The Joint Stock Companies Act 1844 (7 & 8 Vict. c.110) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that expanded access to the incorporation of joint-stock companies. Before the Act, incorporation was possible only by royal charter or private Act and was limited owing to Parliament's protection of the privileges and advantages thereby granted. As a result, many businesses came to be operated as unincorporated associations with possibly thousands of members. Any consequent litigation had to be carried out in the joint names of all the members and was almost impossibly cumbersome. Though Parliament would sometimes grant a private act to allow an individual to represent the whole in legal proceedings, this was a narrow and necessarily costly expedient, allowed only to established compa