HIRING, in law, a contract by which one man grants the use of a thing to another in return for a certain price. It corresponds to the locatio-conductio of Roman law. That contract was either a letting of a thing (locatio-conductio rei) or of labour (locatio operarum). The distinguishing feature of the contract was the price. In modern English law the term can scarcely be said to be used in a strictly technical sense. The contracts which the Roman law grouped together under the head of locatio conductio—such as those of landlord and tenant, master and servant, etc.—are not in English law treated as cases of hiring but as independent varieties of contract, but hiring is generally applied to contracts in which the services of a man or the use of a thing are engaged for a short time.
Hiring Fairs or Statute Fairs, still held in Wales, and some parts of England, were formerly an annual fixture in every impor tant country town. The men and maids seeking work stood in rows, the males together and the females together, while masters and mistresses walked down the lines and selected those who suited them. Originally these hiring-fairs were always held on Mar tinmas day (Nov. II). Now they are held on different dates in different towns, usually in October or November. In Cumberland the men seeking work stood with straws in their mouths. In Lin colnshire the bargain between employer and employed was closed by the giving of the "fasten-penny," the earnest money, usually a shilling, which "fastened" the contract for a twelvemonth. Some few days after the statute fair it was customary to hold a second called a mop fair or runaway mop. "Mop" meant in Old English a tuft or tassel, and the fair was so called, it is suggested, in allu sion to tufts or badges worn by those seeking employment. Thus the carter wore whipcord on his hat, the cowherd, a tuft of cow's hair, and so on.
See FAIR ; LABOUR LAW ; MASTER AND SERVANT ; WAKE.