References: [1808] EngR 211, (1808) 9 East 487, (1808) 103 ER 659
Links: Commonlii
The departure of a trader from his dwellinghouse, with intent to delay his creditors, is an act of bankruptcy, though no creditor be thereby in fact delayed. And the words in the stat. 1 Jac 1 e15 s2 following this and other acts of bankruptcy committed, viz. ‘to the intent or whereby his creditors shall or may be defeated or delayed,” &e. are to be read ‘to the intent his creditors shall, or whereby, (or that thereby) they may be defeated,’ &e. But the lying in prison six months upon an arrest is made a substantive act of bankruptcy independent of any intent of the trader. So in the case of an act of bankruptcy by the trader’s beginning to keep house, the denial of a creditor is usually given in evidence, not to shew the fact of the creditor’s being, delayed, but as evidence to explain the equivocal act of the trader’s keeping in his house, and to shew that he began to keep house with intent to delay his creditors.
