Church Doors As Notice Boards

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 201, 30 April 1943, Page 7

Church Doors As Notice Boards

F obsolete laws that serve as reminders of customs in an older world, one that still remains in force in New Zealand is that which requires jury notices to be fixed on church doors. A meeting of J.P.’s in Nelson recently decided to ask the Minister of Justice to have the law amended, and T. E. Maunsell, S.M., who is Chancellor of the Diocese in Nelson, said that the proper place for such notices was the post office, and there was no need to disfigure church doors any longer. The-Listener inquired into the history of this law, and found that the actual wording of it dates back to 1730 When the statute (3 Georgii II,, Chap. 25) said that the list of full names of persons liable and qualified to serve on juries "yearly and every year, twenty days at least before the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, upon two or more Sundays" was to be fixed "upon the door of the Church, Chapel, and every other publick place of religious worship" (within the jury district). In 1841 the English law required that the list should be published in one paper

in the county as well, but in 1861 the clause relating to newspapers was struck out. In 1868, New Zealand adopted most of the English statute of 1825 with this difference, that the notice had to be placed "upon or near the principal outer door." ‘ England abolished jury lists in 1922 and substituted a system of marks to be placed alongside the names in the electors’ roll of people who might have to serve as jurors, The old practice originated at a time when the church porch was the regular meeting-place of the people, and when, according to an Anglican clergyman | whom we asked, church porches were built especially big to accommodate the people who would stand around after the service to exchange their news, Church doors have often been used for other notices-every schoolboy knows about Martin Luther, for instance — and this parson remembered having a_ rating notice on the door of his own church in recent years.