HOW AN IRISH LANDLORD ROBBED A WIDOW.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 468, 31 March 1882, Page 20

HOW AN IRISH LANDLORD ROBBED A WIDOW.

ONE of the few cases in which the lease-breaking powers of the Land Commission hav<- been brought into play was in the suit of Honor Kelly tenant, William Griffith, landlord, decided on Saturday, Dec. 24. The case illustrates the horrors of rack-renting in their worst possible form. It seem-i that Mr». Kelly a widow woman, was in the year 1872 in possession of a farm somewhere near Colooney, the landlord being a Captain Griffith. There was no evidence that the woman had a lease, so that in 1872, being a tenant from year to year, in the west country, she was p»ohably paying the full value of the farm for it— namely, £32 15s 6d, being about 16s the Irish acre. In the year 1872 however the landlord" re-valued " the farm, and demanded from the woman, under threat of eviction, the enormous increase of a doubled rent, and also a fine of £150. Poor Honor Kelly had of course no choice, for if she went out of her bit of land she bad only to choose between the poor-house and the emigrant ship bo she paid the £150, consented to pay the big rent, and took the lease. Where Honor Kelly got the £150, how she managed to pay the double rent from 1872 to 1881.are matters which may well excite our astonishment. Some light is thrown on the case by the fact that the farm was taken for Mrs. Kelly by her son, a shopkeeper in Colooney, who has since gone to America. We imagine that in this, as in many other cases, it was the rack-rented farm which ate up the little shop and its modest profits. It may be added, to finish the picture of the case, that the poor woman made considerable improvements in her holding, and that these were valued into the increased rent. The Court did justice by breaking the lease, and Mrs. Kellv is now a present tenant with power to apply to a Sub-commission to have a fair rent fixed for a fifteen years' term. . . . Honor Kelly should get back her £150 and the difference between the increased rent and a fair one, for the last nine years with interest at five per cent. — Freeman's Journal.