Q.B. Div.]

enhanced value although the occupation was a shifting one, and although the company never at one time was in the profitable occupation of more than three and a half acres. In Reg. v. Everist (10 Q. B. 178) in the case of a brickfield it was held that a fixed sum paid for occupation and royalty constituted the rent, but that the court could not determine the amount which, at the time of making the rate, a tenant about to take a lease might reasonably be expected to pay. He also referred to

Reg. v. Abney Park Cemetery Company, 29 L. T.
Rep. 174; L. Rep. 8 Q. B. 515;

Hoyle and Jackson v. Oldham Assessment Committee, 70 L. T. Rep. 741; (1894) 2 Q. B. 372. In Rex v. Hull Dock Company (5 M. & S. 384) it was held that the company were rateable in respect of duties although repairs exceeded those duties during the period for which the rate was made.

R. Cunningham Glen for the company.-The quarter sessions were right. He referred to

The Union Assessment Committee Act 1862 (25 & 26
Vict. c. 103), s. 5;

Reg. v. Westbrook, 10 Q. B. 178.
Marshall, Q.C. in reply.

The

CHANNELL, J.-This was a special case stated by the quarter sessions for Surrey on an appeal to them against a rate made on the appellants in respect of their occupation of a gravel pit. The appellants were rated at 4201. gross and 4001. rateable value, and they appealed to quarter sessions on the ground mainly that they were over assessed. The quarter sessions allowed the appeal and reduced the rate to 2521. and 2421. rateable value subject to the special case. question for us is whether the quarter sessions proceeded on the right principle. The appellants were, on the date when the rate was made, in actual occupation of three and a half acres of land, but the gravel in two and a half acres had prior to the making of the rate (but within a year before) been exhausted by the appellants' working, and there was gravel remaining only under one acre out of the three and a half which they occupied. The quarter sessions have treated the properties in the appellants' occupation separately and have rated the one acre at what may be called gravel pit value, and the two and a half acres at its value only for purposes of storing gravel already dug, for which purpose it was in fact being used at the date of the rate. We have to consider whether the quarter sessions were right to take the plots separately, and also whether if that is right they proceeded on the right principle in arriving at the gravel pit value for rating purposes of the one acre. The appellants take the land from the landowner from time to time in small plots, usually of one acre at a time. They buy the gravel under the plot, or, rather, so much of the gravel under it as they can get in a limited time (usually a year), pay a lump sum (usually 1757.) for the gravel, and also pay for levelling the land at the end of the year or other period for which they take the plot, which levelling costs about 40l. per acre. They also pay some sums for costs. Under one agreement -that of June 1897-they paid less than under the other agreements, apparently because the bed of gravel in that plot was either less deep or not so good in quality as the gravel under the

[Q.B. DIV.

other plots. They have no contract with the landowner whereby he is bound to sell them gravel under other land when the plots they hold are exhausted, but, in fact, he has other land adjoining under which there is gravel, and he had prior to the rate in question been in the habit of making successive agreements with them, and he has continued to do so since the rate. Now, as a general rule, property is rated at its existing value at the time of the making of the rate. You have to find what the hypothetical tenant from year to year might be expected to give for the hereditament in its state at that time. If, therefore, the gravel had prior to this rate been taken from the two and a half acres in some way other than by the user of the land in respect of which the rate has to be imposed, I think the quarter sessions here would have been right in rating the two and a half acres at storage value only; the case would then have been the same as buildings on a property being burnt down shortly before the rate, and the rate would be then on the value of the land without the buildings. But I am of opinion that where the rateable user itself carries the diminution of value the rule is not quite so simple. The rule then is, I think, that any partial exhaustion of the subject-matter, so long as the special user continues, in no way affects the rateable value, and that it is only when the special user ceases, by reason of the complete exhaustion of the subject-matter or otherwise, that the rateable value is affected. It then, of course, ceases altogether. The cases which throw most light on the mode of rating such properties are Reg. v. Westbrook and Reg. v. Everist (reported together in 10 Q. B. 178), Reg. v. Abney Park (29 L T. Rep. 174; L. Rep. 8 Q. B. 55), and Reg. v. Whaddon (32 L. T. Rep. 633; L. Rep. 10 Q. B. 230). The rating of such properties without allowing for a renewal fund is somewhat anomalous; but it is clearly established by Reg. v. Westbrook that they are to be so rated, and, indeed, it is obvious that any allowance to keep the property in a state to command the rent would in these cases absorb the whole rateable value arising from the special use of the property. If the exhaustion of the material by the working, in respect of which the rate is imposed, is to be taken into account in the same way as an alteration in the value of the property caused in another way, the rateable value of the hereditament must vary from day to day and be continually diminishing. That, I think, cannot be. The value of the hereditament for rating purposes depends, not on the quantity of the material-in this case gravel-remaining on the property to be worked, but on the amount of the profitable working which is going on at the time of the rate. In this case it is all-important to remember that the value for rating purposes depends on the value of the occupation, and not on the value of the corpus of the property occu pied. The latter in these cases is constantly diminishing, but the former is, or may be, constant, until at last it ceases altogether by the exhaustion of the corpus. To rate such properties you first have to find the amount or rate of working, and then find how much a hypothetical tenant from year to year would give by the year for the rights to work at that rate. It may be that there is not enough gravel remaining for anyone to

Q.B. Div.]

work for a whole year, but that is quite immaterial. The problem is to find the value for a year of that enjoyment of the property which the occupier is in fact having at the date of the rate, irrespective of the question whether that enjoyment by the occupier can or cannot continue for a year. The case nearest to this, and, I think, completely in point, is Reg. v. Whaddon -a case as to coprolites. There the appellants were in occupation of ten acres of land, of which three and a half were at the date of the rate being actually worked for coprolites, and six and a half acres, though still in their occupation, had been exhausted. So far, the facts are the same as in the present case, but in that case the occupier had a contract with the landowner whereby he was entitled to have other land as required from time to time in substitution for that he had worked out; so that he was continuously in occupation of ten acres, though of a different ten acres, and in each year he worked out ten acres though he had only three and a half acres in working at one time. He also contracted to pay the landowner a dead rent of 1000l. per annum, which was a little less in fact than his average payment for royalties on the ten acres worked. It was there held by the majority of the court that the appellants were rateable for the whole ten acres at coprolite value and not merely for three and a half acres at coprolite value and for the remainder at storage value. The argument of counsel for the appellants there was precisely that of the appellants' counsel here, and their view was adopted and developed by the dissenting judge, Cockburn, C.J., but it was not adopted by Mellor, Lush, and Archibald, JJ., who formed the majority. I think this case is an authority in point in the present, and that it is not distinguishable by reason of the two points of difference in the facts which I have mentioned. The dead rent cannot, I think, affect the question. It goes only to assist in arriving at the figures of the annual value, but it cannot affect the principle. In the judgment of the majority the fact that the appellants' occupation was a continuous one was, of course, referred to, but the judges did not rely on the fact that the appellants had a contract for the future digging, nor would that fact really be an element in the value of the occupation for rating purposes. The value for rating purposes of a hereditament does not depend upon the length of tenure of the actual Occupying tenant. A man is rated the same whether his lease has many years or only a few days to run. The hypothetical tenant is not to be assumed to take for the next year after the rate the rights which the actual tenant has for that next year, but he is assumed to take as tenant from year to year the occupation (together, of course, with the rights of user of the land which the occupation carries with it), which the actual tenant has at the date of the rate, whether that occupation or those rights are to continue for a year or for more or less than a year. If any particular year is to be taken for the hypothetical tenancy, it is in cases of this class the year preceding the rate and not the year after. In Reg. v. Abney Park (L. Rep. 8 Q. B. at p. 519) Blackburn J. is reported as saying "the Legislature has taken as a basis the rent which a tenant

from year to year would give during the year preceding the time of making the rate." If that

[Q.B. DIV.

was

dictum is correct, it is conclusive of the present case. In the same Abney Park case, Blackburn, J. at p. 520 of the Law Reports repeats almost the same proposition: "No injustice will be done if the company are rated in every year according to the value which a hypothetical tenant would give for the occupation in the preceding year, and according to this rule, the company's receipts in one year will govern the rateable value of the cemetery in the next." My brother Bucknill has drawn my attention to the fact that these two passages are omitted in the report of the Abney Park case in the Law Journal (42 L. J. 125, M. C.) and also in a report in the LAW TIMES (29 L. T. Rep. 174). The reports throughout vary very much in language. They are obviously condensed reports, and each reporter has purposely omitted some of the actual language used by the learned judge, and each has reported some part of that which omitted by the other, but in substance the reports agree, and the reasoning of the judges appears the same in each report. Of course it may be said that the principle of taking the value in a past year was only applied in the cemetery case because there was no reason why the receipts from burials in the next year should not be as large as in the preceding year. But would not the same rule be applied to the last year before the cemetery became full, that is, when it was not quite full but when it was known that it would be full before the next year was ended? I think it would. The cemetery would still be rated at its former annual value until it was full and then it would cease to be rated at all. It would not be rated at half the annual value in the last year because there was room for only six months' burials, any more than a man would be rated at half the annual value of his house because he had only a six months' term remaining of his lease. It seems to me that where the overseers or assessment committee have to rate a property in respect of a beneficial use which is being made of it, which use is self-destructive, what they have to do is this: They must ascertain what amount of use the actual tenant has been making and continues to make of the property, and then ascertain what a tenant would give for liberty to make that amount of use of the property from year to year, independently of the question whether there is or is not enough of the property remaining for the tenant to be able to go on making that use for a whole year. Thus, in the case of a gravel pit, they must find at what rate per annum the tenant is digging, and then find the annual value of his right to dig at that rate. The reason why it is necessary in cases of this class of property to look at the past user rather than at the capabilities for the future seems to be this: In all ordinary properties anything which happens to the property to destroy its value in the future, such as the burning down of a house, will, as soon as it happens, also destroy the value of the user in the present. Therefore we can take the future value as a measure of the present. But in the case of the class of property under consideration the destruction of future value is caused by the present user itself—that is, by the very thing of which we have to find the value-and consequently to find that present value we cannot look to the future when the destruction c used by it will have taken place. Applying this in the present case, and going back as far as the facts stated in the

Q.B. Div.]

special case enable us to do, we find that on the 24th June 1897 the appellants acquired the right to dig, and, as I understand them, began to dig gravel under an acre and a half, which they completely dug out in March 1898. On the 15th April 1898 they acquired the like right under one acre, which they completely dug out by the 1st Sept. On the 14th Nov. 1898 they acquired another acre, which they were digging on the 8th Dec. 1898 when the rate was made. When they completely dug out that acre does not appear (nor, of course, could it be known when the rate was made), but as they took another plot on the 21st March 1899 it was probably shortly before that. The subsequent taking is only material to show now that which might at the time have been shown by direct evidence-viz., that at the date of the rate (the 8th Dec.) the appellants were digging as before, and had not begun to dig slower than the average rate at which they had been digging. That average rate appears to me to be about the rate of two acres per annum, rather more if any. thing, as they exhausted the acre taken the 15th April 1898 in four months and a half. I think, therefore, that just as in Reg. v. Whaddon the appellants were rated at coprolite value on ten acres (though at the date of the rate six and a half acres had been already exhausted and only three and a half of the ten acres then in their occupation still contained coprolites) because they were working out the three and a half acres at the rate of ten acres per annum, so here the appellants, though at the date of the rate they were only working gravel in one acre, must be rated for three and a half acres on the gravel pit value of at least two acres inasmuch as they were working both during the previous year and up to and at the date of the rate, so far as appears, at the rate of two acres per annum. In this case there seems no reason for not taking the sums paid by the appellants as a measure of what the hypothetical tenant would be likely to pay, and in fact the quarter sessions did so, as I understand they assessed the gravel pit value at 2201. per acre, being the 1757., the 401. costs of restoring, and the 51. costs. If, therefore, the appellants ought to have been rated for their occupation on the footing that they were working at the date of the rate, as they had been previously, at the rate of two acres of gravel per annum, the original rating at 4201. gross was not excessive, and, although the calculations which I have made from the figures in the special case are probably not quite accurate, and the data in the special case are probably not sufficient to enable us, if we had to do so, to fix exactly the proper amount at which the appellants should be rated, it is enough for me to say that the facts stated in the special case show no ground for reducing the rate. I have dealt with the case, so far as I think it ought to be dealt with, as one occupation of the three and a half acres. But I think that, even if the exhausted two and a half acres in the two earlier lettings are to be treated separately and rated at storage value only, the remaining should be rated at approximately double the sum at which the quarter sessions have rated it, because I think the appellants were working it at the date of the rate at the rate of getting two acres of gravel per annum, and I do not think we are excluded from co sidering that question by reason of the quarter sessions having found the value in part.

[Q.B. Div.

They only so found subject to the case, and that states the facts with a view to our deciding it. I put the case thus: If a man pays 1001. for the privilege of taking all the gravel out of a plot of land in a year, and he digs uniformly throughout the year, I should say that the gross value of his occupation during the year is 1007., and that it is so all through the year though he exhausts the land by digging the last load of gravel on the last day of the year. I think that must be admitted. I also think that if he does not dig uniformly, but digs out all the gravel in the first six months, continuing to occupy during the second six months, the gross annual value during the second six months as well as during the first is still 1007., but if not, and if, as the quarter sessions have held, the value during the second six months is nil (or storage value only, which for the purposes of the argument is the same thing), then it follows that the value of the first six months' occupation is the whole 1007. which he pays-that is to say, that the annual value during that six months is 2001. per annum. In either way, therefore, the quarter sessions seems to me to be wrong. They appear to me to have given the appellants the benefit of the exhaustion of the three and a half acres by reason of their speed in working, and not to have given the parish in the rating of the one acre the corresponding benefit arising from the same speed of working. The parish is by their mode of rating robbed of half the rateable value of the occupation. I think the passage in the judgment of Mellor, J. in Reg. v. Whaddon, at the bottom of p. 244, is applicable here: "The appellants cannot by an ingenious arrangement of the mode of working deprive the parish of the benefit of rating them in respect of a whole year's occupa tion.' I base my judgment on the authority of Reg. v. Whaddon, which I think in point and binding on us, but I entirely agree with the reasoning of the majority of the court in that case, and have endeavoured somewhat to amplify and explain it. I think, therefore, that the proper order to be made is to allow with costs the appeal to us, quash the order of the quarter sessions, and, making the order which the quarter sessions should have made, dismiss with costs the appeal to quarter sessions against the rate; but, as the court is equally divided, I am of opinion that the appeal fails, and consequently the order which has to be made is that the appeal be dismissed. Under the circumstances, it will be dismissed without costs, and leave to appeal if necessary is given.

BUCKNILL, J.-The question for our decision is whether the Court of Quarter Sessions for the county of Surrey has rated the Farnham Flint, Gravel, and Sand Company in a rate for the relief of the poor on a principle which can be upheld in law. The material facts may be shortly stated. The Farnham Flint, &c., Company, whose business is that of gravel and sand merchants, entered into three agreements, amongst others, with the owner of a bed of gravel, which were dated the 24th June 1897 and the 15th April and the 14th Nov. 1898 respectively, by which they bought of him the gravel in three separate plots of ground which were marked out for the purpose. The purchasers had a certain time in which to remove the gravel, level the ground, replace the top soil, and restore the plots to their owners. There is, in my opinion,

Q.B. Div.]

no statement in the case to justify this court in treating the land comprised in these three agreements as forming one continuous area. By the agreement of the 24th June 1897 the gravel in one acre and a half was sold to the company, the price being 1501., and the period of possession one year and a half; but in the other two agreements the plots of land were one acre each, and the price for each 1501., the period of possession being one year from the date of the respective agreements. The poor rate which is the subject of this appeal was made on the 8th Dec. 1898. At that time the company was in rateable occupation of the three plots, but in March 1898 they had exhausted all the gravel from the acre and a half which they bought on the 24th June 1897, and on the 1st Sept. they had exhausted all the gravel which they bought on the 15th April 1898. Those two and a half acres were at the time of making the rate used as storage places for gravel in connection with other lands occupied by the company. The gravel bought by the company on the 14th Nov. 1898 was being worked by them on the 8th Dec. 1898 On these facts the Court of Quarter Sessions held that the annual value of the three and a half acres at the time of the making of the rate ought to be taken at the amount of rent or royalty at which the same could then be reasonably expected to be let on a yearly tenancy, regard being had to the value of the gravel in the unexhausted acre, added to the value of the two and a half acres which were exhausted of gravel, but were used for storage purposes only; and on that principle the court found that the amount at which the three and a half acres would in fact be so let was 2521, at which sum they fixed the gross estimated rental, and assessed the rateable value at 2421. On the part of the guardians of the Farnham Union it was argued that the rateable value should be assessed either on the output of gravel during the year preceding the making of the rate from so much of the respective plots of land as was in the occupation of the company at any time during that year, based upon a royalty measured by the market value of the gravel; or, secondly, that as at the time of making the rate the company were and had been working gravel at the rate of at least two acres a year, they must be rated at the full annual value of such two acres. In support of the first contention Reg. v. Abney Park Cemetery Company (29 L. T. Rep. 174; L. Rep. 8 Q. B. 515) was cited, and of the second Reg. v. Whaddon (L. Rep. 10 Q. B. 230). It is necessary, therefore, to look at the facts of those cases. The headnote to the report in the Law Reports expresses very concisely the material facts of the first of these cases, thus: "The appellants were a company that purchased lands and laid them out as a cemetery. They received fees for interments, and conveyed plots of ground to be used as graves. In one year (1869) 23331. was received by the company as purchase money for such plots of ground. Each plot was conveyed by indenture purporting to grant it in fee simple upon trust that the grantee might use it as a place of burial, subject to the regulations of the company, and, subject to such trusts, in trust for the company as part of their property. The defendants were rated as the occupiers of the lands, and upon the principle that the sum of 23331. was to be treated as part of the annual value of the

MAG. CAS.-VOL. XIX.

[Q.B. DIV.

occupation of the lands by the appellants in that year." The Court of Queen's Bench held that the rate was rightly made, and that in that particular case the sale by the cemetery company of plots of ground for burial purposes was the mode, or one of the modes, by which they earned their annual income from year to year; the receipts by them in the year preceding the making of the rate was the best basis for ascertaining the rateable value for the next. The court pointed out that the case was anomalous. I think that an alleged dictum of Blackburn, J. when delivering his judgment has been misunderstood, if, indeed, it has not been misreported in the report of the case in the Law Reports, where he appears to have expressed himself thus: "The Parochial Assessment Act has enacted that the basis for ascertaining the rateable value shall be rent at which the property might reasonably be expected to let from year to year. It might be more equitable if the statute had provided that the basis should be the rent which a tenant for a term of years would pay for the property to be rated, but the Legislature has decided otherwise, and has taken as a basis the rent which a tenant from year to year would give during the year preceding the time of making the rate." I have looked at the report of this case in the Law Journal and in the LAW TIMES Reports, but in neither do I find the expression that "the Legislature has taken as a basis the rent which a tenant from year to year would give during the year preceding the time of making the rate"; nor do I think that learned judge intended to lay down any such general rule, but that all he meant to say was that in that particular case, which was anomalous, and perhaps in other exceptional cases, the rent which a tenant would give during the preceding year might be the only proper basis for ascertaining the existing annual value for rating purposes, and more particularly so if by that means valuable property can be prevented escaping being rated at all, though it by no means follows that there may not be cases "which the existing law cannot reach without being strained in a manner in which we ought not to strain it": (see per Cockburn, C.J. in Reg. v. Whaddon (L. Rep. 10 Q. B. at p. 241). In order to arrive at the rateable value of a hereditament, that which is legitimate and necessary in one case may be neither legitimate or necessary in another. In Reg. v. Abney Park Cemetery Company it must be taken, I think, that the cemetery company was still in occupation of sufficient ground to be able to sell during the year for which the rate was made as many grave spaces as would produce an amount equal to the sales of the year preceding it, but in the case before us the whole of the two plots, consisting of two and a half acres, had been at the time of making the rate entirely exhausted of gravel-producing power, and were useless to the occupiers except as storage places for gravel produced from other land occupied by them. I think, therefore, that the first of these contentions fails. Now, pass to the case of Reg. v. Whaddon, known as the coprolite case, and I think that the facts of that case are very unlike the present. There the occupier was in possession of ten acres of coprolite-producing land at least during each year, but he used no more during any one quarter for the purpose of getting coprolites than three and a half acres, the other six and a 3 Q

Q.B. Div.]

:

half acres lying unproductive, having been exhausted of coprolites. The rate in that case was made quarterly, and it was contended that the rateable value ought to be taken on the value only of the then profitable portion of the ten acres, notwithstanding that owing to the occupation continually shifting a complete ten acres would be profitably worked during the concurrent year. But the majority of the court held that the proper measure was the net annual value of the hereditament-that is, of ten acres, and not only of the three and a half-and that the case could not be distinguished "from an ordinary agricultural farm in which the net annual value is the same, although one part of the farm may lie fallow or be a source of expense at one period and of profit at another, notwithstanding which the rate must be made upon the farm in respect of its net annual value" (see Mellor, J., at p. 244). But between the case of an ordinary agricultural farm and the present there is surely a great difference, for, whilst the farmer pays rent for the user of the land which he occupies, in this case the occupier of the land paid for the right to dispose of the corpus, being the gravel in the ground which he had purchased from the owner out and out, and which he had entirely removed from two of the three plots at the time of the making of the rate. So long as there was any gravel in these three plots of land, it may be that the rateable value would be unaffected-I offer no opinion on that point; but so soon as any one or more of them were exhausted of the gravel that had been in them and they were incapable of beneficial occupation except as storage places for gravel, I am of opinion that they could only be rated upon their actual existing value at the time when the rate was made-in other words, it is not the past nor the prospective, but the actual value of the hereditament that is to be taken as the basis of assessment, or as Blackburn, J. said in Staley v. Overseers of Castleton (33 L. J. 182, M. C.): "The Legislature intended the rate should be made upon the rent which might reasonably be expected from a tenant who took the property from year to year, rebus sic stantibus." Here it is stated in the case as a fact that at the date of the rate being made in two and a half of the said three and a half acres, being the plots of land referred to in the agreements of the 24th June 1897 and the 15th April 1898, the gravel was exhausted, and the land was used for the purpose of storing gravel already dug, and it is not denied that for such user they have been properly assessed, nor, as I understood the argument, is it contended that if it was only a question of the assessment on the remaining one acre, the quarter sessions has proceeded on a wrong principle. In my judgment the present case is more like a brickfield or a mine, both of which are, whilst being worked, approaching the period of final exhaustion. So long as they are being worked as brickfields or mines and there is nothing to show that the profits of the rating year may not be as good as the profits of the past year, then that year may be taken as the basis of the next, if no better can be found; but where the brickfield or the mine has been worked out and exhausted, as in the case of these two and a half acres, and can therefore be no longer worked for the sole purpose for which they were acquired, I cannot agree to the proposition that their rateable value remains un

[Q.B. DIV.

affected simply because they are still occupied under the terms of the respective contracts made with the owner of the land. In this connection Rex v. Bedworth (8 East, 387) seems an authority in point. There a colliery was rated at an annual value of 2001. By lease the tenant paid a rent of 2001. a year at least, and in all events, whatever the state of the mine might be and whether any coal was gotten or not. Before the lease expired, all the coal was exhausted and the mine ceased to be worked, and it was held that, although the rent was still payable, yet, with respect to the parish, the occupier was only rateable for the concurrent annual value during the period for which the rate was made, and that when the thing occupied ceased to afford any such concurrent value, the subject-matter of the rating was gone: (see per Ellenborough, C.J., p. 388). I think the Court of Quarter Sessions has proceeded in this case on the same principle-that is to say, that the two and a half acres were valueless for the purpose for which they were acquired, and that they could only be assessed at the actual value of their occupation at the time of the making of the rate in question. For these reasons I am of opinion, although I say so with much misgiving, being in disagreement with my brother Channell, that this appeal should be dismissed.

Appeal dismissed.

Leave to appeal. Solicitor for the company, Jackson, Farnham. Solicitors for the union, Johnson, Wetherall, and Sturt, for Potter and Crundwell, Farnham.

Monday, Dec. 18, 1899.

(Before DARLING and CHANNELL, JJ.) THOMAS WELSH AND SON (apps.) v. CORPORATION OF WEST HAM (resps.). (a)

Local government - Public Health - Continued existence of work in contravention of bye-law— Continuing offence-Liability-Public Health Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 55), s. 158.

Sect. 158 of the Public Health Act 1875 makes the existence of work (the erection of which was an offence against a bye-law) during its continuance in such a form and state as to be in contravention of the bye-law a continuing offence. If after the person liable for the erection of work of this character has so given up possession of the premises that he is not able to re-enter upon them without committing a trespass, the exist ence of such work is continued, such person is not the person who continues its existence, and he is not liable for a continuing offence under sect. 158.

CASE stated by the deputy stipendiary magistrate for the borough of West Ham.

The respondents were the urban sanitary authority for the borough of West Ham and as such they laid an information against the appellants charging that the appellants, having been convicted and fined on the 30th Nov. 1898 for that they on the 3rd Sept. 1898 unlawfully did break a certain bye-law, No. 63, of the urban authority of the borough with respect to the sufficiency of the air-space about buildings to secure a free circulation of air and with respect to the ventilation of (a) Reported by J. ANDREW STRAHAN, Esq., Barrister-at-Law.