View report page

134
Justice Buckley assumed, for the purposes of liis judgment, that the landlord
had no control, and that the claimant was an inhabitant occupier. That being
the ratio decidendi of the Court of Appeal, the virtually disfranchised latchkey
voter will not find relief in the camp of the lodgers. What he must do is to
satisfy the conditions of Section 3 of the Representation of the People Act,
1867, which, inter alia, require (1) rating as an ordinary occupier of the
premises occupied bv him within the Borough to all rates (if any) made for
the relief of the poor in respect of such premises; (2) payment on or before
July 20th of an equal amount in the pound to that payable by other ordinary
occupiers in respect of all poor rates payable by hiin.
Decision in the Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal refuted the argument that this class of " latchkey "
voter was entitled to be deemed to be rated —or, in other words, that he was
constructively rated. They held that constructive rating applied only to two
classes of cases :—
(i.) Where the rates are compounded by the landlord, either by agreement
or by order of a local authority. This applies to premises not exceeding £20
in the Metropolis, £13 in Liverpool, £10 in Manchester and Birmingham, and
£8 elsewhere. (Sections 3 and 4, of the Poor Rate Assessment and Collection
Act, 1869.)
(ii.) Where the dwelling-house or tenement is wholly let out in apartments
or lodgings (Section 7 of the Representation of the People Act, 1867, and Section
14 of the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration Act, 1878). Here
the test of control is important as distinguishing the case from that in Kent r.
Fittall. No one could mistake the tenement-dwellers for lodgers in the case
where the whole of the tenements comprised in the building or the whole of
the dwelling-house, as the case might be, is let by the landlord, and where the
latter does not reside on the premises.
Persons, therefore, who dwell in tenements or apartments in these circumstances
will not be affected by the decision in Kent t. Fittall (No. 4) in spite
of the fact that the owner is the person rated in the Overseers' books. In
substance of course these cases do not really differ from the letting to a single
person of a whole house, as the separate rooms in the tenement block can be
regarded theoretically as constituting distinct and separable dwellings. In
short, these are not "latchkey" voters at all, though their conditions of living
may strongly resemble those of the voter so sorely hit by the decision now
under consideration.
Class of VoUrt Affected.
There are two questions that are everywhere being asked—(1) Exactly what
class of electors are affected ? (2) Will huge blocks of electors disappear
altogether from the next register ?
The decision affects all those latchkey voters who have hired, especially under
verbal agreements, apartments or rooms in dwelling-houses whereof the landlord
retains either by arrangement or by natural inference the general control.
It is entirely a question of fact. In this respect clearly drawn written