Williams v. Clough (1858), 3 H. & N. 258. (Defendant ordered plaintiff to use a ladder, which he knew to be unsound; plaintiff injured; defendant liable.) Caswell v. Worth (1856), 5 E. & B. 849. (See p. 303, n. (z).) (See p. 473.) Murphy v. Phillips (1876), 35 L. T. (N. S.) 477. (See p. 295.) Watling v. Oastler (1871), L. R. 6 Ex. 73. (Declaration by plaintiff as administratrix of G. W. for that it was necessary for G. W. in the course of his employment to get into a certain machine which was constructed defectively and in an unsafe manner, as the defendants well knew. While G. W. was so employed the machine was suddenly put in motion, and G. W. injured. Not necessary to aver that G. W. was ignorant of the defective state of machine.) Britton v. Great Western Cotton Co. (1872), L. R. 7 Ex. 130. (See p. 302.) Williams v. Birmingham Battery and Metal Co., [1899] 2 Q. B. 338. (See p. 296.) Part II. STATUTE LAW. CHAPTER I. SUNDAY OBSERVANCE. THE 29 Charles II. c. 7 (1677) (an Act for the better observation of the Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday), is the only statute on this subject to which it is necessary to refer. Section 1 declares : That no tradesman, artificer, workman, labourer, or other person whatsoever, shall do or exercise any worldly labour, business, or work of their ordinary callings upon the Lord's Day, or any part thereof (works of necessity and charity only excepted); and that every person being of the age of fourteen years or upwards offending in the premises, shall for every such offence forfeit the sum of five shillings; and that no person or persons whatsoever shall publicly cry, show forth, or expose to sale any wares, merchandises, fruits, herbs, goods or chattels whatsoever upon the Lord's Day, or any part thereof, upon pain that every person so offending shall forfeit the same goods so cried or showed forth or exposed to sale. The penalties under this Act are rarely applied (a). But it is occasionally necessary to know whether contracts made on Sunday are illegal. The Courts have attached important limitations to the scope of the statute. The words "other person whatsoever have not been read literally. Thus in Sandiman v. Breach (b), it was held that they did not include the owner and driver of a stage-coach, on the principle of construction, that where general words follow particular words they are to be read as applicable to persons or things ejusdem generis. A barber, who shaves customers on Sunday, is not within the Act (c). When an attempt was made to bring within the Act farmers who employ labourers on a Sunday, the Court of Queen's Bench (d) decided that a farmer who employed labourers to cart hay, although he himself worked, was not liable to the penalties of the Act. The strange result follows, that an agricultural labourer who works on Sunday may be punished, while the farmer who employed him, and who perhaps took part in the work, cannot be punished. The Courts have also limited the application of the statute to cases in which contracts are made "in the course of the ordinary calling." This was the construction adopted in Drury v. Defontaine (e). There the question was, whether a sale of a horse on a Sunday, not in the course of the ordinary calling of the vendor, was void so as to disable him from recovering the price. The Court decided that it was not void. Though questioned by Park, J., in Smith v. Sparrow (f), this construction of the statute is now settled. Accordingly, a contract of hiring for a year made between a farmer and a labourer is not affected by the statute, hiring not being, it was said, one of those things which the ordinary duties of a farmer require him to perform (g). Such also was the view of the Court of Exchequer with respect to an agreement by an attorney, whereby he agreed to become personally liable in respect of a debt owing by a client (h). On the other hand, a horsedealer cannot maintain an action upon a contract, even if made privately, for the sale and warranty of a horse, provided it were entered into on a Sunday (i). (c) Palmer v. Snow, [1900] 1 Q. B. 725. (d) R. v. Silvester (1864), 33 L. J. M. C. 79; "other persons then must mean other persons not quite a tradesman, labourer, &c.," Blackburn, J. (e) (1808), 1 Taunt. 131. See also Triggs v. Lester (1866), L. R. 1 Q. B. 259. (f) (1827), 4 Bing. 84 (action will not lie upon a contract made and completed on a Sunday). (g) Rex v. Whitnash (1827), 7 B. & C. 596. (h) Peate v. Dicken (1834), 1 C. M. & R. 422; Norton v. Powell (1842), 4 M. & G. 42 (the giving by one tradesman to another tradesman of a guarantee for the faithful services of a traveller is not an act done in his ordinary calling). (i) Fennell v. Ridler (1826), 5 B. & C. 406. See also as to ordinary calling,' Wolton v. Gavin (1850), 16 Q. B. 48 (enlistment of a soldier by a recruiting officer not within the Act, and not invalid by reason of taking place on a Sunday); Scarfe v. Morgan (1838), 4 M. & W. 270 (sending a mare to a farmer to be covered by a stallion not within farmer's ordinary calling); Bloxsome v. Williams (1824), 3 B. & C. 232 (A. not knowing that B. was a horse-dealer, made a verbal bargain with him on a Sunday for purchase of a horse; assuming the contract to be void, the purchaser was ignorant of the fact that the vendor was exercising his ordinary calling on the Sunday; the former was therefore entitled to recover the price for breach of warranty). Only one penalty can be incurred in the course of a day (k). In some American cases it has been held that if a master forces a servant to labour on a Sunday it is a good cause for leaving the service (). This would appear to be the case here also. In a Scotch case (m), the House of Lords laid it down that an apprentice to a barber, who was bound not to absent himself from his master's business on holidays or weekdays, late hours or early, without leave, and who went away on Sundays without leave, and without shaving his master's customers, could not be lawfully required to attend his master's shop on Sundays; the ground of the decision was that shaving was not a work of necessity or mercy; and the words of the Scotch statute are wider (n). The Bread Acts of 1822 (o) and 1836 (p) forbid the baking and restrict within certain hours the sale of bread, &c. on Sunday. (k) Crepps v. Durden (1770), 2 Cowp. 640. (1) Coin v. St. Germon Brown, Penn. 24; and Warner v. Smith, 8 Con. 14. (m) Phillips v. Innes (1837), 4 C & F. 234 See, however, Wilson v. Simson (Sc.), 11 July, 1844, where the Court of Session held that a farmer was justified in dismissing without notice a farm labourer, who, when requested by the farmer to remain at home to attend the cattle, which were il, in order that the other servants might go to church, refused so to do. For a review of the English and Americau cases, see Benjamiu on Sale, 5th ed. 546--550. See also Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, ss. 34, 48. (n) See per Channell, J., in Palmer v. Snow, ubi sup., note (c). (0) Sect. 16 applies to radius of ten miles from Exchange. (p) Sect. 14 applies outside ten miles from Exchange. CHAPTER II. Persons em THE EMBEZZLEMENT ACTS. IN consequence of defects in the Common Law with respect to larceny or embezzlement by servants, the Legislature passed, especially before the introduction of the factory system, a number of Acts for the purpose of preventing the embezzlement of materials and tools, and the selling and buying of such embezzled materials, &c. Most of these Acts have been repealed. The more important of the surviving provisions are here set out. 22 GEO. II. c. 27 (1749). An Act for the more effectual preventing of frauds and abuses committed by persons employed in the manufacture of hats, and in the woollen, linnen, fustian, cotton, iron, leather, furr, hemp, flax, mohair and silk manufactures; and for preventing unlawful combinations of journeymen dyers, and journeymen hotpressers, and of all persons employed in the said several manufactures, and for the better payment of their wayes (a). Section 1 recites clauses in Geo. II. c. 8; and proceeds to extend and ployed in the amend the same by enacting that "if any person or persons whatsoever, who manufactures described shall be hired or employed to make any felt or hat, or to prepare or work up being con- any woollen, linnen, fustian, cotton, iron, leather, furr, hemp, flax, mohair, victed of or silk manufactures, or any manufactures made up of wooll, furr, hemp, embezzling, &c. any of flax, cotton, mohair, or silk, or of any of the said materials mixed one with the materials, another, shall from and after the twenty-fourth day of June, one thousand or of reeling seven hundred and forty-nine, purloin, imbezil, secrete, sell, pawn, exchange, false or short or otherwise unlawfully dispose of any of the materials with which he, she, yarn, or they shall be respectively intrusted, whether the same or any part thereof be or be not first wrought, made up, manufactured, or converted into merchantable wares, or shall reel false or short yarn (b), and shall be thereof lawfully convicted, by the oath or (if the owner thereof be of the people called Quakers) solemn affirmation of the owner of such goods or materials, (a) By 6 & 7 Vict. c. 40, so much of the above Act as relates to the woollen, linen, cotton, flax, mohair, and silk manufactures is repealed. Repealed and replaced as to penalties by 17 Geo. III. c. 56, s. 16. So far as it deals with the payment of wages in coin, this Act is repealed by 1 & 2 Will. IV. c. 36. (b) Repealed as to reeling short yarn by 14 Geo. III. c. 44. |