KISSING

Southland Times, Issue 18965, 13 June 1923, Page 13

KISSING

A FORBIDDEN PASTIME.

The lamentable case in Belfast of a young man and girl who were locked up over night for the grievous offence of kissing in the streets sheds an illuminating light on I the law's unromantic attitude towards such things. The wicked young man in question had just proposed marriage to the girl and had been accepted. Now, acording to i the best tenets of stage and screen, a moment such as that is normally solemnised by an ecstatic kiss. True (writes a correspondent of the Daily Express) the couple happened to be walking in the street at the time, but at such moments love is blind to its surroundings. But a shocked policeman spying them, marched them off to the police station, where they spent the night, ! and were subsequently solemnly told by the I Magistrate that they should be ashamed of j themselves. I This is reminiscent of old Puritan days in i America, when in one recorded instance in 1656, a sea captain named Kemble, of j Boston, was placed for two hours in the stocks for his “lewed and unseemly behaviour for kissing his wife publicly upon the Sabbath day upon the doorstep of his house." He was let off with the light sentence of two hours in the stocks in considi eration of the fact that the rascally sea captain in question had just returned from a three years' voyage. Even to this day kissing is forbidden in New York in certain places. The New York Central Railroad penalise kissing on the station platform, i but have erected at every station an ele- . vated platform called a "kissing gallery," I where passengers may kiss their friends I good-bye. The Bavarian State railways also I forbid kissing anywhere on their railways. | But in Germany one may expect anything :to be “verboten." Kissing was once forI bidden in England, but for quite justifiable ; reasons. It was in 1439, when a plague j that was raging in Europe had invaded • England. A Bid was rushed through both ■ Houses absolutely forbidding any of His , Majesty’s subjects to kiss one another. | France is one of the last countries in [ which one would expect kissing to be penalised. Yet. only last year a man and his wife were fined by the Correctional Court at Arion for kissing in public. Kissing, by the way, is not a universal practice. It is practically unknown among the black and yellow races. This must be a blessing to their police, who it must save from many a shock.