City of Cambridge v. City of Boston
| Decision Date | 21 February 1881 |
| Citation | 130 Mass. 357 |
| Parties | City of Cambridge v. City of Boston |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Middlesex. Contract for money expended, in December 1879, by the plaintiff, for the relief of Bridget Nolan, a pauper whose settlement was alleged to be in the defendant city. Answer, a general denial. The case was submitted to the Superior Court, and, after judgment for the plaintiff, to this court, on appeal, on agreed facts in substance as follows:
The plaintiff is entitled to recover the amount claimed if Bridget Nolan had a settlement in Boston in December 1879 and January 1880. Upon that question the material facts are as follows: Bridget Nolan married Hugh Nolan on August 11, 1861 in Boston, and they have lived together as husband and wife ever since. They so lived in Boston from May 1864 until June 1871, during which time neither he nor she received aid as a pauper. The husband never has had a settlement in this Commonwealth, nor did Bridget at the time of her marriage have any settlement in this Commonwealth, nor has she ever had a settlement in this Commonwealth, unless, by her residence in Boston as aforesaid, she gained a settlement in that city.
Judgment affirmed.
J. W. Hammond, for the plaintiff.
E. P. Nettleton, for the defendant. 1. In Somerville v. Boston, 120 Mass. 574, the court decided that the St. of 1874, c. 274, § 2, providing that "any woman of the age of twenty-one years, who resides in any place within this State for five years together without receiving relief as a pauper, shall thereby gain a settlement in such place," applied only to unmarried women. The St. of 1878, c. 190, revises the law concerning the settlement of paupers, but makes no change in the law in regard to the settlement of married women. By § 1, cl. 1, "a married woman shall follow and have the settlement of her husband, if he has any within the State; otherwise her own at the time of her marriage, if she then had any, shall not be lost or suspended by the marriage." And cl. 6 is identical with § 2 of c. 274 of the St. of 1874.
The St. of 1879, c. 242, § 2, enacts that the provisions of the St. of 1878, c. 190, § 1, cl. 6, "shall be held to apply to married women who have not a settlement derived by marriage under the provisions of the first clause, and to widows; and a settlement thereunder shall be deemed to have been gained by any unsettled woman upon the completion of the term of residence therein mentioned, although the whole or a part of the same accrues before the passage of the act." Adopting the reasoning In Somerville v. Boston, ubi supra, the term "married women" in the St. of 1879 should be held to apply to those married women who are living apart from their husbands.
2. If the construction contended for by the plaintiff is the true one, then § 2 of c. 242 of the St. of 1879 is unconstitutional. It is not in terms an amendment to cl. 6 of c. 190 of the St. of 1878, but is a command to the courts to hold that the provisions of the sixth clause do apply to married women. although this court has decided that they do not. This is a direct exercise by the Legislature of a power in its nature clearly judicial, and expressly prohibited by the Declaration of Rights, art. 30. Denny v. Mattoon, 2 Allen 361, 377. Forster v. Forster, 129 Mass. 559.
G. Marston, Attorney General, was permitted to file a brief as amicus curioe.
The mode by which relief shall be granted to the suffering poor is wholly a matter of statute regulation, and this is the case whether the relief which is afforded is to be at the cost of the person or corporation which affords it, or whether it is ultimately to be borne by some other person or corporation. It is a matter wholly within the discretion of the Legislature to determine what kindred, if any, shall support indigent persons incapable of supporting themselves and under what circumstances any city or town shall be required to furnish such support, or whether the Commonwealth shall support all or any part of such poor residing...
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Hanscom v. MaLden & Melrose Gaslight Co. (state Report Title: Hanscom v. MaLden & Melrose Gas Light Co.)
...105 Mass. 86; settlements and support of paupers, Somerset v. Dighton, 12 Mass. 383; Com. v. Sudbury, 106 Mass. 268; Cambridge v. Boston, 130 Mass. 357; Abington v. Duxbury, 105 Mass. 287; Worcester v. Barre, 138 Mass. 101; suits against married women as if they were single and exonerating ......
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Hanscom v. Malden & Melrose Gaslight Co.
...v. Finan, 105 Mass. 86; settlements and support of paupers, Somerset v. Dighton, 12 Mass. 383; Com. v. Sudbury, 106 Mass. 268; Cambridge v. Boston, 130 Mass. 357; Abington v. Duxbury, 105 Mass. 287; Worcester v. Barre, 138 Mass. 101; suits against married women as if they were single and ex......
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Town of Brighton v. Town of Charleston
...Instead of birth, it may make residence the test, and determine the length of residence which shall constitute such test. Cambridge v. Boston, 130 Mass. 357. right, as against a state, to the equal protection of the laws, is secured to its municipal corporations by the 14th Amendment to the......
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Town Of Brighton v. Town Of Charleston., 470.
...it may make residence the test, and determine the length of residence which shall constitute such test. City of Cambridge v. Boston, 130 Mass. 357. No right, as against a state, to the equal protection of the laws, is secured to its municipal corporations by the 14th Amendment to the Consti......