View report page

10
majority of the cases being those of persons who set the
Vestry at defiance, and have no goods on the premises on
which distress can be levied, and it may be taken that
practically the same persons form the cases each quarter.
In the large majority of these cases also, when proceedings
have reached this extreme, the money is forthcoming.
An average of 14 cases per quarter were excused by the
justices on account of poverty.
Valuation Lists.—Four Provisional Valuation Lists and
one Supplemental List have been made out during the year,
dealing with 314 assessments and resulting in a net increase
in the rateable value of £3,474.
In consequence of the closing of the two prisons, Coldbath
Fields and the House of Detention, in March 1886,
no sum has been received from the Government in aid of
the rates in respect thereof. The amount which has been
so lost to the credit of the rate was about £733 or rather
over a half-penny in the pound. The Sessions Ilouse has
also been declared by the Queens Bench Division of the
High Court to be exempt from rating and a further
diminution of the producing power of the rates is therefore
experienced of over £100 per annum.
Assessment of Sessions House.—The following is an
extract from the Times of the 8th December, 1886 :—
NICHOLSON v. THE ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE OF
HOLBORN UNION.
This was an appeal by Sir Richard Nicholson, Clerk of the Peace
for the County of Middlesex, against the Assessment of the Sessions
House at Clerkenwell. By an Act passed in 1775 (18 Geo. III., c. 67)
such persons as at the time being should be in the commission of the
peace for the county of Middlesex were appointed commissioners for
building a Sessions House and empowered to purchase a site for it.
The Act further provided that the commissioners should be empowered
" to cause a now Sessions House, with all proper and necessary apartments
and offices, to be erected on such piece or pieces of ground for