Outbreak in the Potteries,” in The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working Class Radicalism and Culture, 1830–1860, ed. Thompson, D. and Epstein, J. (London, 1982), p. 210Google Scholar.

¹³ Four are discussed in this article. The fifth and sixth were In Re: Geswood (1853) and In Re: William Baker (1857); see 23 LJ 35 and 2 H & N 219. Also see the Staffordshire Advertiser (16 May 1857), p. 2; Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour, pp. 57–60, 158.

¹⁴ National Archives (henceforth NA), KB 1/190/22, KB 1/191/60.

¹⁵ For the next twenty-five years Roberts traveled across England representing unionized workers in matters as diverse as master and servant, picketing offenses, recovery of wages paid in truck, worker injury, and embezzlement by trade union officials. He assisted the defense in many of the major common law conspiracy cases against trade union officials that occurred during his professional lifetime. For more on Roberts, see Challinor, Radical Lawyer; Frank, “`Constitutional Law versus Justices' Justice.'”

¹⁶ Roberts would sometimes argue that the defendant was not a servant within the meaning of the act or was not engaged in a trade covered by the act's provisions. Other times he would argue that the employment agreement did not meet the requirements of a legally binding contract, or if it was valid, that the employer had repudiated it by failing to adhere to its terms.

¹⁷ Challinor, Radical Lawyer, pp. 92–101; Frank, “`Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice,'” chap. 2, sec. 4.

¹⁸ A conviction form was the written declaration stating that the magistrate had heard evidence and found the prisoners guilty of an offense within his jurisdiction. A warrant of commitment was the official order to the keeper of the house of correction commanding him to detain the prisoner for a fixed period of time. A writ of habeas corpus ordered the keeper of the house of correction to produce the prisoners at Westminster Hall and demonstrate the lawful authority justifying their detention. This authority was usually found on the warrant of commitment, which when brought up with prisoners gave the judges of the Court of Queen's Bench the opportunity to examine it for omissions that failed to establish the magistrate's jurisdiction. Roberts also used the writ of certiorari, which required magistrates to certify and return all records of a judgment made by them, so the judges could inquire into their jurisdiction and quash convictions in which an error of law appeared on the face of the record. These writs did not permit the judges to reinterpret the evidence of the case but rather only to overturn convictions in which the warrant of commitment or conviction forms were not sufficient to demonstrate the jurisdiction of the magistrate.

¹⁹ Frank, “`Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice,'” chap. 4, sec. 2.

²⁰ NA, HO 43/67, pp. 171–72 (2 July 1844), pp. 314–15 (24 August 1844); the Northern Star (23 November 1844), pp. 4, 8, (12 April 1845), pp. 4, 8.

²¹ An advertisement in the Northern Star promised to give a free portrait of Roberts with every new three-month subscription. When entering towns Roberts was often accompanied by parades of workers with banners and bands. Raymond Challinor has uncovered a number of poems and folk songs about the “miners’ attorney general.” Northern Star (2 September 1843), (16 September 1843), (24 September 1843), p. 2, (15 February 1845), p. 1, (26 April 1845), p. 1, (4 October 1845), p. 1; Sheffield and Rotherham Independent (15 June 1844), p. 8, (29 June 1844), p. 5; Challinor, Radical Lawyer, pp. 106–7; Frank, “`Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice,'” pp. 86–87.

²² Northern Star (10 February 1844), p. 4, (8 February 1845), p. 4.

²³ Northern Star (24 February 1844), p. 4.

²⁴ Of course, this rhetoric is highly consistent with Chartist language of the period, which Gareth Stedman Jones has argued was preoccupied with one group's monopoly over lawmaking and law-enforcing power but retained a belief in the legitimacy of “constitutional” institutions such as Parliament and the common law courts. For Chartists, in law as in politics, the key was getting access. Northern Star (22 June 1844), p. 5; Jones, Gareth Stedman, The Languages of Class: Studies in Working Class History, 1832–1982 (London, 1983), pp. 102–6, 109Google Scholar. For more examples of this rhetoric, see Northern Star (23 December 1843), pp. 4, 8, (20 January 1844), p. 4, (10 February 1844), p. 4, (11 May 1844), p. 4, (8 February 1845), p. 4, (5 July 1845), p. 8; the Miners’ Advocate (27 January 1844), p. 37, (29 March 1844), pp. 68–69; Frank, “`Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice,'” pp. 87–99.

²⁵ Those advocating the expansion of magistrates’ powers to determine cases of petty theft, workplace misappropriation, and juvenile crime summarily were very clear in their motives. They claimed that the jury trial was too expensive, time-consuming, and maddeningly uncertain for the prosecutor. They claimed that juries were unsure to convict, judges “overprotected” defendants, and lawyers exploited technicalities to free the guilty. Sweeney, T., “The Extension and Practice of Summary Jurisdiction in England, c. 1790–1860” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1985), pp. 34–35, 86, 91–102, 111, 118, 129–33, 139, 141, 145–59Google Scholar; Smith, B., “Circumventing the Jury: Petty Crime and Summary Justice in London and New York City, 1790–1855” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1996), pp. 75–76, 84, 102–16, 118–26, 132–34, 189–97, 416–19, 424, 430, 433, 440Google Scholar.

²⁶ Many of these latter originated from magistrates’ rulings in labor cases. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3d series, Commencing with the Accession of William IV (London, 1843–48), vol. 85, cols. 470–80 (2 April 1846), vol. 90, col. 1136 (11 March 1847), vol. 93, cols. 120, 947–53 (4 and 25 June 1847)Google Scholar; Frank, “The Warrington Cases,” pp. 29–33.

²⁷ Frank, “`Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice,'” chap. 3, sec. 5, and chap. 6, secs. 4 and 5, and “The 1844 Masters and Servants Bill.”

²⁸ Smith, “Circumventing the Jury,” pp. 118–20. Harry Arthurs has argued that between 1830 and 1870 the legal profession and the common law judges were also asserting their authority over a wide range of specialized courts and private tribunals that administered distinctly local systems of law. Arthurs, H., Without the Law: Administrative Justice and Legal Pluralism in Nineteenth-Century England (Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar.

²⁹ Frank, “‘Constitutional Law versus Justices' Justice,’” chap. 4.

³⁰ The Justice of the Peace 6, no. 33 (20 August 1842), 7, no. 7 (18 February 1843), pp. 61–62, 8, no. 9 (2 March 1844), pp. 131–32, 8, no. 19 (11 May 1844), p. 312, 8, no. 20 (18 May 1844), pp. 323–24, 333, 8, no. 23 (8 June 1844), pp. 381–82, 8, no. 30 (27 July 1844), p. 498, 9, no. 5 (1 February 1845), pp. 65–66, 9, no. 29 (19 July 1845), pp. 451–52, 9, no. 49 (6 December 1845), pp. 785–86, 799, 9, no. 52 (27 December 1845), p. 847, 10, no. 23 (6 June 1846), pp. 353–54, 10, no. 43 (24 October 1846), pp. 674–75, 10, no. 47 (21 November 1846), pp. 753–54, 11, no. 9 (27 February 1847), pp. 147–48, 12, no. 41 (7 October 1848), pp. 657–58, 12, no. 44 (28 October 1848), pp. 705–6, 12, no. 45 (4 November 1848), p. 735; Legal Observer 27 (27 March 1844), p. 406; Frank, “The 1844 Masters and Servants Bill,” and “`Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice,'” chap. 3, sec. 5.

³¹ 11 & 12 Vict., c. 42, 43, 44. “An Act to Facilitate the Performance of Duties of Justices of the Peace Out of Session in England and Wales, with Respect to Summary Convictions and Orders,” not only consolidated the procedures that magistrates were required to follow in summary hearings but also contained a schedule of short template forms for summons, convictions, commitments, and orders. In addition to making it less likely that magistrates and their clerks would make legal errors, these forms were also very short, or “faceless,” containing very little actual information about the case. This made certiorari a much less effective remedy for labor's legal representatives in the 1850s. Furthermore, the “Vexatious Actions Act” gave magistrates greater immunity against civil actions for nonmalicious errors. Smith, “Circumventing the Jury,” pp. 450–53; Cornish, W. R. and Clark, G.de N., Law and Society in England, 1750–1950 (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1989), p. 35Google Scholar; Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour, pp. 158–59.

³² Wedgewood, J., Staffordshire Pottery and Its History (London, 1913)Google Scholar; Labour and the Poor in England and Wales, 1849–1851: The Letters to the “Morning Chronicle” from the Correspondents in the Manufacturing and Mining Districts, the Towns of Liverpool and Birmingham, and the Rural Districts of Northumberland and Durham, Staffordshire, the Midlands, 2 vols., ed. Ginswick, J. (London, 1983), l:111–13Google Scholar. B. P. Smith has argued that the recruitment of legally trained stipendiary magistrates was one of the strategies pursued by the state for improving the legitimacy of summary hearings; see Smith, “Circumventing the Jury,” p. 405.

³³ “Meeting of Deputations from Different Districts of the Potteries Held at White Sheaf Inn Stoke-Upon-Trent, Monday, September 3, 1838,” Staffordshire Record Office, D 593/L/3/25; Steinberg, “Capitalist Development,” pp. 468–69.

³⁴ NA, KB 1/191/60.

³⁵ Shaw, C., When I Was a Child (London: Caliban Books, 1903), p. 41Google Scholar. Shaw also went on to describe the “damp, dark, foul den” where prisoners waited in terror to be called before Rose.

³⁶ Fyson, “Crisis of 1842,” pp. 197–98, 200–203; Challinor, Radical Lawyer, p. 63.

³⁷ NA, HO 45/260, pp. 222–26.

³⁸ NA, HO 45/260, pp. 236–49, 474–85; Shaw, When I Was a Child, pp. 155–71; Cooper, T., The Life of Thomas Cooper, ed. Saville, J. (1872; New York, 1971), pp. 186–219Google Scholar; Fyson, “Crisis of 1842,” pp. 207–14; Challinor, Radical Lawyer, pp. 64–67.

³⁹ The crowd destroyed police offices in Hanley and Fenton, the coal office of the earl of Granville, the home of master potter Charles Mason. It also burned down the homes of magistrates William Parker, Thomas Allen, and R. E. Aitken. Challinor, Radical Lawyer, p. 65.

⁴⁰ Emphasis in original. NA, HO 45/260, pp. 236–49, 474–85; Fyson, “Crisis of 1842,” pp. 207–10; Shaw, When I Was a Child, pp. 155–71; Cooper, Life of Thomas Cooper, pp. 186–219.

⁴¹ Fyson disagrees, hypothesizing that “isolation, vulnerability, or the chance whim” might have played an equally significant role in the crowd's choices. Fyson concedes, however, that Rose “was always deeply unpopular with the working classes.” Fyson, “Crisis of 1842,” pp. 210–11. J. Fellague Ariouat, “Rethinking Partisanship in the Conduct of Chartist Trials, 1839–1848,” Albion 29, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 601; Challinor, Radical Lawyer, p. 79.

⁴² One of Home Secretary James Graham's biographers suggests that many magistrates “neglected their duties through idleness, fear, ‘economical’ reliance on the Army or desire to embarrass the Government.” Graham told the Queen that “he was by no means satisfied with the activity of the magistrates … [who] had shown a want of proper spirit in defending their property.” Lord Lieutenant Talbot defended Rose, arguing to the home secretary that despite the “difficult position in which Mr. Rose was placed” one could “not find that he was wanting in activity or exertion to quell the riots.” Ward, J. T., Sir James Graham (London, 1967), pp. 190–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fyson, “Crisis of 1842,” p. 214; NA, HO 45/260, pp. 483–85.

⁴³ Over 703 men and women were arrested, 276 were put on trial, 116 were imprisoned, and 49 were transported. See NA, HO 45/260, pp. 366–71, for correspondence regarding whether it was illegal for Rose to sit at Newcastle, because the act appointing him specified his jurisdiction as “Stoke-Upon-Trent and certain places adjoining.” Rose also was on the grand jury for one of Thomas Cooper's trials; see Staffordshire Record Office D 5567/1–6. Though Thomas Cooper represented himself at both trials, he met with W. P. Roberts before the first hearing and took his advice on defense strategy. See Cooper, Life of Thomas Cooper, pp. 214–17.

⁴⁴ Northern Star (8 February 1845), p. 4.

⁴⁵ Potters also objected to the employers’ right to refuse to pay them for “dirty ware” (and then sell it at discounted prices) and to the unlimited power to fine them. Their bond allowed some employers to operate an allowance system, whereby they were “allowed” to deduct 2d. to 4d. from every shilling a potter earned. Warburton, The History of Trade Union Organization, pp. 44–46, 90–98, 105; Potters Examiner and Workman's Advocate (henceforth PEWA; 6 January 1844), p. 44.

⁴⁶ Robert Steinfeld argues that the struggle over the consideration required in contracts of employment was a critical front in the legal “struggle over the rules” of master and servant law during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Steinfeld finds that for part of the 1840s, the courts ruled that contracts where the employer bound the employee to work for him exclusively but did not explicitly promise to provide a reasonable quantity of work for the worker were bad for want of adequate consideration. In other words, the employer was not promising anything of value in return for the worker's promise to work exclusively for the employer. Beginning in the middle of that decade, however, the court reversed itself, ruling that a promise to provide reasonable work “according to the state of the trade” could be inferred in contracts of employment and would be adequate consideration to make the contract valid. The degree to which the high court's rulings in these cases were mirrored by the reality of magistrates’ enforcement of contracts of employment on the ground is, of course, open to question. Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour, pp. 104–23; PEWA (9 December 1843), p. 11, (16 December 1843), p. 20; Wedgewood, Staffordshire Pottery, p. 170.

⁴⁷ PEWA (16 December 1843), p. 20, (30 December 1843), p. 34. For use of rhetoric comparing “American slavery” with “English slavery,” see Cunliffe, M., Chattel Slavery and Wage Slavery: The Anglo-American Context, 1830–1860 (Athens, Ga., 1979), pp. 8–16Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Staffordshire Advertiser (16 December 1843), p. 2; PEWA (23 December 1843), p. 29. Rose commonly made similar warnings to the wider community when issuing rulings from the bench. Staffordshire Advertiser (6 September 1851), p. 4, (12 July 1851), p. 4.

⁴⁹ PEWA (23 December 1843), p. 29.

⁵⁰ These articles also adopted the same praise and reverence for “patriarchs of the law” at Queen's Bench who granted Roberts's victories, contrasting it sharply with Rose's behavior. PEWA (23 December 1843), p. 29, (30 December 1843), pp. 33–34, (6 January 1844), p .44, (20 January 1844), pp. 57–58, (17 February 1844), pp. 89–90, (9 March 1844), p. 116, (30 March 1844), pp. 137–39, (6 April 1844), pp. 145–46, (27 April 1844), pp. 174–75.

⁵¹ The author assessed Rose's impact on the legitimacy of the law, suggesting, “How can they reasonably expect that the masses will treat with awe, that which magistrates administer with contempt?” PEWA (30 March 1844), pp. 137–39.

⁵² NA, KB 1/131/42; Justice of the Peace 9, no. 5 (1 February 1845), p. 84; Northern Star (8 February 1845), pp. 4, 8.

⁵³ Northern Star (8 February 1845), p. 4, (15 February 1845), p. 1.

⁵⁴ Frank, “The 1844 Master and Servants Bill,” and “`Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice.'”

⁵⁵ Through his defense of union officials charged with conspiring to violate the 1825 act, Roberts was important in the establishment of much of the case law that defined these terms. In 1847 he had been the solicitor in the case of twenty-six Warrington mechanics charged with conspiring to violate the 1825 act by warning replacement workers that they would be known as “knobsticks” if they continued to work. In this case, R v. Selsby (1847), Baron Rolfe defined an illegal threat as one that communicated the possibility of bodily harm. The words “obstruction” and “molestation” remained vague until the conspiracy cases of R. v. Rowlands and R. v. Duffield (1851), in which Judge Erle defined them in the “broadest possible terms.” Erle told a jury at the Staffordshire Assizes that conspiring to take away all of the plaintiff's workmen qualified as obstruction and molestation under the 1825 act. This ruling made it legal for men to combine to raise wages or reduce hours but criminalized tactics that could effectively achieve these ends, such as the information picket. The case led to political agitation by labor that ultimately resulted in the 1859 Molestation of Workmen Act. Orth, J., Combination and Conspiracy: A Legal History of Trade Unionism, 1721–1906 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 87–90, 95–98Google Scholar, and “The Law of Strikes, 1847–1871,” in: Papers Presented to the Bristol Legal History Conference (14–17 July 1981), ed. Guy, J. A. and Beale, H. G. (London: Royal Historical Society, 1984), pp. 128–31Google Scholar; Orth, J., “English Law and Striking Workmen, the Molestation of Workmen Act, 1859,” Journal of Legal History 2 (1981): 238–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, J., Selsby and Others on the Prosecution of Jones and Potts, Narrative, Introduction, &c. (London, 1847)Google Scholar, Goldsmith-Kress Library of Economic Literature, Reel no. 35390; NA, KB 1/157/65, KB 1/199/59–60, KB 1/203/62–63, KB 1/204/50–51, 21/68.

⁵⁶ NA, KB 1/190/29, KB 1/190/4; Staffordshire Advertiser (4 May 1850), p. 4, (11 May 1850), p. 4.

⁵⁷ Sec. 12 also allows for evidence to be reheard in the appeal to Quarter Sessions, not just technical points on the face of the conviction.

⁵⁸ NA, KB 1/190/29; Staffordshire Advertiser (11 May 1850), p. 4; Justice of the Peace 7, no. 46 (18 Nov. 1843), p. 695.

⁵⁹ See R. v. Robert Greaves and R. v. Askew, below. NA, KB 1/190/29. Heaton's behavior in the litigation between John Caton and Robert Greaves demonstrates some hostility toward trade unions.

⁶⁰ Challinor, Radical Lawyer. Two other solicitors who did considerable work for trade unions and merit further investigation are J. H. Owen of Wales and William Broomhead of Sheffield. For Owen, see Evans, E. W., The Miners of South Wales (Cardiff, 1961)Google Scholar; Morris, J. H. and Williams, L. J., The South Wales Coal Industry (Cardiff, 1958)Google Scholar. For Broomhead, see Frank, “‘Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice,’” chap. 6.

⁶¹ Staffordshire Advertiser (11 May 1850), p. 4; NA, KB 1/190/4. Roberts was probably referring to Thompson v. Gibson and Another (1841). In that case, Baron Alderson endorsed a definition of “immediately afterwards” that stretched to “within such convenient time as is requisite for doing the thing.” See Thompson v. Gibson and Another (1841), 8 M & W 282–90.

⁶² NA, KB 1/190/29; Staffordshire Advertiser (11 May 1851), p. 4.

⁶³ 11 & 12 Vict., c. 44, s. 5.

⁶⁴ This was a relevant point because in 1843 two Staffordshire magistrates were forced to pay the costs of all parties in a criminal information brought against them for refusing to accept the bail of Chartist prisoners. In the summer of 1848, a Norfolk magistrate was pursued in civil action for erroneously revoking the bail of a defendant. Justice of the Peace 7, no. 11 (18 March 1843), pp. 128–30, 7, no. 23 (10 June 1843), pp. 317–318, 12, no. 30 (22 July 1848), p. 469.

⁶⁵ Rose and his clerk contested the assertion that Austin was poor. NA, KB 1/190/4, KB 1/190/29.

⁶⁶ John Walter Huddleston was an active barrister on the Oxford Circuit who often handled Roberts's briefs from Staffordshire. In 1875 he became a judge in Common Pleas and in the same year was transferred to the Exchequer. See Dictionary of National Biography; Justice of the Peace, 15, no. 1 (4 January 1851), pp. 9–10; NA, KB 21/68 (8 June 1850).

⁶⁷ County of Staffordshire, Orders of Sessions, vol. 37 (1850).

⁶⁸ Frank, “`Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice,’” chap. 7.

⁶⁹ NA, KB 1/190/22; Staffordshire Advertiser (16 March 1850), p. 5, (18 May 1850), p. 7. A butty collier was a type of subcontractor of labor in the mining industry.

⁷⁰ Hinton, G. W., The Truck System: Including a History of the British Truck Acts, 1465–1960 (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 31–33, 121–24Google Scholar.

⁷¹ According to a correspondent of the Morning Chronicle writing from Staffordshire between 1849 and 1851, “Not a few magistrates themselves are notorious truck store keepers.” Cases of Distress and Oppression in the Staffordshire Potteries; By Labourers Wages Being Paid in Truck (Burslem, 1830), pp. 4–12Google Scholar, and Reflections on the Injustice of the Truck System by a Staffordshire Morelander (London, 1830), pp. 13, 15, 17Google Scholar, in Goldsmith-Kress Library of Economic Literature, Reel nos. 26355, 26435; Labour and the Poor in England and Wales, 1849–51 pp. 105–8; Hinton, The Truck System, pp. 35–36.

⁷² In 1850 and 1851, large employers who paid their employees in currency, and resented competitors who gained an advantage by using truck, made common cause with workers by creating anti-truck societies in at least eight different communities in Staffordshire. The South Staffordshire Anti-Truck Association, which often engaged solicitor William Henry Duignan, secured over 250 convictions of truck masters in 1850 alone. 1 & 2 Will. IV, c. 37; Hinton, The Truck System, pp. 109–111, 121–31, 128; Morris and Williams, South Wales Coal Industry, p. 269; R. Swift, “The English Urban Magistracy,” pp. 75–92.

⁷³ NA, KB 1/190/22; Staffordshire Advertiser (16 March 1850), p. 5, (18 May 1850), p. 7.

⁷⁴ NA, KB 1/190/22, KB 1/191/60.

⁷⁵ NA, KB 1/190/22.

⁷⁶ I strongly suspect, of course, that John Randolf Rose is a relation of Thomas Bailey Rose, but I cannot confirm this. NA, KB 1/191/60.

⁷⁷ 1 & 2 Will. IV, c. 37, ss. 1, 3, 4, 6. Secs. 3 and 4 of the same act make all payments in truck illegal, the same as if Caton had never paid Greaves at all.

⁷⁸ If Rose did not know this, Roberts taught him. In November 1851, a miner was brought before Rose charged with leaving his work without proper notice under 4 Geo. IV, c. 34. Roberts represented the man and proved that the miner had been paid in a public house owned by a group of butty colliers (which was illegal under 5 & 6 Vict., c. 69), who forced him to accept 6d. of every pay packet in drink. Rose dismissed the charges. See Staffordshire Advertiser (18 January 1851), p. 5.

⁷⁹ NA, HO 45/994; Steinmetz, “De-juridification,” p. 276.

⁸⁰ Staffordshire Advertiser (16 March 1850), p. 5; NA, KB 1/191/60.

⁸¹ NA, KB 1/191/60.

⁸² NA, KB 1/190/22.

⁸³ NA, KB 1/191/60.

⁸⁴ Staffordshire Advertiser (18 May 1850), p. 7.

⁸⁵ Staffordshire Advertiser (18 May 1850), p. 7.

⁸⁶ Hay, D., “Dread of the Crown Office: The Magistracy and the King's Bench, 1740–1800,” in Law, Crime, and English Society, 1660–1840, ed. Landau, N. (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 26–30Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ In the eighteenth century, he notes, there was “a great tolerance by the high court judges, … for ignorant or mistaken, but also abusive or even clearly malicious, conduct” by magistrates. Ibid., pp. 21, 26–30.

⁸⁸ In another 1850 criminal information against a magistrate, Judge Campbell asserted that the Queen's Bench would send a criminal information before a special jury at the assizes “if he [the magistrate] gives way to passion in doing anything connected with the administration of justice or if he is guilty of any impropriety of demeanor, so as to affect the due discharge of his duties.” It would appear that the affidavits of Greaves and Daniels met this standard. Justice of the Peace 14, no. 47 (23 November 1850), p. 47, 14, no. 48 (30 November 1850), pp. 738–39Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ In the two cases where a rule absolute was granted, there was one acquittal and one conviction. In the Easter Assizes of 1833, Pembrokeshire Justice of the Peace Samuel Harris was convicted and fined £500 and costs. “Return of All Applications in the Court of Queen's Bench for Criminal Informations against Justices of the Peace in Which a Rule Nisi Was Granted, January 1820– December 1830,” Parliamentary Papers, 1831, vol. 15, cmnd. 87; “Return of All Applications in the Court of Queen's Bench for Criminal Informations against Justices of the Peace in Which a Rule Nisi Was Granted, January 1831–December 1833,” Parliamentary Papers, 1834, vol. 48, cmnd. 249; “Return of All Applications in the Court of Queen's Bench for Criminal Informations against Justices of the Peace in Which a Rule Nisi Was Granted, January 1834–December 1838,” Parliamentary Papers, 1839, vol. 43, cmnd. 431.

⁹⁰ Hay, “Dread of the Crown Office,” pp. 21, 26–30.

⁹¹ Staffordshire Advertiser (15 June 1850), p. 5; NA, KB 21/68 (12 June 1850).

⁹² According to Steinfeld, soon after the victory of In Re: Askew, the high courts became much more reluctant to overturn convictions for defects in form, determining in 1853 that magistrates using the general template forms found in the schedules of the Jervis Acts would be protected from such actions. Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour, pp. 158–59. See In Re: Geswood, 23 LJ 53. Between 1848 and 1853, justices of the peace were afraid that the 1848 Summary Jurisdiction Act did not apply to master and servant cases, despite the fact that most believed Parliament “no doubt intended … to comprehend master and servant” within its provisions. The Justice of the Peace, considering how strictly the courts had constructed the master and servant statutes during the 1840s, expressed considerable doubts upon this point and repeatedly advised readers that magistrates were still bound by the earlier precedents. Justice of the Peace 12, no. 41 (7 October 1848), pp. 657–58, 12, no. 44 (28 October 1848), pp. 705–6, 12, no. 39 (30 September 1848), pp. 634–37, 15, no. 14 (5 April 1851), p. 234.

⁹³ The agreement also stipulated that this failure to provide work could not be caused by a shutdown. Staffordshire Advertiser (7 June 1851), p. 4.

⁹⁴ Staffordshire Advertiser (7 June 1851), p. 4.

⁹⁵ Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour, pp. 57–60; Hay, “Master and Servant in England,” p. 238. Rose and Roberts were involved in one of the most important cases on this point, In Re: Baker (1857), 2 H & N 219. Staffordshire Advertiser (16 May 1857), p. 2.

⁹⁶ Staffordshire Advertiser (21 June 1851), p. 4.

⁹⁷ 4 Geo. IV, c. 34, s. 3.

⁹⁸ In Re: Turner, 10 J.P. 570; Lindsey v. Leigh, 11 Q.B. 454.

⁹⁹ NA, KB 1/199/47.

¹⁰⁰ Justice of the Peace, 15, no. 26 (28 June 1851), pp. 418–19, 15, no. 30 (26 July 1851), pp. 485–86; NA, KB 1/199/47; Staffordshire Advertiser (21 June 1851), p. 8.

¹⁰¹ Staffordshire Advertiser (21 June 1851), p. 8.

¹⁰² Smith, “Circumventing the Jury,” pp. 25, 36, 75–77, 84, 118–26, 186, 197–98.

¹⁰³ Robert Steinfeld has argued that the aims of this protest were entirely limited to preventing the extension of penal sanctions for breach of contract to job and piece workers and that therefore it did not expand the struggle beyond what it had been previously. My own research of the participants of this large-scale labor protest and their rhetoric leads me to different conclusions. The leaders of the protest in 1844 were unionized miners and potters, who had long been covered by existing master and servant statutes and who used the protest as an opportunity to express grievances with the existing law. Speakers at these protests often compared labor regimes governed by master and servant law to slavery. Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labour, pp. 97, 135–47; Frank, “The 1844 Master and Servants Bill,” and “`Constitutional Law versus Justices’ Justice,'” chap. 3, secs. 4 and 5.

¹⁰⁴ “Report from the Select Committee on Master and Servant; Together with the Proceedings of the Committee and Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, and Index,” Parliamentary Papers, 1866, vol. 8, cmnd. 449. For Roberts's testimony, see pp. 70–81 (12 June 1866), pp.101–5 (19 June 1866). For arguments about collusion or ignorance by magistrates, see Alexander Campbell, pp. 13–23 (17 May 1866), Alexander MacDonald, p. 28 (29 May 1866), C. Steele, p. 32 (29 May 1866), W. Dronfield, p. 36 (29 May 1866), J. Normansell, p. 44 (1 June 1866), C. Williams, pp. 50–51 (1 June 1866), G. Odger, p. 90 (15 June 1866), and W. Burns, p. 108 (19 June 1866).