A lawyer friend of mine once told me the law is not about seeking truth. It is, quite simply, a set of rules and procedures for resolving disputes. The truth may or may not emerge.
My friend was right. A day in court may or may not get to the bottom of what happened. But court cases have truth value in another way- their records preserve important details about people and the times in which they lived.
This is clearly true of a case heard by West Chester justice of the peace John Graves on May 30th, 1795. One of Graves' neighbors on Walnut Street, Jonah Garret, owned a number of "free-range" pigs. One of them, a sow, dug around the gardens of Turk's Head Tavern. The keeper of the tavern was Mr. John Harper. Harper sought damages against Jonah Garret for the sow's unpermitted foraging.
The loss to Mr. Garret was calculated at 7 shillings. Graves had the sow assessed at 14. He ordered that the pig be sold or slaughtered, and Mr. Harper recompensed accordingly.
John Harper, justice Graves, Jonah Garret, and the pig have long since vanished. But Walnut Street remains. I walked down it last week, imagining a time when money was counted in shillings and the pigs roamed free.
We may think the world was simpler then, but this is an illusion. The municipal problems we face today are certainly ones people in the 18th century couldn't conceive of, but the reverse is also true - I suspect there aren't many residents in the borough these days who are bothered by free-ranging hogs. Life has always been complicated, and courts have existed throughout history to settle disputes in a peaceful fashion. For the historian, they also provide a glimpse of a lost world, with all of its crimes, follies, and misfortunes.
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