Riot Damages Act, 1886 - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition riot-damages-act-1886

Definition :

Riot Damages Act, 1886 (English) (49 &50 Vict. c. 38), providing compensation, out of the police rate, to any person sustaining damage by riot. From very early times (see the repealed acts scheduled to 7 & 8 Geo. 4, c. 27) compensation of some kind for damage by riot was recoverable from 'hundredors' (see HUNDREDORS), and the consolidating Act (7 & 8 Geo. 4, c. 31), regulated the procedure for obtaining the compensation, limiting the title to recover to cases where there had been a felonious demolition of property, and giving no compensa-tion for property stolen. A serious riot occurring in the metropolis on February 8th, 1886, and disclosing insufficiency in the law of compensation led very quickly to the Metropolitan Police Compensation Act, 1886 (49 & 50 Vict. c. 11), applicable to the metropolis only and retrospective, and shortly afterwards to the general Riot Damages Act, 1886, by which (1) the police district is substituted for the hundred as the area liable to compensation; (2) simple demolition is substituted for felonious demolition as giving the right to compensation; (3) compensation is given for stolen property; and (4) infixing the amount of compensa-tion, regard is to be had to the conduct of the claimant, whether as respects precautions taken by him, or the part taken by himself in the riot, or the provocation offered by him to the rioters. The time for sending in claims, and the procedure generally as to claims, is fixed by regulations of a Secretary of State. See the Riot (Claims for Compensation) Regulations dated October 1st, 1921 (No. 1536), which provide that claims shall be made in a specified form and within fourteen days; the time may, however, be extended to forty-two days. As to the elements which must have existed in the disturbance in order to constitute a 'riot' within the meaning of this Act, see Field v. Receiver for Metropolitan Police District, (1907) 2 KB 853.