BUILDING: Borders v. Builders

Financed by popular subscription under Government blessing, Britain’s 1,000-odd building societies, today with assets totaling £750,000,000, build and sell houses, taking mortgages from purchasers for up to 90% of the cost of each house. Since they played a big part in the building boom which jerked England out of Depression, they have been held up as something for the U. S. to imitate. They have also been mopped up in court—by enterprising Elsy Florence Eva Borders, sharp-nosed, bright-eyed wife of a London cabby.

In March 1934, Mrs. Borders and her husband, Jim, bought a house on Coney-hall Estate, twelve miles from Charing Cross. To the Bradford Third Equitable Building Society they paid £37 cash, signed a mortgage for the remaining £693. The building society as usual paid only £650 to the builders, keeping the rest as part of a pool to pay losses from defaulted mortgages.

Hardly were the Borders installed when they noticed cracks in the ceiling, squeaks in the floors. Soon plaster began to fall, dampness oozed through the walls, the roof sagged and leaked. While the Borders grumblingly met their monthly £4/45. ($21) payments, Elsy busied herself helping form a Federation of Tenants’ and Residents’ Association, which now has 45 branches and membership of 45,000.

Last year Elsy began withholding mortgage payments, and after three months the Bradford Society brought a claim against her. Elsy cracked back with a claim of £500, charging misrepresentation of the value of the house, and questioning the legality of holding back part of the cost in a pool while at the same time charging interest on the full amount.

Too poor to hire a lawyer, determined Elsy Borders spent several months reading law in the London School of Economics, handled the case herself. For 18 days the court was packed with crowds who came to see the “Tenants’ K.C.” in action. Last month the judge dismissed both actions, thus giving Elsy clear title to her house without any more payments but defeating her challenge of building-society operations.

Since then, 500 of her neighbors have intentionally defaulted, fire-eating Ellen Wilkinson M.P. has introduced a bill in Parliament to reshape the Building Society Acts and the Federation of Tenants’ and

Residents’ Association has prepared writs against 24 “jerry” building societies, including Halifax and Abbey Road, the two biggest in England. Last week, therefore, when the “Tenants’ K.C.” returned to court with a libel suit of her husband against, the building-society lawyers for calling him a “bad egg,” Norman Birkett K.C. was there to meet her.

Pince-nezzed Norman Birkett, who got Wallis Warfield Simpson her divorce and is rated Britain’s top criminal lawyer, did his dry best to castigate Housewife Borders. But she met him with equal guile. Sample parry:

Q. “You are getting accustomed to litigation?”

A. “This is the first time I have had the pleasure of meeting you, Mr. Birkett.”

The court awarded Jim Borders £150. Said Elsy, as Norman Birkett K.C. withdrew: “I wiped the floor with him! He was bloody wild.”