SOME QUEER LAWS

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 December 1929, Page 3

SOME QUEER LAWS

RELICS OF THE PAST. The above title, “Some Queer iJaws,” is perhaps not, strictly speaking, quite correct, says the “New Zealand Law Journal,” from which this article is taken. Any action or institution which may be described as “queer” is, in that case, meant as unsound, possessing no discoverable motive or purpose. But “queer” laws are only mysterious, erratic?, or eccentric when regarded objectively..; To the sympathetic student of English laws and legal customs, every statute, however grotesque, it may appeal’ ta the twentieth century, had its definite basis of utility, which was sometimes, too, a basis for the preservation of so. ciety. f Very recently, a “queer” bylaw was introduced in Biarritz, by which the gendarmes were empowered to arrest any fat man or woman who might be dressed in such inartistic. garments as to offend, not the public sense of decency, but the public sense of aestheticism. S ch a law might seem amusing to us, b \ it certainly has its basis of utility, ii? asmuch as aesthetic conduct and moral conduct intertwine very closely. It is sometimes extremeljr difficult to differentiate, in a Court of law, between the moral aspect of an action and its aesthetic aspect. What

may have been assumed to have shocked a witness's sense of decency may really have offended merely his eyesight. / In the same way the curious statute enforced during the reigns of both Richard 11. and Henry IV. making it compulsory for men to practise the game of archery on Sundays ■ had its basis of utility in preparing the people for a state of war. Blackstone quotes another remarkable statute which was still unrepealed in his own day, and endured until’ the reign of Queen Victoria. This was an Act (10 Edw. I.) which ordained that no man should be served at dinner or supper with more than two courses, except upon any great national holiday, when he could be 'served with three courses. A concomitant law made the wearing of expensive garments (according to contemporary fashion —piked shoes, short doublets, and long coats) a. criminal matter. The motive of such laws was possibly to keep the money concentrated in a few hands and available to the King’s tax gatherers. x It was a queei’ law, introduced by James 1., which prevented England from, probably being, in our day, a great tobacco-producing country. Before 1624, when the Abolition Order was carried out only too effectually? a good deal of tobacco cultivation was in progress in England, especially in Gloucestershire. The law of James I. empowered every sheriff to uproot all tobacco plants, and so this part of English agriculture speedily perished. The reason for such an odious proclamation seems almost to arise from some erratic spitefulness of the monarch responsible for it. Its real reason, of course, was to facilitate the collection of revenue upon tobacco, it being so much easier to levy a duty ' at the Customs House upon importation from Virginia or Bermuda (where it was then extensively grown) than to collect a tax from every individual tob'acco planter in England.

It. is strange to find that domestic fires were once taxed in England. “Smoke farthings” and “hearth money” were levied for the benefit of the King and of the clergy in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and there was even, at that time, a window tax, so that the people had even to pay for their sunlight. Daines Barrington, the celebrated archaeologist, mentions an extraordinary legal ritual (a “queer law”) designed to prove the innocence or guilt of a prisoner upon trial. This was the bread and cheese ordeal. The food was blessed by a priest and the prisoner made to eat it. If he were able to swallow it, then he was adjudged inno; cent and acquitted, but if he choked in the ordeal, then he was adjudged guilty and received the consequences. “Hence, perhaps,” remarks Barrington, “the expression, ‘I wish it may choke me.’ ” Fortunately, though it may be still true that a prisoner’s demeanour plays a large part in a Magistrate’s verdict, our rules of psychology are rather less rough and ready than the bread and cheese judgment.

ADMISSION CHARGE TO COURTS

One wonders whether the sensational cases, such as the recent Croydon inquest, which are so prominently featured in the newspapers, Would still attract large queues of Court spectators if an admission fee were charged. Such a suggestion, we know, could be promptly pooh-poohed on the ground of public interest, but it is interesting to find, in the “quqeer” statutes 13 Edw. 1., c. 42-44, that admittance to the Law-Courts by. .outsiders was charged one penny: equivalent to about Is 3d nowadays. The statute ,it should be noted, directed’ that the defendant and plaintiff should hot be charged admission. Some time ago interest was aroused in a judgment upon a girl indicted for whistling in an English churchyard. Upon appeal the judgment was reversed, so that one may fairly conclude that offences committed in a churchyard are no more culpable, in the eyes of English law, than those committed elsewhere. This was not the case. in former years, when, according to 'the Statute 6, Edward VL, the offence of striking in a churchyard was punished by cutting off the delinquent’s ears. The basis of utility, in this instance, however, was more than one of veneration, for it was instituted to prevent dangerous riots between 'the 'Papists and the Protestants upon the final establishment of the Reformation. Nevertheless, Barrington, writing in 1775, notes that not many years previously there was an

indictment under the same Act at the ■quarter sessions in Somersetshire. Striking in the King’s Palace wak once regarded as perhaps the highest outrage of all, and was Until the repealing act of George IV., punishable by perpetual imprisonment and fine at the King’s pleasure, and also with the loss of the offender’s right hand. Baker’s “Chronicle” describes the arraignment of one such delinquent. * “On the 10th of. June, 1541, Sid Edmund Knevet, of Norfolk, was arraign-ed-before the officers of the Green Cloth for striking one Master Cleer within the tennis court of the King’s House. Being found guilty, he had judgment to. lose his hand, and to forfeit'all his-lands and goods. . .the said Knevet confessed and humbly submitted himself to the King’s mercy; only.he. desired that the King tfould spare his right-hand and take his left: ‘Because,’ said he, ‘if my right hand be spared I may live to do good whose, sub-, mission and reason of his suit, when the King was informed, granted him to lose neither of his hands, and par-.

doned him also of his lands and goods.” WORKS OF NECESSITY Then there is the curious list of exceptions made from time to time to the original Sabbath Observance Act of 1677. The statute itself contains an exemption in favour of cook’s chops, and was later extended to the baking of meat, puddings, and pies on a Sunday; this being regarded as “a work of piety and necessity.” One justice is said to have observed at the time that “it was as reasonable that the baker should bake for the poor, as that the cook should roast or boil for the magistrates.” In the same reign, too, exception was made “for the crying dr selling of milk before nine o’clock in the morning or after four of the clock in the afternoon. ” By a law of 10 Will. 111., mackerel were permitted to be sold on Sundays before or after divine service; though why such a special mark of favour should be shown to mackerel is still obscure. At any rate, it proved to be the thin edge of the wedge for a provision which was afterwards recognised by the 2nd of Geo. 111., also in favour of fish carts travelling on Sundays. A discussion on the theme of queer

laws' of' other days must inevitably lead to the question of those quaint and effete laws, which still encumber the statute book, and which still survive both in England ’and in this Dominion under frequent protest from judges and magistrates. In England hardly a day passes when someone in legal authority does not call for the complete, overhauling or revision of some law which has longoutgrown its original purpose or utility. All laws, however freakish they may appear on the face of things,, were designed for a specific and reasonable purpose (whether that purpose was equitable or not). The only laws which are really queer and which may really be called freakish or eccentric are those which, suited to meet the manners and philosophy of another age, still linger in their fusty obsolescence to harass modern judges and modern seekers of justice;