rack-renting

Absentee English landlords also got rid of tenants by means of exorbitant rent increases (rack-renting), land enclosure, construction of new roads, and imposition of new laws.

Jane Smiley: Jane's Bingo! Award for Most Informative Book of 2006 2008

The Anglefords were good landlords; there was no rack-renting, no ejections, and a farm falling vacant from natural causes was always eagerly tendered for.

Nell, of Shorne Mills or, One Heart's Burden Charles Garvice

Mr. Charles George Mahon, whom he addressed personally as "a rack-renting landlord," and otherwise held up to scorn and derision.

Disturbed Ireland Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. Bernard H. Becker

The new landowners who came into possession of forfeited estates or of confiscated monastic lands continued to substitute pasture for tillage, and to dispossess the agricultural population as well by the reduced demand for labour as by rack-renting and evictions.

England under the Tudors

Those who have read modern history, or political economy, will not require an elaborate exposure of a scheme which aims at setting up in Gilead, under the guise of philanthropy, the rack-renting and ornamental landlording which have received such severe rebukes in Europe.

The Contemporary Review, January 1883 Vol 43, No. 1 Various

If we examine the rents paid one hundred and fifty, or even one hundred years ago, they will appear trifling when compared with the rents of the present day; so that, at first, one is inclined to question the accuracy of those writers who denounce the avarice and rack-renting propensities of the landlords of their time.

The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) With Notices of Earlier Irish Famines John O'Rourke

Thus it looks now as if by the appreciation of gold all that was gained for the tenant is more than lost, and that in the future his condition may be worse than in the worst days of rack-renting.

If Not Silver, What? John W. Bookwalter

Being a land agent, I wish to provide some account from another pen of my stewardship, for which said stewardship I was falsely called 'the most rack-renting agent in Ireland.'

The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent S.M. Hussey

The section on Avarice is particularly valuable for its picture of the sins of executors of wills, rack-renting lords, extortionate shopkeepers, false lawyers, usurers, and gamblers.

Medieval People Eileen Edna Power 1914

There can be no doubt, however, that subsequently the promises of large annual receipts from the old religious estates proved illusory, and that, in spite of the rack-renting of the Crown farmers, the monastic acres furnished less money for the royal purse than they had previously done under the thrifty management and personal supervision of their former owners.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 10: Mass Music-Newman 1840-1916 1913