Catalogue description Court of King's Bench: Plea Side: Depositions

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Details of KB 144
Reference: KB 144
Title: Court of King's Bench: Plea Side: Depositions
Description:

A very small series of depositions had by the Court of King's Bench, probably chance survivals.

All the other material to survive from before about 1836 seems to owe its survival to its use in an Irish case of 1838. There is relatively little material before the late 1850s, and most of the items relate to the last 15 years or so before the court became a division of the High Court of Justice in 1875. Depositions taken abroad, especially in connection with shipping matters, are prominent.

An act of 1831 empowered the English courts of law to order the examination of witnesses both within and outside its jurisdiction, and there are many depositions taken under those terms, usually filed with the commission and the interrogatories still attached. The places where depositions were taken include France, South America, the West Indies, India, Canada and Ireland, and often one of the parties to a case is an insurance company. There are relatively few documents, such as newspapers, supporting or illustrating the content of the depositions.

An index referring to the years 1856-1875 can be found in IND 1/6630

Date: 1792-1875
Related material:

Later King's Bench Division depositions are in:

J 16

J 17

Crown Side depositions are in KB 6

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 13 bundle(s)
Selection and destruction information: The fact that most of what has survived comes from the last years of the life of the Court of King's Bench suggests that little systematic effort was made to ensure that the most valuable material was kept, and that what remains does so largely by chance.

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