WE ARE CRIMINALS ALL.

Thames Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 17927, 1 July 1930, Page 6

WE ARE CRIMINALS ALL.

You can still be an outlaw bold in Britian—even in these days of 1930 A.D.

Commit certain offences against the realm and the law declares that you are outside it. A man who failed to answer a charge of embezzlement in Edinburgh a few days ago was outlawed under a mediaeval law.

This sentence of outlawry is a fairly ordinary occurrence in Scotchish criminal procedure, but in England such penalties are now almost unknown.

Nevertheless, you can still be fined, imprisoned, or even suffer worse fate in England for the breach of laws enacted half-a T thousand years ago. Fortunately most of these laws are now disregarded. Were it not so, most of us would be continually behind prison bars. Laws which have never been repealed enact that you can be punished for:—

Playing football. Evading divine service on Sunday.

'Refusing to chase a thief. Hundred's-of-years-old bl'ashphemy laws are still in existence—(Parliament refused to alter them the other day—while the Lords Day Act of James I. and Charles 11. strictly enforce the keeping of the Sabbath.

According to these Acts,* you must not barter on Sundays; you must not compel a man to work on Sundays. Nor must you walk, ride or row on Sundays. How fortunate for the modern generation that they are allowed to honour these Acts in the breach rather than in the observance! Trial' by ordeal is still part of the English law, although it was in vogue in 1066. Prisoners have demanded to take their trial by this method even in the twentieth century.

We can still suffer durance vile under mediaeval laws for "listening under the walls, windows, or eaves of a house to hearken after discourse and thereupon to frame slanderous and mischievous tales" in other words eaverdropping. Every football j player and every football spectator is liable to a fine of imprisonment, because in 1314 Edward 11. forbade the game. (Richard 11. passed a similar Act in •1389 with special reference to .encouraging archery. This Act was reenacted Iby Henry VIII and has not yet been repealed. Boxing is not yet a legalised sport, while under an Act of Parliament passed in the reign of Richard 111. public billiards are graded under the gaming laws. A license for public billiards has to be obtained at the local brewster sessions. By an Act passed in 1845 it is ; an offence to use billiard balls on I Christmas Day, Good Friday, and j other "fast" days. j Laws about dancing in public places are regulated according to an old eighteenth century statute dealing with disorderly houses. Perhaps the most glaring case of obsolescence is the law which makes' people liable to be transported for Me if they damage certain bridges, i ,There are those who would delight to see enforced an Act passed in 1698 in the reign of William 111. which orders legal officers drawing defective bills to draw new ones without fee or pay*£s and the costs.