Decided 1788 (1788) End date 1788 | Judge(s) sitting Lord Loughborough | |
 | ||
Citation(s) (1788) 1 H Bl 51; 126 ER 32. | ||
Steel v Houghton (1788) 1 H Bl 51; 126 ER 32 is a landmark judgment in English law by the House of Lords that is considered to mark the modern legal understanding of private property rights. Ostensibly the matter found that no person has a right at common law to glean the harvest of a private field, but the judgment has been taken to be a more general precedent for private land matters.
Contents
Background
In early modern England gleaning was an important source of income for labouring families, at a time when many parishes were affected by enclosure and the wholesale transformation of property rights.
Over the harvests of 1785-1787, conflict had been escalating between land owners and gleaners in the village of Timworth, Suffolk. In 1787 Mary Houghton gleaned on the farm of a wealthy land owner, James Steel, who sued for trespass.
Verdict
The court sided with landlords and found against the gleaners' claims, rejecting arguments from Mosaic Law and from the traditional Anglo-Saxon constitution as a basis for the common law. Although precedent was raised by the gleaners that appeared to support gleaning, the court held that this was only to be viewed in the narrowest of terms with conditions, as was legislation which had provision for gleaning (the sections that were discussed dealt only with penalties). The Court held gleaning to be only a ‘privilege’ and not a right; the poor of a parish had no legal right to glean, hence gleaning was trespass.
Lord Loughborough gave the leading judgment of the majority and argued that:
Loughborough's conclusion was that the gleaners' defence was "inconsistent with the nature of property which imports absolute enjoyment".
Criticism
The decision has been criticized on legal grounds for ignoring statute and precedence for an outcome that denied natural justice and has been criticized by Marxist scholars as a decision that was thinly veiled class oppression, particularly citing Loughborough's choice of words.