thumb|280px|Doctors' Commons in the early 19th century

Doctors' Commons, also called the College of Civilians, was a society of lawyers practising civil (as opposed to common) law in London, namely ecclesiastical and admiralty law. Like the Inns of Court of the common lawyers, the society had buildings with rooms where its members lived and worked, and a large library.

It was also a lower venue for determinations and hearings, short of the society's convening in the Court of the Arches or Admiralty Court, which frequently consisted of judges with other responsibilities and from which further appeal lay. The society used St Benet's, Paul's Wharf as its church.

The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 created a new divorce court in which regular barristers or doctors of Doctors' Commons could .

The High Court of Admiralty Act 1859 liberalised rights of audience in the Admiralty Court. What remained for Doctors' Commons was only the established church's Court of Arches.

A motion to dissolve the society was entered on 13 January 1858, setting the path towards its final meeting: the end of Trinity Term, 10 July 1865. The fellows, rather than surrender their offices and charter, resolved that its property was to be sold and no appointments to any vacant post could be made. The buildings of Doctors' Commons were sold in 1865 and demolished soon after. The site is now largely occupied by the Faraday Building.

The Court of Arches gave right of audience to barristers in 1867.

The society perished with the death of its last fellow, Tristram, in 1912.

In Victorian literature

Satirical descriptions of Doctors' Commons can be found in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz and in David Copperfield in which Dickens called it a "cosey, dosey, old-fashioned, time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family party."

In the same-era novel The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, the solicitor of Gray's Inn Square Mathew Bruff notes, "I shall perhaps do well if I explain in this place, for the benefit of the few people who don't know it already, that the law allows all wills to be examined at Doctor's Commons by anybody who applies, on payment of a shilling fee."

Doctors' Commons is mentioned anachronistically in the much later short story The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in which Sherlock Holmes apparently obtains some information there about the will of the wife of Dr Grimesby Roylott of Stoke Moran.

See also

  • List of demolished buildings and structures in London

References

Bibliography

  • Description of Doctors' Commons from Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz