LAW’S LONG ARM

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11945, 16 May 1933, Page 3

LAW’S LONG ARM

STATUTES FROM OTHER DAYS. The hackneyed phrase “the l°ng arm of th e law” has acquired a new significance for the man who was committed for trial at Sydney recently because it was alleged that be had kept watch for a prisoner who had escaped from a country lock-up. The “arm” in his ease was an ancient English law of the twelfth century, which enabled the police to frame an indictment. Many similar lawg of old England arc in force today in Victoria under the provisions of the Imperial Arts Application Act winch was passed in lf)‘2'2. A few of them were passed as long ago as U-'Gfj in the reign of Henry I The Chinese who was fined for having worked- in his market garden on a Sunday and the itinerant yodelling milkman for having “cried his wares c-n the Lord's Day” were both prosecuted under statute to which Charles IT. gave the Royal Assent in 1677

“for the hotter observance < f the Lord’s Day.” Charles lb. however, had some thought for the needs of his subjects for be restricted the ban on the “crying” milkman to the hours between “D of the clocke in the morningo and four in the afternoone,” and he allowed the ‘'dressing of mcate in families or the dressing or selling of monte in innes, cooltshops, or victualling houses. 1 ’ It is still an offence, apparently, under the same act for any tradesman or workman to exercise his “ordinary calling upon the Lord’s Day," or for anyone to engage in “publicly crying or showing forth or sale ei any wares merchandises, fruit, herbs, goods, or chattels’’ on Sunday. Charles Id. also prohibited his subjects from playing sports on a Sunday outside thVir own parishes. The penalty was, and still is, apparently, 3s -Id! The proprietors of a Brisbane newspaper found to iheir cost some years aso that they had offended by publishing an advertisement stating that upon the return of a certain. lest article a reward would: he paid “and no questions asked.' 1 Tinder a hitherto unknown law the newspaper was fined heavily for having compounded a felony, and half the fme wont to the informer. Should anyone hope to exploit this field of revenue, however, he should pause, for many ancient laws which entitled the informer to a reward have been repealed, and those that remain ■offer little scope.