Records of the Poor Persons Department

Records of the Poor Persons Department relating to early legal aid administration. Files of the department are in J 153

Records of the Committee to Enquire into Poor Persons Rules, 1919, are in LCO 32

In 1916 a Poor Persons Department was set up in the Supreme Court to deal with applications for legal aid by poor persons. The poor persons rules administered by the department rested upon the willingness of barristers and solicitors to undertake the work involved without remuneration. The outbreak of war resulted in a large increase in poor persons petitioning for divorce under the rules and the taxing masters adopted the practice of allowing the payment of solicitors' out-of-pocket expenses in such cases, including in that phrase clerks' time and office overheads.

The voluntary nature of the scheme and the difficulty of poor persons in finding the sums needed to meet their costs resulted in the appointment of a Committee of Inquiry in 1919 under the chairmanship of Mr Justice Lawrence. Following the committee's report in October of that year, new rules were introduced which confined recoverable costs to actual out-of-pocket expenses only.

The Law Society also made an appeal to solicitors throughout the country to enter their names with the Poor Persons Department indicating how many cases they would be prepared to take in the course of a year. By 1922 grave difficulties had arisen in the administration of the scheme due mainly to the unwillingness of solicitors to undertake the necessary work.

To enquire into the difficulties which had arisen a Poor Persons Rules Committee was appointed in 1923, again under the chairmanship of Mr Justice Lawrence. This committee reported in 1925 advocating an entirely different system for assisting poor persons to pursue their civil remedies in the High Court or to defend actions brought against them. In particular, the committee recommended the further decentralisation of matrimonial causes to District Registries and the abolition of the Poor Persons Department.

They also recommended that poor persons' legal aid applications and cases should be taken over by the legal profession under the supervision of the Law Society, which should receive a grant from the government in aid of its expense under the scheme. These proposals were accepted by the government and following the introduction of new rules in 1926 the staff of the Poor Persons Department were finally transferred to the Law Society in 1928.