Catalogue description Chancery: Corporation Petitions to Appoint Charitable Trustees

The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 laid down that property held by boroughs for charitable uses was to be administered separately from borough funds. This was done because in recent years the municipal corporation commissioners had discovered evidence of mismanagement and abuse.

The 1835 legislation provided that members of corporate bodies who were also trustees could remain so only until 1 August 1836. If a vacancy occurred among the charitable trustees for any borough before then, the lord chancellor was empowered to appoint a replacement upon petition.

Although this procedure was originally intended only to meet the contingency of a vacancy occurring before August 1836, it seems that because parliament never stated what was to happen after the boroughs had relinquished control of property held by them for charitable uses, all the borough corporations could do when a vacancy arose was to follow the existing procedure and petition the lord chancellor to appoint new trustees.

Not all petitions came from municipal corporations; any interested party could submit a petition and suggest suitable people to be trustees. Whenever the names of new trustees were put forward, the case would be referred to a master in Chancery. He would hear the counsel and solicitors of the petitioners, read affidavits that had been sworn before masters extraordinary, and as necessary call for all books, deeds, papers and writings to do with the case to be laid before him. On this basis he would then decide who should make the best trustees.