THE RIGHT TO QUIET.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1440, 15 December 1923, Page 4

THE RIGHT TO QUIET.

JUDGE Scully, of the Marylebone County Court, London, recently laid it down that no one has a right, even though earning his living by it, to practise music at the expense of other people’s comfort. In the case in which the Judge delivered this dictum it was said that the daughters of a landlady in whose house a longsuffering tenant dwelt played the piano and ’cello for hours every day, and for a registered nine hours on Sundays. The tenant remonstrated with the landlady, and she retorted by demanding possession of the apartments rented by the tenant. Failing to get possession, she applied to the Court. Judge Scully not only dwelt upon the tortures that the tenant had undergone, but he refused an order for possession, and so the landlady was in a position somewhat analagous to Mother Hubbard’s dog. The grounds of the refusal were that the tenant had a right to quiet and relief, certainly from nine hours of music on Sundays. Excessive music in this case was looked upon by the Judge as in the nature of a misdemeanour. The long-suffering tenant evidently regarded it as in the nature of a crime. He w r ill probably have many sympathiseis in New Zealand, for in the cities of the Dominion, because of the chronic shortage of dwellinghouses the tendency of crowding more people into houses than they were ever built to accommodate is growing as -at Home, but with this difference: that there are not here, as ■there, the relief afforded by definitely self-contained fiats, built as such, and securing something like the seclusion of a separate house. It can well be imagined what an experience it would be in a wooden house, where the partitions are as resonant as the sounding board of a fiddle, if a man in the next room amused himself on a wet Sunday afternoon by playing on a gramophone, “Yes! We Have No Bananas,” from 2 to 6, without any more intermission except the winding up of the instrument. Playing musical instruments and vocal exercises to the annoyance of others have been the subject of Court proceedings again and again, but decisions have greatly varied. Judge Scully, however, does not appear to have any doubt in his mind that no one has the right, although earning a living as a musician, to practise music at the expense of other people’s comfort. This is a recognition, surely, of the right ,of people to quiet. This right, if it be conceded, was never more in need of being respected than it is today. Most medical men, if asked for their opinion, will agree that people appear to be becoming more “nervy” than they were even as recently as ten years ago. The war had much to do with making them so, especially in the case of those who were within range of German air raids. Nervous people may be a nuisance to themselves and to everyone else (who is not afflicted); but it is only the neurologist who can say with certainty whether the case is one for treatment by the sufferer himself in co-opei’a-

tion with the physician or by the latter alone. In their case unnecessary and preventable noises may, and often do, assume the form of positive torture. Even in the case of the well in body and mind;such noises, especially if they are close enough to a dwelling, may constitute a nuisance of an impeachable kind, and utterly destructive of the right of the individual to quiet. In the rapid developmen of cities in New Zealand, combined with the “edgy” condition that strenuous modern circumstances of life impose, there is far more noise than is necessary in the streets. One has only to mention the startling detonations in the ear of some motor cyclist who declines to muffle his exhaust. The raucous klaxhorn, too, is used with greater freedom than the brake in the case of inconsiderate motorists. All these sounds add to the volume preventable distracting noise in the streets. The right to quiet is One of the most flagrantly ignored of all rights of the individual. Its violation is becoming more flagrant. One’s nostrils may not be annoyed with impunity with objectionable odours from, say, a glue factory, and areas are often allotted for socalled noxious trades; but when it comes to noise, whether by chiming of town clocks and crowing roosters at unearthly hours, or non-stop music in the home, there seems always to be a doubt about one’s legal right to relief. In this matter, when the bylaws come to be consolidated, as it is said they will be done, without interfering too much with the liberty of some subjects, to ensure the inherent right of some other subjects to quiet where noise is avoidable and can be prevented.