maken aan het optreden van onbekwame klerken van ingeschreven
attorneys. Voortaan moesten die attorneys hun klerken laten registreren bij
de rechtbank en ook aangeven, wanneer klerken hun dienst verlieten of een
nieuwe werd aangenomen.
In het parlementaire rapport van 1832 werden al deze praktijken bevestigd:
Ven/ often an insolvent, before he goes to gaol, will offer to pay five or six
shillings in the pound; but on taking the benefit of the Act, it is so contrived
that he shows no estate; he afterwards carries on business in another
person's name, and the creditors never get a shilling. The debtor, on his
return home, makes it known that he knows more law than half the
profession, and when his friends find difficulty in meeting their payments,
they apply to him, and he is sure to advise them to go to prison and defraud
their creditors by getting white-washed, as they term it. If his friends were
before honestly disposed, he is sure to make them like himself, delighted in
cheating his creditors, and the evil daily increases; besides in all future
transactions with insolvents, rascalty is invariably observed, the overreaching
system being their whole study and delight.
Extortions of sheriff' officers are often dreadful; and the timidity of
under-sheriffs frequently involves parties in great difficulties and
embarrassments; and I must not omit the shamelessly and cruelly sharp
practice of London attornies, who increase the costs often to a frightful
extent.
The insolvent Acts are worse than Pandora's box. I have known hundreds
of rogues discharged under them, who ought to have been transported
or hanged. These fellows, when they leave prison, commit immens mischief,
by teaching the inexperienced how to go to work to cheat their creditors.
Ook in de jaren 1850 trachtten allerlei lieden als 'attorney' te profiteren van
de law of debtor and creditor. Henry Kay, in Queen's Bench Prison, vertrouwde
zijn zaak toe aan een klerk van Mr.Wallington voor £10. Ter zitting vroeg
Mr.Commissioner Law of Kay ooit Mr.Wallington had gezien, wat niet het geval
was. Mr.Law dacht dat ook, want Mr.Wallington was zelf opgesloten in de
Whitecross-street Prison. In het Court of Aldermen zei Aiderman Lawrence in
1852:
It had been the frequent subject of just complaint that persons not attorneys
were in the habit of prowling about the purlieus of the metropolitan gaols,
preying upon the unfortunate inmates, under the pretence of providing
them with a legal defence.
Dit betoog was een gevolg van correspondentie over een dergelijke
sham-attorney tussen de Secretary of State en magistraten, die een
gevangenis inspecteerden. De correspondentie werd in The Times uitvoerig
gepubliceerd.
Teneinde perk en paal te stellen aan de praktijken van sham-attornies en
agenten in en om de gevangenis, benoemde de Court of Aldermen
Messrs.Clarke and Carter als prison-attorneys voor Whitecross-street Prison om
