Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE, LORD HAILES.
Subject_2 BURGH ROYAL.
Subject_3 The daughter of a soldier found not entitled to authorise her husband to carry on a trade within burgh.

The Corporation of Shoemakers of Perth
v.
Elizabeth M'Martin and Daniel Cameron

Date: 24 February 1789

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[Fac. Coll. X. 232, Dict. 2014.]

Hailes. The defenders' counsel makes the most of what I must consider as an untenable plea. I am not quite satisfied that the statute in question was meant to be extended to Scotland; but I am satisfied that the legislature had chiefly in view the companies in London, and other great cities in England. The statute could not mean to consider what trades women were apt and able to exercise in every little burgh throughout the kingdom, or to suppose that they were apt and able to exercise every one of them. It is enough that they might have qualifications fitted for the exercise of some one or other of them; for example, brewers. Our old laws are full of female brewers. In ancient times all baking was performed by women; and we learn from Thucydides, that at Platea, during the siege, there were 200 she-bakers. Women may be habit-makers; and they have, with much success, practised the business of apothecaries and druggists. The office of vintners is exercised by women, notwithstanding an old Act of Parliament to the contrary. I suppose that women are capable of being fishmongers; for, in some countries they have occasionally practised the trade of legislation. They may be weavers of lace; and there is nothing to prevent them from being weavers of linen. Women have been good artists in that branch. Because an old preamble is prefixed to a new statute, the defenders conclude that the new statute must be interpreted by the old preamble. If a soldier may exercise by others any trade which others are apt to exercise for him, any man of quality, who ever served in the army, may, by journeymen and apprentices, take all unfreemen, tailors, weavers, &c. under his protection. In the county of Lanark alone there are half-pay officers enough to set up at Glasgow, and put an end to all the privileges of the trades there. Much is said of the odiousness of corporations. They are not odious in their origin and nature, but in consequence of their by-laws and by-drinks. In themselves, as religious and political societies, they are useful; and it is the abuse alone which we ought to complain of. At any rate, it is plain that the legislature meant to take an exclusive right from one set of persons, and communicate it to another; and therefore I cannot presume that it meant to take away more than it expressed. The statute, as interpreted by the defenders, ought to have been entitled “an act for the more speedy and effectual marrying of soldiers' widows.” The fancy of making a husband journeyman under his wife is ingenious.

On the 24th February 1790, “The Lords found that Daniel Cameron, husband of Elizabeth M'Martin, had incroached upon the privileges of the shoemaker trade of Perth” adhering to the interlocutor of Lord Justice-CIerk.

Act. J. Drummond. Alt. H. Erskine.

[Detained by indisposition from the Court, 27th February, 11th March.]