Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wbk2r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-20T15:13:47.664Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Law and Urban Change: Some Nineteenth-Century Scottish Evidence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Richard Rodger
Richard Rodger
Affiliation:
Department of Economic History, University of Liverpool
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The constitutional change which was embodied in the Union of Parliaments in 1707 provided for the retention of distinctive Scottish codes governing banking, the church and the law. Such a guarantee ensured that the economic, social and cultural idiosyncracies of Scotland would not be absorbed or Anglicized, and that in the long term the unique institutional framework would continue to stamp its character upon most aspects of daily Scottish life, urban and rural. The tacit acceptance of these legal and institutional differences in certain parts of the kingdom became compounded over the decades so that attempts to modify most aspects of Scottish urban life required separate treatment rather than an extension of British Statutes. Indeed tables of parliamentary statutes in most years display a significant number of purely Scottish bills, thereby reflecting the necessity of specialized legal draughtsmanship, skilled in the peculiarities of Scots law, to accommodate the changes desired north of the border. Two important consequences of these arrangements are worth noting. First, the basis of the Scottish legal and administrative structure was distinct, and second, to amend that framework, separate Scottish bills were frequently required, and thus the timing, coverage and intent of the law were at variance with the remainder of the country.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 6 , May 1979 , pp. 77 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am indebted to the late Professor H. J. Dyos for his encouragement and advice, which were essential to the writing of this article.

References

1. Murray, A. L., ‘Administration and law’, in Rae, T. I. (ed.), The Union of 1707 (1974).Google Scholar

2. The same point might be made in the case of Ireland.

3. Day, J. P., Public Administration in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1918), 4.Google Scholar M. R. McLarty and G. C. H. Paton (eds), A Source Book of Administrative Law in Scotland (1956), identifies some 17 or so areas of distinctive Scottish legislation.

4. Royal Commission on Housing of the Working Classes (subsequently R.C. 1884–5), C. 4409, 1884–5, 2nd Report, 4.

5. Royal Commission on the Housing of the Industrial Population of Scotland, Rural and Urban (subsequently R.C. 1917), Cd. 8731, 1917, Report, paras. 337, 345.

6. Census of Scotland, Cd. 6097, 1911; Census of England and Wales, Preliminary Report, Cd. 5705, 1911; Chalmers, A. K. (ed.), Public Health Administration in Glasgow (1905), 30–43.Google Scholar

7. Bowley, M., Housing and the State (1945), App. 1, 261.Google Scholar

8. For these various explanations, see: R.C. 1917, para. 339; Smith, R. J., ‘Multidwelling building in Scotland, 1750–1970: a study based on housing in the Clyde Valley’, in Sutcliffe, A. (ed.), Multi-Storey Living: The British Working Class Experience (1974), 212;Google Scholar Pryde, G. S., The Burghs of Scotland: A Critical List (1965);Google Scholar Smout, T. C., A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830 (1969), Ch. VII;Google Scholar R.C. 1917, para. 354; Board of Trade Enquiry into Working Class Rents and Retail Prices, Report, Cd. 6955,1913, xxxvii; Bowley, A. L., ‘The statistics of wages in the United Kingdom during the last 100 years’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, lxiii (1900), 297–315, 485–97; lxviii (1905), 104–37, 373–91, 563–614 and 704–15; lxix (1906), 148–92;Google Scholar The Builder, 7 Feb. 1880.

9. R.C. 1917, paras., 1486–1518; Scottish Land Enquiry Committee (subsequently S.L.E.C.) (1914), Report, 288. Coull, J. W. and Merry, E. W., Principles and Practice of Scots Law (1971), 139–48, give a synopsis of feuing.Google Scholar

10. R.C. 1917, Evidence (1921), Roxburgh, Q. 19, 451, and H. Nicol.Q. 27713; R.C. 1917, Report, Ch. XXI.

11. S.L.E.C, 294.

12. S.L.E.C, 289. For the comparison with English landlords, see Younger, R. T., ‘Land ownership in Scotland’, Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, xx (1888–1889), 177–92.Google Scholar

13. R.C. 1917, para. 1311. See also W. Smart, The Rating of Site Values: A Statement and Criticism of the Findings of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation as regards Scotland (1902), and ‘The taxation of land values with reference to the London County Council Resolutions and the Glasgow Bill’, The Accountants' Magazine (1899), 607–30. Smart argues that the tenure system in the two countries produced different beneficiaries as a consequence of rising site values, and that to tax them similarly, as was proposed, would be to misunderstand an elementary distinction in the land laws of Scotland and England.

14. The price of property was customarily determined by compounding the feu-duty. Thus, in 1914, it was some 24 years. In 1900, this factor was nearer 30 years. See S.L.E.C., 331.

15. R.C. 1884–5, Gowans.Q. 18, 892–3.

16. Select Committee on Feus and Building Leases (Scotland), C. 477, 1893–94, Report iii–vii.

17. Glasgow Municipal Commission on the Housing of the Poor, (1904) (subsequently G.M.C.), Report, 21. The report recommended that the town council itself should obtain some method of facilitating property transactions.

18. S.L.E.C., 344. See also The Builder, 20 May 1865; Hole, J., The Homes of the Working Classes (1866), 89;Google Scholar R.C. 1884–5. Colville. Q. 19, 085, and Telfer, Q. 19, 237.

19. Murray, D., Land Registers and the Registration of Title in Scotland (1904);Google Scholar idem, The Land Registers (Scotland) Bill: Its Object and Effect (1903); S.L.E.C., 344 Royal Commission on the Registration of Title in Scotland, Cd. 5316, 1910, and R.C. 1917, paras. 1982–3, both strongly recommended simplified registration.

20. Most Scottish housing investigations directed some attention to the contribution of housing to vice: see R.C. 1884–5, Report, 5; G.M.C., McIntosh, QQ. 9514, 9519; Hodder.Q. 11, 768; R.C. 1917, Report, paras. 845–6; Russell, J. B.; ‘On the “ticketed houses” of Glasgow’, Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, xx, (1888), 1–24;Google Scholar Morrison, J., A Few Remarks on the High Rate of Mortality in Glasgow (1874).Google Scholar

21. Williamson, A. M., The Influence of Housing on Health (privately published, 1917), 13.Google Scholar

22. Chalmers, op. cit., 105; Thompson, W., Housing up-to-date (1907), 3–4.Google Scholar A report in 1907 on child life and physical deterioration concluded that,‘It cannot be an accident that boys from two-roomed houses should be 11.7 lbs lighter on average than boys from 4-roomed houses and 4.7” smaller.’ The implication of the customary one- and two-roomed Scottish houses is therefore quite clear, as the data for Glasgow in relation to Liverpool and Birmingham shows.

23. Chalmers, op. cit., 106.

24. Ibid., 59.

25. See Smith, P. J., ‘Planning concepts in the improvement schemes of Victorian Edinburgh’, paper presented to the First International Conference on the History of Urban and Regional Planning, London, 1977;Google Scholar Parris, H., ‘The nineteenth century revolution in government: a reappraisal reappraised’, Historical Journal, iii, (1960), 17–37;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Report of the Lord Provost's Committee on the Buildings' Regulation Bill (1842) is an interesting exception to the remark about the impact of disaster, induced as it was by sentiments of social welfare; Chalmers, op. cit., 24, for cholera; and Report relative to the Fall of the Tenement in the High Street (1861).

26. Wood, M., ‘Survey of the development of Edinburgh’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, xxxiv, (1974), 23–56.Google Scholar

27. R.C. 1884–5, D. Crawford, Q. 18, 476–80, Q. 20, 589–874. The burghs were Glasgow (1866), Edinburgh (1867), Dundee (1871), Greenock (1877), Leith (1880) and Aberdeen (1884). Allan, C. M., ‘The genesis of British urban redevelopment, with regard to Glasgow’, Economic History Review, xviii, (1965), 598–613;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Smith, op. cit.

28. R.C. 1884–5, D. Crawford, Q. 18, 476–9; ibid., J. K. Crawford, QQ. 18, 706, 18, 737; Allan, op. cit., 604–9.

29. The Builder, 26 April 1879; Presbytery of Glasgow Commission on the Housing of the Poor in relation to their Social Condition (1891), Report, 7; The Builder, 28 Sept. 1878.

30. R.C. 1884–5, D. Crawford, Q. 18, 475; S. Chisholm, ‘The history and results of the Glasgow City Improvement Trust’ Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, xxvii (1895–6), 39–56. Municipal housebuilding was considered a ‘dernier ressort’ for some time prior to a more adventurous policy, subsequently labelled ‘municipal socialism’. See also R.C. 1884–5, J. K. Crawford, Q. 18, 727–9, and Laing, Q. 20, 515–32, on these points. For the role of local authorities, see Allan, op. cit., 606–7.

31. Miller, R., The Edinburgh Dean of Guild Court: A Manual of History and Procedure (1896);Google Scholar Adams, D. T., A Review of the Administration of the Town's Affairs (Forfar) (1967);Google Scholar Public Health (Scotland) Act, 1867, 30 and 31 Vict. C. 101; Burgh Police (Scotland) Act 1862, 25 and 26 Vict. C. 101. Acts of Parliament in 1862, 1866, 1867. 1879, 1892 and 1953, together with several local Acts, were the main milestones in extending building regulations. For the model of O. MacDonagh, see ‘The nineteenth century revolution in government: a reappraisal’, Historical Journal, i (1958), 52–67.Google Scholar

32. The Builder, 9 Dec. 1876.

33. Dean of Guild Court Rules and Regulations (1936), 10–11.Google Scholar Although published much later this is a verbatim transcription of the Dean of Guild Court rules in several nineteenth-century minute books; for example, Port Glasgow Dean of Guild Court Minute Book, 2 Oct. 1877, and Grangemouth Dean of Guild Court Rules for new Buildings, 23 July 1900.

34. Muirhead, J., The Law and Practice relating to Police Government in Burghs of Scotland (1900),Google Scholar and Gowans, J. and Jenkin, F., ‘Sanitary regulations of buildings’, Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1880), 529–65.Google Scholar

35. Hudson, K., Building Materials (1972),Google Scholar App. 1; G.M.C, Watson, Q. 11, 199, 11, 204, 11, 161.

36. Ibid., Q. 11, 080.

37. Ibid., Burgess, Q. 5, 880–7; Fraser, W., ‘Fluctuations of the building trade and Glasgow's house accommodation’, Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, xxxix (1907–1908), 32–3.Google Scholar

38. Annual Report of the Burgh Engineer of Edinburgh (1902), 27;Google Scholar Barras, G. W., ‘The Glasgow Building Regulations Act’, Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, xxv (1894), 155–69;Google Scholar G.M.C., Watson, Q. 11,080 (p. 511); see also Binnie, Q. 7, 019; Eadie.Q. 7, 282–5;and Gilmour.Q. 7, 226.

39. Fraser, op. cit.

40. G.M.C., Binnie, Q. 6, 482; ibid., Q. 6, 475.

41. Chalmers, op. cit., 15; Best, G. F. A., ‘The Scottish Victorian city’, Victorian Studies xi (1968), 329–58.Google Scholar

42. See, for example, F. Howkins, The Housing Acts, 1890–1909 and Town Planning as Applied to Great Britain (1910), and Muirhead, op. cit.

43. R.C. 1884–5, D. Crawford, Q. 18, 451–60. A qualification to this statement is given in Gauldie, E., Cruel Habitations: A History of Working Class Housing 1780–1918 (1974), 243,Google Scholar where some use of the powers is shown to have been made in Dundee.

44. R.C. 1884–5, D. Crawford., Q. 18, 470.

45. Best, op. cit., 335; R.C. 1884–5, Report 7; Gauldie, op. cit., 19–20.

46. Kellett, J. R., The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities (1969);Google Scholar Annual Report of the Burgh Engineer of the City of Edinburgh, 1899, 2.

47. Dyos, H. J., Victorian Suburb: a study of the growth of Camberwell (1966),Google Scholar and ‘The suburban development of Greater London, south of the Thames, 1836–1914’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1952);Google Scholar Simpson, M. A., ‘Middle-class housing and the growth of suburban communities in the west end of Glasgow, 1830–1914’ (unpublished B.Litt. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1970), 268–85.Google Scholar

48. Ochojna, A. D., ‘Lines of class distinction: an economic and social history of tramways’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1974);Google Scholar Hunter, D. L. G., Edinburgh Transport (1964).Google Scholar

49. Ochojna, op. cit., 172–3.

50. Lenman, B., Lythe, C. and Gauldie, E., Dundee and its Textile Industry, 1850–1914 Abertay Historical Society, no. 16 (1969).Google Scholar

51. Kellett, J. R., ‘Property speculators and the building of Glasgow, 1780–1830’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, viii (1961), 211–32;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Simpson, M. A., ‘The West End of Glasgow 1830–1914’ in Simpson, M. A. and Lloyd, T. H. (eds), Middle-Class Housing (1977);Google Scholar Wood, op. cit.

52. Chalmers, op. cit.; anon., Remarks on the Lord Provost's Vindication of the Municipality Extension and Police and Sanitary Bills Proposed by the Town Council (1848), 19.

53. Chalmers, op. cit.; Census of Scotland, Cd. 6097–1 (1911), City of Glasgow: Boundary extensions included Springburn, Possil, Gilmorehill, Alexandra Park (1872); Coplandhill (1878); Hillhead, Maryhill, Govanhill, Crosshill, Pollockshields (1891); Bellahouston (1896); Blackhill (1899); Kinning Park (1905); Corkerhill (1909); and Govan and Partick (1912).

54. Royal Commission on Local Taxation in Scotland, C. 7575 (1894).

55. Glasgow Herald, 18 Oct. 1913. Report of the municipal financial year 1912–13 showed that in 190 Scottish burghs ‘agricultural’ acreages accounted for 37 per cent of the total burghal area, yet yielded only 0.31 per cent of the total rates. S.L.E.C, 480–2: in Clydebank, in 1912–13, agricultural land formed 30.6 per cent of the burghal area, and paid 1.82 per cent of the rates; in Paisley, 31.1 per cent accounted for 5.37 per cent of rates.

56. Royal Commission on the Classification and Incidence of Imperial and Local Taxes, etc., C. 9528, 1899; Marshall, op. cit. 115.

57. The Builder, 24 March 1877.

58. Departmental Committee on House-Letting in Scotland, Cd. 3715, 1907, Report, 3–6.

59. S.L.E.C, 476–7; Parochial Assessment Act, 1836,6 and 7 Will. iv, C 96. The 1886 Act (49 and 50 Vict.C. 50) amended an Act of 1881 which had applied the principle of yearly lets to rural housing. The intention to continue a let had to be intimated by 2 February, effectively adding a few months to the yearly period.

60. Departmental Committee, 1907, QQ. 5, 815, 5, 860, 6, 814, 6, 817, 7, 299, 7, 300, 8, 589. Landlords' preference to leave housing empty rather than to introduce a shorter tenure clearly shows the entrenched position and effect of the laws on yearly lets, as well as the effect of the law rendering even empty property liable for rates. See Walker, A., Liability of Owners of Unlet Property for Owners' Assessments (1908).Google Scholar

61. R.C. 1917, Report, para. 1972.

62. MacDonagh, op. cit., 52.

63. Ferguson, T., Scottish Social Welfare, 1864–1914 (1958).Google Scholar

64. Royal Commission on Sea Fisheries, Evidence C. 3596–I, 1866, Q. 683, and 1st Annual Report of the Fishery Board for Scotland, C. 735, 1883, xx; Day, op. cit., 384.

65. Chalmers, op. cit., 526–8.

66. Ibid., 60; Gray, W. F., ‘The quarrying of Salisbury Crags’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, xviii (1932) 181–210;Google Scholar The Builder, 27 Feb. 1864; 12 Oct. 1872, ibid., 4 June 1870; 23 April 1870.

67. G.M.C., Binnie, QQ. 6, 549, 6, 554.

68. 26 April 1897.

69. Hole, op. cit., 62.

70. Kuznets, S., Economic Growth and Structure: Selected Essays (1965) 108;Google Scholar Marshall, A., Principles of Economics (8th edn, 1969), 159.Google Scholar

71. Engerman, S. L., ‘Some considerations relating to property rights in man’, Journal of Economic History, xxxii (1973);Google Scholar Landes, W. M. and Solmon, L. C., ‘Compulsory schooling legislation: an economic analysis of law and social change in the nineteenth century’. Journal of Economic History, xxxii (1972), 54–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72. Ibid., 54.