Attorney General v Kell (1840) and Attorney General v Earl of Craven (1856)

Speaker:  Prof. Charles Mitchell, UCL

About the talk

Attorney General v Kell and Attorney General v Earl of Craven both concerned the recovery of misdirected charitable property and the cy-près application of this property once it had been recovered. There were many cases of this kind in the mid 1800s because many trustees during the previous century and more had used trust property for purposes other than trust purposes where these had become redundant. Another point in common between the cases is that both concerned trusts to operate pesthouses, buildings to which sufferers from infectious diseases were isolated from the community. The pesthouse in Craven was for sufferers from plague; that in Kell was for sufferers from smallpox. When the trusts were settled, it was believed that these diseases were spread by poisonous vapours in the air. This theory persisted into the nineteenth century, as a result of which the reasons why epidemic outbreaks began and ended were commonly misunderstood. This made it hard to say if the purposes of the trusts in Kell and Craven had become redundant, so that the cy-près doctrine should apply. This and other legal issues arising in the two cases are discussed following an examination of their social context.

About the speaker

Charles Mitchell KC (Hon) FBA is Professor of Law at UCL. Charles has written extensively on modern trusts law and legal history. His recent publications include ‘Public Trusts, 1750-1850’ in Essays on the History of Equity; ‘Justificanda’ in Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Express Trusts (with Jessica Hudson); and ‘Making Sense of Mesne Profits: Causes of Action and Remedies’ [2021[ CLJ 130 and 552 (with Luke Rostill).

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