The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1876-03-07 00:00:00

THE CORPORATIONS OF WAREHAM AND
CORM CASTLE.

Sir Charles Mike on Tuesday night entertained the
House of Commons by describing the neglected local
administrations which he alleges still survive in England.
Ile was listened to throughout with marked attention and
interest ; he fairly won over his hearers to his views, and
secured the support of the Government. Referring to the
Corporations of Dorset he said : —The borough of Wareham
returned its income in 1K.15 at .C4O, which was received by
the mayor without account, and the commissioners
reported that it was mostly spent on the annual dinner,
which raged from three in the afternoon till eleven at
night. The corporation licensed public-houses, and three
brewers were members of the corporation in consequence
of which there were twenty public-houses in the tiny
town, being in the proportion of seven to the thousand of
the population, while the average in the small towns of
the West of England was one to a thousand. The borough
of Code Castle was one of the oddest in the world. The
corponition consisted of one member only, the present
mayor. It had large charities under its jurisdiction, and
the magistrates exercised criminal jurisdiction by charter'
but sr the mayor was the only magistrate he had to send
into the county whenever a second justice was required.
Sometimes the policeman had to go 30 miles before he
could find a second magistrate to sit with Mr. John
Johnson, the grocer and draper. There ought to be eight
barons of Code Castle? but no one in the borough ever
heard of such a functionary. Mr. Johnson, the grocer
and mayor, apparently held frequent meetings of the
corporation with himself, and he claimed to be the
licensing authority. In 1835 the borough was one of the
two—the other being New Romney—which refused all
Information to the commissioners and to Parliament The
lord of the manor, who also had certain jurisdiction, was
Lord High Admiral of the Isle of Purbeck, and the warlike
office Was held now by an inoffensive clergyman, who had
power to call up all the population for military service,
and all his shores were exempt from Admiralty juris-
diction. In June last year the hon. menther for Penryn
applied for a QUO scarranto against the mayor of Code
Castle to show cause why he assumed to grant licenses
for ale-houses. Ilia worship made no reply, and the
judges holding that it must be presumed he had the right
until the contrary was proved, the learned gentleman was
unable to go on with the case, and the quo warrant° was
unimously refused by four judges. The mayor, therefore,
exercised his jurisdiction 'till Six cuts which appeared
In a comic paper last year were regarded by him tatT;
a wholly exaggerated caricature ;`but they were a literally
truthful representation of the corporation of Corte Castle.
The cuts represented—i. Our mayor; 2. Our grocer; 3.
The gentlemen who elect our mayor' 4. The gentleman
who disposes of our yoblic trusts ; 5. The gentleman who
benefits by our public trusts; 8. The corumittee appointed
annually to look into the accounts of the gentleman who
disposes of our public trusts. All these six were one
gentleman in different costumes, front the apron of the
grocer to the velvet robes and chain of the mayor; and in
order that there might be no doubt of the identity of the
gentleman he was in each cut represented with a large
wart on his nosie—(lsughter). A matter which had been
perplexing bins was what happened when a Mayor of
Code Castle died. We all knew the diflieulties which
occurred in Chinese Tartary when a grand Llama ceased to
exist. It was found necessary to conceal the facts of the
death, and to bring forth limn the seclusion of the palace
some youth who had been captured for the purpose when
achild. Ile fancied that this must be the system adopted
at ('side Castle in the case of the dynasty of Johnson—
(laughter.)