By Fiona Fitzsimons
The courts of petty sessions were the lowest courts in the land. They developed independently of manor courts, which they eventually replaced. Petty sessions evolved from the exercise of summary jurisdiction by justices outside the quarter sessions. They heard criminal and civil matters, gave summary verdicts on lesser cases and referred more serious ones to the assizes courts, streamlining the judicial process.
By the late eighteenth century, petty sessions sat routinely in almost every district in Ireland. Even so, these courts weren’t formally established in law until 1827. In that year the Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act directed grand juries for the first time to define districts within their counties; instructed county councils (after 1898) to fix dates for regular court sessions, and to provide and maintain courthouses in every district; and required two local justices from the county and a clerk to preside over every session.
Local justices were recruited from the ranks of landed proprietors, most of whom had no legal training or qualifications. With nothing to guide them but their own common sense—a commodity then, as now, in short supply—the Act widened access to the law but lowered the standards of justice dispensed. The State tried to raise the bar, appointing trained resident magistrates to sit alongside justices of the peace.
The position of clerk was sought-after, and in some families was even passed on almost as a hereditary office. Clerks sat in front of the justices and were responsible for administration, for collecting payments and fines and for paperwork. The Petty Sessions (Ireland) Act (1851) introduced compulsory record-keeping. The greater part of the collection dates from 1852 to the 1920s. The Petty Sessions Clerk (Ireland) Act (1858) further defined the tenure, office and duties of the clerks.
The business of the courts was judicial and administrative; the justices heard all minor offences in the district. Their administrative work overlapped with local government; they issued licences for everything from public houses to fishing, keeping dogs, endorsing pedlars and stocking gunpowder and explosives; they licensed general and second-hand dealers; they appointed bailiffs to enforce licensing laws; and they collected fees and fines where laws were breached. The courts of petty sessions were popular because they reduced costs and improved access to the law. In 1924 in the Irish Free State they were replaced by district courts; in Northern Ireland they were renamed magistrates’ courts.
The records of the courts of petty sessions provide a real window onto the past. The most common types of cases were agricultural and domestic workers suing for unpaid wages. Farmers might be fined for letting their animals wander, or for not painting their name in English on the side of their cart. Political feelings were often volatile, and you will find cases all over the country of people charged for handling ‘seditious’ literature—even as innocuous as posting notices of meetings, distributing leaflets about land reform or having sheet music as Gaeilge.
We also see the underside of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland. Poverty was endemic; we find cases of children and adults before the courts for begging and vagrancy. These contemporary records document what was happening at grass-roots level in every district, no matter how remote. We find evidence of children and young people mitching school, robbing orchards, throwing snowballs in winter, playing hurling and cricket in the street year round, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Dog licences are a subset of the petty sessions records. Comedy value aside, dog licences are a useful census substitute, to trace how long someone remained in a district.
Fiona Fitzsimons is a director of Eneclann, a Trinity campus company, and of findmypast Ireland.