Occupation: Judge

"jurydyczanie" [singular: "jurydyczanin" legal authority ***** I like to highlight the different occupations of our relatives. On the Raczkiewicz, pretty much all of them were farmers. On the Kaszucki side, there were a few farmers but more townspeople with occupations like furrier, shoemaker, etc. Tomorrow (May 20) I will tell you about the death of imy 4x great grandmother Agnieszka Szczesnicka. Her father Michal was a judge. We know this from her brother Bartlomiej’ wedding record. Based on the records, I am estimating Michal was a judge around 1780--I have no idea for how long. The role of judge changed over time because of the transition from serfdom to ownership of farms by the farme. Also, he would have been a judge after the first of the three partitions(1772) so Austria would have been the occupying country. In the book I read about this job, the author who died in 1932, describes the situation in an area about 85 miles from Tomaszow Lubelski so it should be fairly similar. ***** The manors had authority over the villages. The owner of the manor was the administrator and judge unless he delegated those duties to someone else. The judge would deal with the legal matters and were officials sworn in by the appellate court. Ordinary civil cases such as those dealing with land were handled by the judge. Because the pastures and other land the peasants used belonged to the manor, they had easements which allowed them to use it in return for what they provided to the manor. Therefore, the peasants/farmers would not have ownership disputes, which would come later. ***** “Most of the criminal cases back then involved thieves, and there was no shortage of them in the villages. . . Thieves would steal horses and cattle from the stable and the pasture, or would dig under the granaries and take grain, or even steal bacon, clothing, or coral beads. Whole bands of thieves and robbers frequented the roads and forests, and the thefts were rarely solved.” “ If an accusation was made, he sent a policeman to bring the accused to his office. . . “ “ . . . he ordered the matter settled immediately and restitution made; and that was the end of the matter. . . “ “. . . if the offence in question was minor, the accused would receive several blows with a stick on a bench, without any protocol, and that was that.” In another case, “He received three days in prison, and the judge gave him a harsh scolding, telling him, he had committed a crime, and if it happened again, things would go worse with him.” ***** From: Memoirs of a Peasant: from Serfdom to the Present Day: by Jan Slomka. 1912. Revised 1929. Translation. 2019. Jan Slomka lived 1842 to 1932. Lived in and near Tarnobrzeg (139 km west of Tomaszow Lubelski) It was in the Austrian partition but just a few miles from the border of the Russian partition. Tomaszow was in the Russian partition. Image: Chris Potter, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons