ARTHUR HANSEN HAMMOND

The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, on 17 July 1939, allowed an appeal by the head of the matrilineal Kreshie family from the West African Court of Appeal, restoring the Gold Coast Supreme Court’s declaration that St. Janet’s Harbour, High Street, Accra, is family land. Sir G. C. Deane, C.J. had held the plaintiff, as family head, entitled to title and administration; the Court of Appeal dismissed the claim, accepting J. H. W. Randolph’s contention that the property was self-acquired by his female ancestor. Their Lordships, applying Rayner C.J.’s 1898 account of West African customary tenure and Fanti customary law, agreed that individual ownership is foreign to native ideas and that succession is through the female line. The record showed the property was inherited from Kreshie, managed by her daughters Janet Plange and Na Momo and later P. C. Randolph as head, with mortgages and a 1913 reconveyance in a representative capacity. Later “rectification” deeds could not convert family land to personal freehold; Randolph held, at most, as trustee. Two parcels acquired in 1910 were purchased on behalf of Janet Plange’s estate and likewise form part of the family property. The respondents’ proposal to compromise rents precipitated the suit. The appeal was allowed with costs.