A terrific thing about writing this blog is that I never know what new family connections will pop up and what amazing things I will find out about my ancestors. I am very grateful to my Australian cousin Kris Hardy for the information that forms the basis of this blog. Kris is descended from George Hardy a brother of my great grandfather Charles Lingham Hardy.
The item Kris found was a record of an appeal to the House of Lords of a court case that came about through the activities of our ancestors George Augustus Lingham and his brother Thomas Lingham. If you have read my previous blogs you will have read about William Lingham father of George and Thomas and founder of the wine and spirits business that was located in Beer Lane, All Hallows, London.
When William died in1825 he left the business in the hands of George and Thomas. I suspect they were in fact managing the business before their fathers death based on the activities connected to the court case.The business looked like it should have been quite profitable. There was some accomodation, a public house and a wine sales business. Nevertheless in the same year as William's death it seems the brothers were bankrupt. George was adjudged bankrupt in August of 1825 and Thomas in December of the same year.
I addition to George and Thomas being adjudged bankrupt there is also a record in May of 1825 of the dissolving of a partnership they had entered into with a gentleman named Randle Hopley. Randle was also in the wine and spirits business his occupation being described as a vintner.
Randle Hopley must have been a very good friend of George as one of George's sons was named after him as Randle Hopley Lingham. It was interesting to find that Randle Hopley was at one stage nominated for appointment as a Sheriff of London. This is relevant to the topic of this blog, as you will see later.
The great item that Kris located was the record contained in the below book recording cases heard in The House of Lords. This book has been digitised which means we have been able to read the full record of the specific case involving George, Thomas and Randle. The record of the case is many pages long and consists of complex legal arguments.
Cases heard in The House of Lords as the final court of appeal are cases where an aggrieved party to legal action already taken considers they have not had a just outcome. The process is long and expensive. This means that a substantial amount of money must be at stake in order to justify taking this course of action. In this case a period of 10 years has passed since the occurrence of the action that resulted in the initial court case. The case fits into the category of a writ in error. The reason for this will become clear when you read about the matter in question.
The pages shown below set out in a reasonably concise manner the facts behind the case and the parties involved.
Although only Thomas Lingham is named below it is clear from the detailed record of the case that it was about an arrangement entered into by Thomas along with his brother George and their business associate Randle Hopley. That arrangement was to import certain goods purchased from Nathaniel Thornton, described as "furs, oils etc" from Van Diemans Land (Tasmania) for subsequent sale in London.
At this time sealing and whaling were significant activities in Van Diemans Land. Seal fur was used for clothing and oil for lighting lamps.
Christopher Nockells was the owner of the ship The Emerald on which the goods were to be freighted to London. An agreement was made that he would be paid 6000 pounds as the freight fee and this would be paid 10 days after delivery of the goods.
The other parties involved are Phineas Davis and Joseph Bull who were bailiffs and worked for Matthias Prime Lucas and William Thompson who were Sheriffs of Middlesex. It was Davis and Bull who acting on instructions from the Sheriffs Lucas and Thompson broke into The Emerald at the London Docks on 1st January 1823. They seized the goods in question over a period of 3 or 4 days and delivered them to the Linghams and Hopley. The seizure of the goods was done under the authority of a writ of fieri facias - this means the goods were being seized to meet a debt owed. A sum of some 20,000 pounds is mentioned as the amount that the Linghams and Hopley claimed as costs (ie the value of the shipped goods) they sought to recover under their writ.
The legal case hinged on the matter of whether the writ issued for the seizure of the goods actually entitled the bailiffs to seize the goods and pass them onto Messers Lingham and Hopley It is instead considered by the shipowner that under the terms of the writ of seizure the goods were specifically to be held by the bailiffs and sold by them to cover their costs. By passing the goods onto Messers Lingham and Hopley it is considered that the true intent of the writ of seizure was not followed. The shipowner Nockells was of the view the writ of seizure was used as a means of avoiding payment of his shipping fee of 6000 pounds and was not justified.
Below are the pages from the case that set out what I have described. The actions of the bailiffs are referred to as actions of trespass. A lot of the legal arguments about the case were focused on the laws of trespass. The particular matter of relevance was the effect of a person entering onto another persons property with permission to do one thing but instead doing something for which they did not have permission.
Before going further into the House of Lords hearing I think it is worth considering what the Linghams and Hopley were involved in with this venture. The sum of 20,000 pounds plus costs is an amount which is quoted as being claimed by the Linghams and Hopley. In today's money this is an amount of around 2,000,000 pounds. In other words a very large sum of money is at stake as the potential proceeds from the sale of the imported goods.
In the summary of the House of Lords case the venture is described as being the purchase of some goods in Van Diemens Land for what was probably a "trifling sum" of money for resale in London for a very much greater sum of money. That seems to be an accurate description. The fact that the partnership was willing to spend what was required over a period of 10 years to appeal their case in The House of Lords is indicative of the venture needing to have a "payoff" of an amount as high as the 20,000 pounds suggested above.
The pressure of deciding whether to accept the loss of the goods and cease expenditure on the court case or continue in the hope of winning would have been immense.
We know that by late 1825, about two years after the seizure of the goods from The Emerald, the Lingham brothers were declared bankrupt. They had probably spent the inheritance from their father, although perhaps they had managed to keep some assets away from their creditors. We do not know. Somehow they had managed to fund the legal costs and bring the case to The House of Lords in 1833.
George's wife Mary inherited a substantial sum of money from her father when he died on 16 April 1832. Had George persuaded Mary to assist with some funds to meet the costs of the court action? At some point between 1833 and 1841 George left his first wife Mary Teale and established a relationship with Mary Patwell. Had the loss of the court case been the cause of George and Mary Teale becoming estranged?
Thomas seems to have continued his business as a wine merchant and was still showing this as his occupation until the time of his death in 1855. Is it significant that Thomas and not George is the named party in the court case? Had George ceased to be a party to the legal action before it went to The House of Lords?
Somehow at least Thomas Lingham and Randle Hopley kept going in the hope of a huge payday if they could win their case. Unfortunately they did not win!
In his issuing of the final judgement of The House of Lords, Lord Wynford referred to the fact he was one of a panel of 8 judges who had tried this case in the Court of the Exchequer. This is a lower court that was a court of appeal for civil cases. In that court all 8 judges found in favour of Nockells and against Hopley and Lingham. Of the 5 judges of The House of Lords only 1 found in favour of Hopley and Lingham. So across two court hearings on the matter only 1 out of 13 judges considered Hopley and Lingham had acted correctly.
The key words used by Lord Wynford were that he considered Hopley and Lingham had acted in a dishonest and fraudulent manner in an attempt to possess themselves of the goods. He further said that given they were acting under a writ issued by the courts, it was "...an abuse of the process of the courts..." He further said "The writ told the sheriff to seize and sell the goods. He did not sell."
I am impressed by the entrepreneurial endeavours of George and Thomas and their partner Randle Hopley in the venture to import the goods from Tasmania. It seems they stood to make a very handsome profit on the sale of the furs and oil. However I am much less impressed by the action of seizing the goods in a questionable manner. Were they really trying to avoid paying the freight cost of 6000 pounds? That seems pointless if the sale price could have been as much as 20,000 pounds.
I am intrigued by the fact that Hopley was proposed to be made a sheriff of London in 1823. Did he have some connections in this area that were behind the decision to get a writ of seizure as a sneaky way to avoid the freight costs? Perhaps one of the sheriffs involved was a mate who had a cunning plan. Was it Hopley's influence that persuaded the Linghams to take this action?
The goods were passed by the sheriff to Hopley and the Linghams and they sold them. The fact that court action by the ship owner Nockells then followed is indicative of his freight costs not having then been paid. If he had been paid he would have had no reason to take legal action. He succeeded in his court action. Therefore Hopley and the Linghams must have been left with the requirement to pay the 6000 pounds owed to Nockells plus the court costs and their own legal costs.
I have not seen any mention of the amount received by Hopley and the Linghams as proceeds from the sale of the goods. It is possible that they did not make a big profit, if anything at all, from this long drawn out enterprise. I find it astonishing that such a vast amount of time and effort went into the series of courts cases. It seems to me that as is often the case the lawyers were probably the ones who profited most handsomely from this venture.
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