Friends of Hastings Cemetery
Common Terms Explained
Instructions -
Persons following no particular Profession, Trade or calling, and holding no public office, but deriving their incomes chiefly from land, houses, mine, or other real property, from dividends, interest of money, annuities & etc. may designate themselves "Landed Proprietor," ......"Fundholder"....as the case may be.
The Settlement Act Of 1697 debarred strangers from residing in a parish unless they could produce a settlement certificate showing that they would be taken back by their home parish if they became in need of poor relief; law of settlement (1662) allowed justices to remove any stranger who moved into the parish unless he rented a property valued at least £10. To this end, incomers were subjected to Examinations for Settlement.
Court Directory
Various ‘authorities’ give differing descriptions of the Court Directory found in most street directories, generally up to around the end of the First World War.
- Lists of householders not in commercial section
- In this case a Court Directory is a list of all the householders in the directory not found in the commercial section. Historical directories were divided into two -
the Commercial or trade section and the Court section. These earlier C19th directories were more likely to have included in them residents who were the more well off and might include those with titles. The name court was used here as a piece of snobbery to encourage people to pay to be in the directory with others of their class, implying that some of these people might be the sort of people who would even be seen in royal circles at court. The name Court directory stuck as more ordinary people were included in what was really the residential section of the directories as the C19th wore on and turned into the C20th.
- In the middle of the nineteenth century, the heading for the Court section in directories is usually "Gentry".
- The people listed in the Court section tended to live in large houses and were of independent means or in high-
class jobs: solicitors, bankers, doctors, and vicars were listed here alongside the Lord of the Manor.
- Spinsters and widowed women were listed as gentry if they were the head of the household, but otherwise women were ignored.