To shew Dickens’ care in collecting his facts the following report of a case relating to Yorkshire Schools is of interest. It was supplied to the author by C. S. Kenny, Esq., Downing Professor of the Laws of England, Cambridge.
Chapter II. The Relevancy of Evidence
[Evidence must be confined to the points in issue.]
BOLDRON v. WIDDOWS
Westminster N. P. Sittings. 1824.
1 Carrington and Payne 65.
This was an action for defamation. The declaration stated that the plaintiff kept a school, and had divers scholars; and that the defendant spoke of him in his business of a schoolmaster certain words there set out. The words were variously laid in different counts; but they were, in substance, that the scholars were ill fed, and badly lodged, had had the itch, and were full of vermin. Some of the counts laid the loss of certain scholars as special damage. Pleas—the general issue; and justifications, that the whole of the words were true.
For the plaintiff, several witnesses proved the speaking of the words, and that the boys were boarded, educated, and clothed, by the plaintiff, at £20 a year each, near Richmond in Yorkshire: and the usher of the school was called to prove that the boys were well fed and well lodged, and had no itch. In his cross-examination it appeared that there were between eighty and ninety boys; that about seventy of them had had a cutaneous disease; and that they all slept in three rooms close to the roof, with no ceiling; and that there was a general combing of the heads of the whole school every morning over a pewter dish, and that the vermin combed out were thrown into the yard; no boy was free from them. A piece of bread of a perfectly black hue was shewn him: he did not think the bread in the school so black as that.
The witness having stated that he had himself been at the Appleby grammar-school, the plaintiff’s counsel wished to ask him what was the quality of the provisions used by the plaintiff’s school, compared with those consumed by the Appleby grammar-school.
The defendant’s counsel objected to this.