View report page

TO THE
GENERAL PURPOSES COMMITTEE,
Gentlemen,
Your reference of the 10th December last, directing me to
report with regard to inserting the names of "Tenement" occupiers
(or, to speak more strictly, the names of the occupiers of rooms in
"Let Out" houses) in the occupiers' column of the Rate Books, will
be best met by my first calling your attention to some of the more
important statutes relating to rating and registration and to the
numerous and somewhat varying constructions which have from time
to time been placed by legal tribunals upon these statutes, after which
I will venture to make a few comments upon the practice of this
and other parishes in regard to them.
The foundation of the Poor Rate, and, indeed, of all rating, is
the Act of 43 Elizabeth, cap. 2, which, after providing for the appointment
of Overseers in each parish to assist the Churchwardens in
administering relief to the poor, enacted that they should " raise weekly
"or otherwise, by taxation of every inhabitant, parson, vicar, and
"other, and of every occupier of lands, houses, &c., in such competent
"sum or sums of money as they shall think fit, a convenient stock of
"flax, &c., to set the poor on work, and also competent sums of money
"for the relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, &c."
This Act, which recognised the principle of rating every inhabitant
according to his means, whether derived from personal property or
otherwise, as well as every occupier of lands, houses, &c., though it still
remains the basis of all rating, has been modified in various important
directions.
By the Act of 59 Greo. III., cap. 12 (commonly known as "Sturges
Bournes" Act), and more fully by the 13 and 14 Vic., cap. 99, provision
was made for rating the owners of small tenements instead of the
occupiers, and for allowing such owners a commission in consideration