§ MR. PICKERSGILL (Bethnal Green, S.W.)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to a charge beard at the Thames Police Court on Thursday last against a rent collector of causing wilful damage to the furniture of a poor family in Stepney, when evidence was given that the defendant, who stripped the prosecutor's room of all its furniture and turned it into the street, was escorted and protected by two policemen, and the Magistrate strongly censured the conduct of the police who, he said, by their presence had lent colour to what was an utter illegality; whether the policemen were acting according to their instructions; and what is the practice of the Metropolitan Police respecting applications made to them by landlords or their agents for assistance in ejecting their tenants without the order of a Court?
§ MR. ASQUITHI have been in communication with the learned Magistrate in reference to this ease. It is the fact that the defendant forcibly ejected the prosecutor as a trespasser when, in the opinion of the Magistrate, he was a tenant, and the proceedings of the defendant were altogether illegal. The defendant applied in the first instance to a policeman to assist him. The policeman did not at once go with him, but, according to what I have since learned, I though no evidence to this effect was before the Magistrate, the policeman soon afterwards, seeing a crowd collected, went to the spot with another policeman with a view to prevent a breach of the peace. The Magistrate tells me that he did not censure the policemen individually, but said that their presence lent colour to the illegal proceedings. In this I agree with him. The general instructions given to the police are silent as to their duty in eases of this kind. In this respect they are defective, and I am taking steps to have them revised. It is no part of the duty of the police to assist an alleged landlord in ejecting an alleged trespasser without process of law.