ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nature of feeble remedies and the development of the laws relating to small debts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The legal machinery which catered for small debt disputes at the end of the eighteenth century was totally inadequate. In addition to the county courts, there were other inferior courts which dealt with small debt cases in the first half of the nineteenth century. The original model for the courts of request was that established as early as 1518 at the Guildhall to try small debt cases quickly and cheaply, by eliminating attorneys, stamp duties, written pleadings and appeal. The inadequacies of the small debt courts were apparent to all at the start of the nineteenth century, but, as with bankruptcy and insolvency, the problem of devising a viable alternative took a long time to solve.
