We have seen that Anguilla’s 368-year old judicial system has evolved through three distinct phases:
1. The Period Before Union with St Kitts in 1825
2. The Period of Union with St Kitts
3. The 1967 Anguilla Revolution to Today
Last week, we looked at the period from settlement in 1650 until union with St Kitts in 1825. This week, we look at the second stage of the development of Anguilla’s court system. This is the period from union with St Kitts in 1825 to the Anguilla Revolution of 1967.
2. From Union with St Kitts Until the 1967 Anguilla Revolution of 1967
Last week, we looked at the period from settlement in 1650 until union with St Kitts in 1825. This week, we look at the second stage of the development of Anguilla’s court system. This is the period from union with St Kitts in 1825 to the Anguilla Revolution of 1967.
In the year 1825, prolonged drought; regular hurricanes; and the long wars with the USA and France, which ended only in 1815, combined to bring the Anguilla planters to their knees. The British blockade of trade with the enemy during the preceding 30 years devastated the vital Anguillian privateering and smuggling industries, while the alternating periods of droughts and hurricanes destroyed the small-stock, crops and homes of the islanders. The law suits in the island’s unofficial courts after 1780, traces of which have survived in the archives, demonstrate in a practical way just how the economy had collapsed. The sums being sued for declined from hundreds of pounds before the American Revolution of 1776 to just a few shillings and pence in the fifty years before Anguilla was joined to St Kitts.
Their economy having collapsed, the Anguillians submitted to pressure from London to be governed by St Kitts. London’s main interest in the union, as evidenced in the correspondence of the Secretary of State with the Governor-in-Chief in Antigua in the early part of the 19th century, was to have some form of law-making power that would apply law to the Anguillians, particularly the existing slavery amelioration laws and the coming Abolition of Slavery Act.
In 1825 the St Kitts Legislative Assembly, under pressure from London, passed the Anguilla Act to provide for its laws to extend to Anguilla. Anguillian planters who met the voting qualification (ownership of 100 acres of land) elected one representative to the St Kitts and Anguilla Assembly. In this way, in the year 1834, the Slavery Abolition Act of St Kitts was effective to bring an end to slavery in Anguilla.
From 1825 Anguilla began to share the judiciary of St Kitts. The Chief Justice of St Kitts and Anguilla, under the authority of a Writ of Assizes issued by the governor, visited Anguilla at intervals to conduct the Court of Oyez and Terminez for the trial of criminal cases. All previous trials between 1650 and 1825 had been completely unauthorised by any similar enactment or other formal law or legal system.
The first Courthouse on Anguilla appears to have been deputy governor Benjamin Gumbs’ house on the top of Crocus Hill, turned over to public use after his death. There is no surviving record of how this came to be. The little complex of out-buildings around the main house served as the Customs House, Post Office and Police Station. It was for some 150 years the administrative centre of the island. It was approached from South Hill and North Hill villages and the west via the public footpath from North Hill. It passed down into Katouche Bay Valley and up the public path to the Valley where the road leading to the Masara Resort now runs. The Old Courthouse was ideally located, as Crocus Bay, the main port of entry, lay to the west at the foot of the hill, while the town of The Valley lay immediately to the east. When the Chief Justice visited Anguilla from St Kitts, the main building of the complex served as the Courthouse. Living accommodation for the visiting Judge was problematic. For at least the first 50 years after 1825, the visiting Judges complained to the lieutenant governor in St Kitts that, as there was no guest-house in Anguilla, they were forced to spend their nights on board the schooner in the harbour.
Presiding at the first sittings of the Court Oyez and Terminez, and later of the Court of Kings Bench, to hear criminal and civil cases in Anguilla was Richard Williams Pickwood, CJ of St Kitts and Anguilla, and Anguilla’s first High Court Judge. Joining him on the bench at the Courthouse were two Assistant Justices, who acted as assessors of the facts. A minute of their proceedings in criminal matters for several years is preserved in the records held in the Archives in Basseterre, St Kitts, and at Kew Gardens in London.
After 1825, Anguilla’s legal and judicial system evolved in tandem with that of St Kitts, and the colony was now officially titled “St Christopher and Anguilla.” Significantly, in 1882, when the Council and Assembly of Nevis were dissolved, and Nevis joined to create a three-island colony, it was, from then until 1967, officially known as the “Colony of St Christopher and Nevis”. The name of Anguilla was dropped, until briefly added to the 1967 Associated State.
With the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1834, Special Magistrates appointed by St Kitts were stationed in Anguilla to oversee the Apprenticeship Period which lasted until 1838. After 1838, and until 1882, the Magistrates of Anguilla were usually professional lawyers who were appointed as Stipendiary Magistrates, meaning they got paid. The first on record was Thomas Egar (who served 1835-1841). He was followed by other qualified lawyers who doubled as the St Kitts-appointed local administrator for Anguilla. The most famous and long-lasting was Chief Justice Pickwood’s son, Robert William Pickwood, who served for 20 years from 1842-1862. He was so dedicated to his duties in Anguilla and so well-respected by everyone that, when he died in St Martin, the funeral that the French gave him was described in the official correspondence as almost a state funeral.
The old Courthouse with its out-buildings stood from the mid-1700s, when it was first built, until 1 September 1950, when Hurricane Dog hit the island. This hurricane completely destroyed the wooden structure, leaving only the stone foundations remaining. The masonry basement, including the cellar which served as the prison cell while Court was in session, can still be seen there. The ruins are overshadowed by two large, ugly, black Rubbermaid water storage tanks and two equally large and ugly radio aerials raised in the Courthouse yard. Goats, mimosa and Flamboyant trees and strangler fig compete to see which can be first to totally destroy the abandoned remains.
In the years after 1950 when Hurricane Dog destroyed Governor Benjamin Gumbs’ old Courthouse building, temporary quarters were found in a private home opposite the present Comprehensive School. The original wooden building has now been replaced with a modern concrete structure, occupied by NAGICO across from the High School.
It was only in the year 1964 that the St Kitts government built a new Courthouse for Anguilla. Wallace Rey was appointed to head Anguilla’s public works after he retired from the US Air Force Base in Antigua where he had found employment at the start of World War II. Wallace Rey designed and built the new Court building. Its reinforced-concrete transverse arches that reach up from the foundations, and go up and over the roof to descend on the other side, made it one of the most imposing structures at the time on the island. Its design reflects that of St Mary’s Anglican Church, which he also designed and built around the same time.
Wallace Rey’s 1964 building served, at first, only the Magistrate and the occasional visiting High Court Judge. Later, it was to also house the Anguilla House of Assembly, and the Court of Appeal. These all shared the one-room premises without difficulty, since when the High Court Judge or the Court of Appeal visited, no other Court or the Assembly sat. The Magistrate doubled as Registrar of the Supreme Court.
Among the hats the Magistrate of Anguilla wore at that time were Registrar of the Supreme Court; Coroner; Registrar General of Births Deaths and Marriages; Registrar of Companies, Trade Marks, Patents, Co-operative Societies, Credit Unions, Friendly Societies, Newspapers, and Trades Unions; Secretary to the Medical Board; and Island Archivist. That explains why, when the Registry of the Supreme Court and the Registry of Companies were hived off in the 1990s, the Magistrate remained head of the Judicial Department. This was the system in place which I met when I was appointed Magistrate of Anguilla and Registrar of the Supreme Court in August 1976. At that time, and for the next several years, the only lawyers in the public service were the Attorney-General and the Magistrate. The first Crown Counsel to assist the Attorney-General, Kurt Defreitas, was appointed in the late 1980s. As for Wallace Rey’s building in which I served as Magistrate and Registrar, it is no longer a Courthouse. It presently serves as the offices of the Statistics Department.
The short-lived West Indies Federation broke up in 1961 when Jamaica chose to go into independence rather than stay tied to the smaller islands. Trinidad and Barbados left shortly after, and the Federation was dissolved. By the year 1967, the individual colonies of the Leeward and Windward Islands were themselves headed to independence. They first entered into the intermediate status of ‘Associated Statehoodship’ with Great Britain. The old, separate Supreme Courts of the Leeward Islands and that of the Windward Islands, re-established after the collapse of the Federation in 1961, were merged into the new ‘West Indies Associated States Supreme Court’.
Next week, we conclude this series of three articles on the history and evolution of the court system of Anguilla by looking at the 51-year period, from the Anguilla Revolution of 1967 to today.
