3-071-223 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Working of the Land Court in Ireland: Sub-Commissioners examining a farm, 1881. 'The commissioners testing the soil; [?] the only cattle on the farm; the Land Surveyor; the Sub-commissioners on their round of inspection; Evidence for the Petitioner...The Sub-Commissioners of the Land Court, in the several provinces of Ireland, having to decide upon the tenants' application for the fixing of judicial rents, find it needful, in many cases, to make a personal inspection of the farms. A page of Sketches presented by us this week shows the scenes that frequently take place on these occasions, when the three official gentlemen, one of them probably a lawyer, the other two experienced land-agents or practical agriculturists, walk over the fields, accompanied by the tenant, his solicitor, and other friends, and by the landlord's agent or solicitor, with a guard of armed constables, scrambling over walls and ditches, and sometimes up to the ankles in bog and mire. The depth of soil has to be tested, in the Sub-Commissioners' presence, by turning it up with the shovel; for it will not do to rely upon the evidence of Irish witnesses on either side'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.