for the benefit of the sick and wounded. To the first-named class belong the state and county fairs, as they are called. Among the first and best-known of these was the “New York World’s Fair,” opened in 1853 by a company formed in 1851. (See Exhibition.)
Law of Fairs.—As no market or fair can be held in England without a royal charter, or right of prescription, so any person establishing a fair without such sanction is liable to be sued under a writ of Quo warranto, by any one to whose property the said market may be injurious. Nor can a fair or market be legally held beyond the time specified in the grant; and by 5 Edward III. c. 5 (1331) a merchant selling goods after the legal expiry of the fair forfeited double their value. To be valid, a sale must take place in “market-overt” (open market); “it will not be binding if it carries with it a presumption of fraudulence.” These regulations satisfied, the sale “transfers a complete property in the thing sold to the vendee; so that however injurious or illegal the title of the vendor may be, yet the vendee’s is good against all men except the king.” (In Scottish law, the claims of the real owner would still remain valid.) However, by 21 Henry VIII. c. 2 (1529) it was enacted that, “if any felon rob or take away money, goods, or chattels, and be indicted and found guilty, or otherwise attainted upon evidence given by the owner or party robbed, or by any other by their procurement, the owner or party robbed shall be restored to his money, goods or chattels,” but only those goods were restored which were specified in the indictment, now could the owner recover from a bona fide purchaser in market-overt who had sold the goods before conviction. For obvious reasons the rules of market-overt were made particularly stringent in the case of horses. Thus, by 2 Philip & Mary c. 7 (1555) and 31 Eliz. c. 12 (1589) no sale of a horse was legal which had not satisfied the following conditions;—Public exposure of the animal for at least an hour between sunrise and sunset; identification of the vendor by the market officer, or guarantee for his honesty by “one sufficient and credible person”; entry of these particulars, together with a description of the animal, and a statement of the price paid for it, in the market officer’s book. Even if his rights should have been violated in spite of all these precautions, the lawful owner could recover, if he claimed within six months, produced witnesses, and tendered the price paid to the vendor. Tolls were not a “necessary incident” of a fair—i.e. they were illegal unless specially granted in the patent, or recognized by custom. As a rule, they were paid only by the vendee, and to the market clerk, whose record of the payment was an attestation to the genuineness of the purchase. By 2 & 3 Philip & Mary c. 7 every lord of a fair entitled to exact tolls was bound to appoint a clerk to collect and enter them. It was also this functionary’s business to test measures and weights. Tolls, again, are sometimes held to include “stallage” and “picage,” which mean respectively the price for permission to erect stalls and to dig holes for posts in the market grounds. But toll proper belongs to the lord of the market, whereas the other two are usually regarded as the property of the lord of the soil. The law also provided that stallage might be levied on any house situated in the vicinity of a market, and kept open for business during the legal term of the said market. Among modern statutes, one of the chief is the Markets and Fairs Clauses Act 1847, the chief purpose of which was to consolidate previous measures. By the act no proprietors of a new market were permitted to let stallages, take tolls, or in any way open their ground for business, until two justices of the peace certified to the completion of the fair or market. After the opening of the place for public use, no person other than a licensed hawker may sell anywhere within the borough, his own house or shop excepted, any articles in respect of which tolls are legally exigible in the market. A breach of this provision entails a penalty of forty shillings. Vendors of unwholesome meat are liable to a penalty of £5 for each offence; and the “inspectors of provisions” have full liberty to seize the goods and institute proceedings against the owners. They may also enter “at all times of the day, with or without assistance,” the slaughter-house which the undertaker of the market may, by the special act, have been empowered to construct. For general sanitary reasons, persons are prohibited from killing animals anywhere except in these slaughter-houses. Again, by the Fairs Act 1873, times of holding fairs are determined by the secretary of state; while the Fairs Act 1871 empowers him to abolish any fair on the representation of the magistrate and with the consent of the owner. The preamble of the act states that many fairs held in England and Wales are both unnecessary and productive of “grievous immorality.”
The Fair Courts.—The piepowder courts, the lowest but most expeditious courts of justice in the kingdom, as Chitty calls them, were very ancient. The Conqueror’s law De Emporiis shows their pre-existence in Normandy. Their name was derived from pied poudreux, i.e. “dusty-foot.”[1] The lord of the fair or his representative was the presiding judge, and usually he was assisted by a jury of traders chosen on the spot. Their jurisdiction was limited by the legal time and precincts of the fair, and to disputes about contracts, “slander of wares,” attestations, the preservation of order, &c.
Authorities.—See Herbert Spencer’s Descriptive Sociology (1873), especially the columns and paragraphs on “Distribution”; Prescott’s History of Mexico, for descriptions of fairs under the Aztecs; Giles Jacob’s Law Dictionary (London, 1809); Joseph Chitty’s Treatise on the Law of Commerce and Manufactures, vol. ii. chap. 9 (London, 1824); Holinshed’s and Grafton’s Chronicles, for lists, &c. , of English fairs; Meyer’s Das grosse Conversations-Lexicon (1852), under “Messen”; article “Foire” in Larousse’s Dictionnaire universelle du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1866–1874), and its references to past authorities; and especially, the second volume, commercial series, of the Encyclopédie méthodique (Paris, 1783); M’Culloch’s Dictionary of Commerce (1869–1871); Wharton’s History of English Poetry, pp. 185, 186 of edition of 1870 (London, Murray & Son), for a description of the Winchester Fair, &c. ; a note by Professor Henry Morley in p. 498, vol. vii. Notes and Queries, second series; the same author’s unique History of the Fair of St Bartholomew (London, 1859); Wharton’s Law Lexicon (Will’s edition, London, 1876); P. Huvelin’s Essai historique sur le droit des marchés et des foires (Paris, 1897); Report of the Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, vols. i. (1889), xiv. (1891); Final Report (1891); Walford’s Fairs, Past and Present (1883); The Law relating to Markets and Fairs, by Pease and Chitty (London, 1899). (J. Ma.; Ev. C.*)
FAIRBAIRN, ANDREW MARTIN (1838– ), British Nonconformist
divine, was born near Edinburgh on the 4th of
November 1838. He was educated at the universities of Edinburgh
and Berlin, and at the Evangelical Union Theological
Academy in Glasgow. He entered the Congregational ministry
and held pastorates at Bathgate, West Lothian and at Aberdeen.
From 1877 to 1886 he was principal of Airedale College, Bradford,
a post which he gave up to become the first principal of Mansfield
College, Oxford. In the transference to Oxford under that name
of Spring Hill College, Birmingham, he took a considerable part,
and he has exercised influence not only over generations of his
own students, but also over a large number of undergraduates
in the university generally. He was granted the degree of M.A.
by a decree of Convocation, and in 1903 received the honorary
degree of doctor of literature. He was also given the degrees of
doctor of divinity of Edinburgh and Yale, and doctor of laws
of Aberdeen. His activities were not limited to his college work.
He delivered the Muir lectures at Edinburgh University (1878–1882),
the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen (1892–1894), the Lyman
Beecher lectures at Yale (1891–1892), and the Haskell lectures
in India (1898–1899). He was a member of the Royal Commission
of Secondary Education in 1894–1895, and of the Royal
Commission on the Endowments of the Welsh Church in 1906. In
1883 he was chairman of the Congregational Union of England
and Wales. He is a prolific writer on theological subjects. He
resigned his position at Mansfield College in the spring of 1909.
Among his works are:—Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History (1876); Studies in the Life of Christ (1881); Religion in History and in Modern Life (1884; rev. 1893); Christ in Modern Theology (1893); Christ in the Centuries (1893); Catholicism Roman and Anglican (1899); Philosophy of the Christian Religion (1902); Studies in Religion and Theology (1909).
FAIRBAIRN, SIR WILLIAM, Bart. (1789–1874), Scottish
engineer, was born on the 19th of February 1789 at Kelso,
Roxburghshire, where his father was a farm-bailiff. In 1803
he obtained work at three shillings a week as a mason’s labourer
on the bridge then being built by John Rennie at Kelso; but
within a few days he was incapacitated by an accident. Later
in the same year, his father having been appointed steward on a
farm connected with Percy Main Colliery near North Shields,
he obtained employment as a carter in connexion with the
colliery. In March 1804 he was bound an apprentice to a millwright
at Percy Main, and then found time to supplement the
deficiencies of his early education by systematic private study.
It was at Percy Main that he made the acquaintance of George
Stephenson, who then had charge of an engine at a neighbouring
colliery. For some years subsequent to the expiry of his apprenticeship
in 1811, he lived a somewhat roving life, seldom remaining
long in one place and often reduced to very hard straits before
he got employment. But in 1817 he entered into partnership
with a shopmate, James Lillie, with whose aid he hired an old
shed in High Street, Manchester, where he set up a lathe and
began business. The firm quickly secured a good reputation,
- ↑ In Med. Lat. pede-pulverosus meant an itinerant merchant or pedlar. In Scots borough law “marchand travelland” and “dusty fute” are identical.
