On Saturday, December 7, 1811, shortly before midnight, Mr. Marr, a respectable linen draper, closed his shop at 29, Ratcliffe Highway, in Wapping, East London, and with his young assistant began to replace on the shelves the goods which had been displayed for sale during the day. The household consisted of Mr. Marr, his wife and child, the shop-boy and a maidservant. At about twelve o'clock he sent the maid to a nearby shop to buy oysters for supper. She left the door open but on returning she found it closed and rang the bell. She rang again, but there was no reply. Joined by a watchman an hour later, they both rang and knocked until a neighbour, noticing that the yard door was open, leapt over the fence and entered the house. There he saw a terrible scene. Marr and his assistant lay in the shop, dead, with fractured skulls; Mrs. Marr's body was in the passage, also battered about the head, and the child had been murdered in its cradle. The ripping chisel of a ship's carpenter and a maul were found lying near Marr; bloodstains reddened them and spattered the window. No property had been stolen: indeed about one hundred and sixty pounds in cash and notes were found in the house.

In commenting on a decision of the House of Lords, given some fifty years ago, concerning the law relating to unincorporated associations as it affected the Free Church of Scotland, Maitland was provoked to say, “I cannot think that it was a brilliant day in our legal annals when the affairs of the Free Church of Scotland were brought before the House of Lords and the dead hand fell with a resounding slap upon the living body.” It was with a much revitalised hand, however, that the same tribunal, in Bonsor v. Musicians' Union, disturbed the slumbers of that self-same branch of our law, but this time in its application to trade unions. On this occasion, the slap has been described as a blow struck for freedom, and though the ultimate decision is in itself of the first importance, it is perhaps in a consideration of the diverse means employed in reaching that result that the student will find the greatest interest.

Before the coming into force of the 1925 legislation it was possible to state with reasonable certainty the rules for determining which of the assets comprised in a testator's estate could be used for paying general pecuniary legacies and in what order such assets ought to be applied for that purpose. The pecuniary legatee was, in the absence of any indication in the will of a contrary intention, entitled to have his legacy satisfied out of one portion only of the testator's assets, his general personal estate, that is to say, his personalty not specifically bequeathed. It was immaterial whether such personalty was the subject of an effective residuary gift, or was not effectively disposed of by the will: and if the testator had given his residuary personalty in shares and the gift of any share failed, by reason of lapse or otherwise, so that there was an intestacy as to that share, the legacies were still payable out of the whole of the residuary personalty before division, so that the share which was not effectively disposed of bore the burden pari passu with the other share or shares, the gift of which did not fail.