FREAK LAWS.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15119, 4 January 1922, Page 6

FREAK LAWS.

AMERICAN EFFORTS;

PROFESSIONAL FLIRT

CATCHERS

The law just passed by the Senate of Utah, limiting the height of women’s heels to a modest inch and a half, is matched by a recent law which makes it a misdemeanour for a Maryland woman to appear in a public place in a hat with a greater diameter than ten inches.

v Bull such examples of “freak legislation'’ are quite thrown into the shade by many others familiar enough.in the United States. It is not long since an edict was published in Texas making tickling unlawful. Any person convicted of tickling another person was made liable to a fine not exceeding 100 dollars.

Chicago has a law which forbids a man to slap his wife, under penalty of a fine ranging from one dollar for. a smack with the left hand to five dollars for a slap, while sitting down. A husband recently qualified for the whole series, and handed over his eleven dollars “like a man,” declaring' that it “was cheap at the price.” But what are wo to say to the edict that inflicts a 'heavy fine tor a kiss, which may be as innocent as po doubt it is pleasant ? Thus, at Rochester, New York, one Charles Drobblo 'recently paid 400 dollars for kissing Mary Himple, his clerk, once only; while Marshall McDaniels got off with a 150-dollar fine for kissing Sallie Jones 150 times — a modest dollar a kiss. The bachelor is the unhappy butt of many of these freak laws. Thus in Maine all unmarried men over thirty years of age are taked fen dollars a year, the sum to bo used as a pension for spinsters. And in Illinois a bill recently was introduced to prohibit bachelors from being called “Mister,” “so that no one can bo deceived.”

In Illinois, too, any woman whose Hat-pins exceed nine inches in length must take out a permit, “as for any other deadly weapon;” and, before marrying every man must make an affidavit that lie has not been intoxicated more than twice during the.previous year. e Utah makes it a misdemeanour not to- bathe at least once a week; Oregon has®%, law compelling hotels to provide “nine-foot bed sheets of linen or good cotton”; and Texas makes it a criminal offence to swear' over the telephone. In at least two States —California ami Illinois —the campaign against

tho masculine flirt, has taken such an acute form that “professional flirt “Catchers’’ in tho guise of attractive gills, arc appointed to act as decoys to the importunate -Lothario, and to hand him over “red-handed’’ to the custody of the detectives, who aio their shadows. ,

But it is in tho realm of divorce that America excels herself in legislative comedy. Thus, in recent cases, wo find one petitioner getting his freedom on tho ground that “ho could no longer stand tho jokes of his wife's friends who were always poking fun at him and making him a laughingstock.”

Ono lady petitioner secured her divorce, because her husband had “dared to remove liis beard.” “lie has not enough dignity to pass as my husband,” she pleaded, “unless his weak little chin is covered up and hidden away by a Among other grounds for recent divorces has been “tho . husband's pernicious habit of snoring, which could ’no heard several blocks away, and which made sleep impossilffo for his wife.”