Catalogue description Board of Trade and successors: Solicitor's Department and successors: Correspondence and Papers

This series contains files of the Board of Trade and its successors concerning the drafting of subordinate legislation, and on litigation and prosecutions arising in relation to the acts, regulations and orders administered by the board and its successors.

Some files concern instructions to law officers and counsel to advise, and their opinions. Many files relate to the period during and immediately after the Second World War, and cover such topics as wartime trade, treaties of peace, consumer rationing and price controls. Other files concern company law, trade descriptions, trademarks, patents and copyright, restrictive trade practices, bankruptcy, liquidation, customs and import duties, employment and industry, industrial development and investment, weights and measures, monopolies and mergers, hallmarking, hire purchase, international trade, consumer protection, tourism, and transport.

A number of files concern proceedings of the Vehicle and General Tribunal, under the Tribunals of Inquiry Act 1921. The Board of Trade solicitor acted as legal advisor to the Export Credits Guarantee Department, and a number of these files are included.

The series also contains indexed volumes of general minute books of the department (1875-1941).

The in-letters of the solicitor to the Board of Trade do not survive before 1910.

From 1969 Board of Trade

Registers and indexes of the department's correspondence (1879-1902) are in BT 19 and BT 23