“HOME COMFORTS.”

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 63, 26 December 1935, Page 8

“HOME COMFORTS.”

JUDGE AND LANDLADIES. Judgments affecting seaside landladies and boarding-house keepers Avere given bv Judge H. L. Beazley at Southend Comity Court, England, when lie found that two landladies Avere not entitled to succeed on claims for breach of contract because the accommodation they provided Avas not reasonable. (Defending one action brought against him by the proprietress of a hoardinghouse at. Westeliff. Sidney Phillips, commercial traveller, of Cardiff, stated that he engaged a room for himself and another for his mother and tAvo sisters, at four guineas a week per person. They did not stay because they were {ilissatisficd Avith the place. Mr Phillips asserted that there Avas a lack of cleanliness about the rooms, and that when he remarked to the landlady* that there was no bathroom, she said, “You can go across there,” pointing to the sea. There Avas only one jug and one basin in the room allotted to the Avcmen.

It transpired that the advertisement which led Mr Phillips to inquire about the rooms in the first instance contained the-.words, “Home comforts”; and it Avas stated that there were about 20 people at the house. Judge Beaszley remarked that he Avas no tdisposed to translate “Homo comforts,” -Avhich might mean anything, •hut lie held that there Avas an implied term in every contract of this nature that reasonable, decent and proper accommodation should be provided. The decisive factor in the case Avas that there were 20 people in the house, but there was not even a bathroom to he exclusively used as such, because in it there was a camp bed, where apparently some mad Avas sleeping at night. In the other room, in Avhich Mrs Florence Raive, of Highgatc, was the defendant —she Avas sued by another landlady—it was stated that rooms wore engaged for a fortnight, hut Avere vacated at tlie end of a week. Mrs Rawc also alleged that tlie accommodation provided Avas not clean, and said she and the children had to wait a long time for their. breakfast. She also complained that the food was insufficient. Giving judgment for Mrs RaAve, Judge Beazley said she Avas justified in not staying a second Aveek. Nothing would persuade him to hold that there was not an implied term in the contract that things should he, not spotlessly clean, but reasonably and adequately clean.