Town - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition town

Definition :

Town, denotes the existence of houses in close proximity, concentration of a large number of people in a comparatively small area, engagement of a bulk of the population in non-agricultural activities, Baliat Sheikh v. State of West Bengal, AIR 1952 Cal 753; State v. Jagdish B. Rao, AIR 1970 Goa, Daman and Diu 54.

Town, is an assemblage of buildings, public or private larger than a village and having more complete and independent local government, AIR 1970 Goa 54 (55). (Police Act, 1861, s. 34)

1. A center of population that is larger and more fully developed then a village, but that is not incorporated as a city

2. The territory within which this population lives, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn.

Ville [fr. tun, Sax.], a tithing or vill; any collection of houses larger than a village. A place 'cannot be a towne in law, unlesse it hath, or in time pasthath had, a church, and celebration of divine service, sacraments, and burials' (Co. Litt. 115 b). 'And it appeareth by Littleton, that a towne is the genus, and a borough is the species; for hee saith that every borough is a towne, but every towne is not a borough' (ibid.). In London and South Western Ry. Co. v. Blackmore, (1879) LR 4 HL 611, it was said that where there is such a continuous occupancy of houses that persons living in them may be said to be living in the same town, there the place may be said to be a town. Town, for the purposes of the Licensing Consolidation Act, 1910 (10 Edw. 7 & 1 Geo. 5, c. 24), and see Sch. VI., is a borough or urban district with at least 1,000 inhabitants and any adjacent collection of houses so declared by order