Steel v Houghton (1788)
| Steel v Houghton (1788) | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Court | House of Lords |
| Decided | 1788 |
| Citation(s) | (1788) 1 H Bl 51; 126 ER 32. |
| Court membership | |
| Judge(s) sitting | Lord Loughborough |
| Keywords | |
| gleaning property law | |
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.
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.
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.
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