Agricultural History Review, Volume 61 Part 2 (2013), p. 361

The Lincoln Record Society publishes volumes in which the major part of each book is devoted to an edition of the text of an original document, accompanied by brief introductory notes. This latest is a book in two parts, each illustrating a different aspect of the dispensing of local justice in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Lincolnshire.

The first, edited by Brian Davey, reproduces the justice books of Thomas Dixon (1729–98), which he kept between 1787 and 1798. Dixon was a tenant farmer from Riby near Grimsby, who sat on the magistrates’ bench and was the only Lincolnshire JP to leave any record of his justice work done outside the usual sessions. His three notebooks, kept in the Lincolnshire Archives, chronicle those cases on which he sat alone, often in his own house, dispensing summary justice whenever possible. Cases include petty theft, assault and fathering bastard children, with sentences ranging from a public whipping in front of the courthouse to transportation. The introduction explains the legal background to summary justice in the late eighteenth century, with biographical notes on Thomas Dixon and his career as a magistrate. There is a section on the type of offences he heard, including ‘master and servant’ cases, which he frequently encountered. In addition to the contents of the notebooks, Davey has added relevant extracts from other sources, including the local press, Lindsey Quarter Sessions minutes and accounts of parish officers. The magistracy of Lincolnshire has already been examined in the context of local government in south Lincolnshire (Kesteven) by Joan Thirsk and nineteenth-century Lincolnshire rural society and county government by R. J. Olney. Dixon’s notebooks are unique of their type in Lincolnshire and rare in the rest of the country, and, with Davey’s contextualization, we have a valuable primary source made more widely accessible.

The same applies to the second part of the volume, edited by Rob Wheeler, which reproduces the text of papers in a case from 1838 of mutual indebtedness between business partners, Benjamin Hart Thorold of Harmston and John Catton from the Lincoln area. One of Thorold’s financial schemes to get himself out of debt was to take advantage of the recently passed Beerhouse Act of 1830 to resurrect a former inn on his estate as a beer house called the Blackamoor’s Head and to install Catton, a local stonemason, as manager. Catton was, amongst other things, to sell the ale that Thorold tried to brew, but the arrangement ran into difficulties and an absence of accounts between the two parties caused a dispute. Each took the other to court in the Queen’s Bench and the papers reproduced here recount the proceedings of an arbitration held locally in Lincolnshire. They include statements by the parties and witnesses, the arbitrator’s brief, a summary of the evidence, and various bills and receipts. These are interesting enough in demonstrating the legal processes in such a case, but the incidental detail of their content throws a fascinating light on a number of socio-economic themes. They touch on social relations between the gentry and tradesmen, the establishment of a beer house in the early years after the Beer House Act, improvements to the River Witham as seen through the eyes of the bankers who provided the labour, and the Scotland-to-London cattle-droving trade, which made use of Thorold’s premises for overnight accommodation. The introductory paragraphs to both parts of this volume and the texts of the documents provide a fascinating insight into how the law was administered at a relatively informal, local level in a rural county in the early stages of industrialization.