CO885-9 — Page 436

Printed for the use of the Colonial Office.

Miscellaneous

No. 179.

Confidential.

Supplementary Memorandum on Prædial Larceny.

The print "Miscellaneous No. 135" deals with correspondence on the subject

of Prædial Larceny down to the end of 1900. This memorandum" is written in continuation.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

5

19

mimimmim

Reference :-

C.O. 885/

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

QPUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

31168/01. 31169/01.

Jamaica

Prædial

Larceny Law of 1901.

In August 1901, the Governor of Jamaica sent home a new Prædial Larceny Law, a new Produce Protection Law, and a draft of a new Vagrancy Law.

The Prædial Larceny Law made a sentence of flogging (up to a maximum of 24 strokes) permissible for a first offence and compulsory for à second offence. But the magistrate need not Section 7. order flogging for a second offence if committed more than three years after the first offence; and he might postpone the flogging for 14 days in order to enable him to communicate with the Governor and obtain his permission to remit it. Section 2. Section 2 empowered the Jamaica Agricultural Society and Local Agricultural Societies affiliated thereto to appoint "authorized persons who were given the power of arresting suspects; any such appointment was to be subject to revocation Section 3. by the Governor. Section 3 enabled a Justice of the Peace or Clerk of the Courts to order the detention for not more than seven days of a suspected person, "after enquiry which need not necessarily be on oath " until the next convenient sitting of the Resident Magistrate for the Parish. Section 4 threw the burden of proof of lawful possession of articles suspected to be stolen upon the accused.

Section 4.

Jamaica Produce Protection Law of 1901. Section 2.

The Produce Protection Law (15 of 1901) raised the fee for a license to deal in agricultural produce from 4s. (the amount fixed by Law 30 of 1898) to £1 (the amount originally fixed by Law 30 of 1896). Section 10 cast upon any Section 10. person purchasing, without a license, produce for dealing in which a license was required, the burden of proving that he purchased such produce for private consumption and with no intention of dealing therein. The remaining sections were intended to make the machinery of the existing law more efficient.

Jamaica Vagrancy

Bill.

The Vagrancy Bill practically assimilated the law of the Colony on this subject to the law of England.

50 G611 Wt 91483 9/08 D&S 20952

A