Archaic British Laws

[fluffymark]

All English males over the age 14 are to carry out 2 or so hours of longbow practice a week supervised by the local clergy.

In London, you are not allowed to keep a pigsty in the front of your home.

Any person found breaking a boiled egg at the sharp end will be sentenced to 24 hours in the village stocks.

All male orgies are illegal, although add one woman and it’s legal.

Until 1976 cab drivers were required by law to carry a bale of hay to feed a horse.

It is illegal to stand within one hundred yards of the reigning monarch when not wearing socks.

It is still an offence to beat or shake any carpet rug or mat in any street in the Metropolitan Police District, although you are allowed to shake a doormat before 8am.

Placing a postage stamp that bears the Queen (or King) upside down is considered treason.

A Member of Parliament must not enter the House of Commons wearing a full suit of armour.

Committing suicide is classified as a capital crime – punishable by death.

A 1307 law ensures that the head of any dead whale found on the British coast becomes the property of the king and the tail belongs to the queen (she need the bones for her corset).

Royal Navy ships which enter the Port of London are required to provide a barrel of rum to the Constable of the Tower of London.

In Chester you are allowed to shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrow provided it is done inside the city walls and after midnight.

It is still illegal for cabbies to carry rabid dogs or corpses and by law they must ask all passengers if they have small pox or the plague.

In Scotland, it is illegal to be a drunk in possession of a cow.

Anybody know any more amusing obsolete british laws?

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I'd not repeal the one about longbows. Weekly Legolas moment for everybody, yes please :D

[deborah_c]

You really want to see OR holding a weapon? Have you thought this through?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Longbow practice is really safe, it'll be fine. Anyway, I think he'd just skin his arms with the string for the first few weeks (not that I have direct experience of this hem hem), and that'd be even more worth watching :)

Lonbow Practice

[(Anonymous)]

I have been a longbow man for 42yrs..... ;)

[vierasesine.livejournal.com]

*agrees wholeheartedly*

[zotz]

Actually, the death penalty was formally abolished in 1997 with no fuss whatsoever. I follow politics moderately closely and I didn't find out for six months afterwards.

So there's a reason why the last couple of parliaments haven't had reinstatement debates.

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

The death penalty is contrary to article 1 of the sixth protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was incorporated into British law in 1998 in the Human Rights Act. As I understand it, this is the reason why we no longer have reinstatement debates.

[zotz]

'98? Well, right you are. I remembered it going through faster than that, but I remembered wrongly.

Cheers.

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

There's a mildly interesting article about it here (http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ccps/resources_europe_UKabolition.htm).

[zotz]

Yes, there is. Thank you.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Most amusing, thank you for those.

#3 is from Gulliver's Travels, I don't think it was true in real life. The whole point was that it was a satire on Church politics.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

A lot of them are urban myths etc., sadly. I suspect that the one about MPs wearing armour is true, and I'm pretty sure that cabbies aren't allowed to carry corpses or rabid dogs - other than that, it wouldn't surprise me if they were *all* false.

The one about the whale is especially silly - the baleen (which is in the head) is the part used for corsets.

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

Number 4 is particularly irritating, because it refers to a law which was recently repealed (and quite widely reported), ie s1(2) of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, which meant that any homosexual act which took place in the presence of a third person was illegal (so that an orgy with many men and one woman would only have been legal if the men had restricted themselves to sexual relations with the woman), which was held to be contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights in 2000 in the case of ADT v UK, and repealed in schedule 7 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. I mean, the section was quite notorious; you would think people would notice that it's been repealed.

Suicide has not been illegal since 1961, although it remains illegal to aid, abet, counsel or procure the suicide of another.

However, I am prepared to accept that I am not allowed to keep pigs outside my house.

[rosie-rhi-bee.livejournal.com]

I think you can kill welsh people in hereford cathedral as well as chester but I can't remember the clauses. I think you have to use a longbow and stand a certain distance a way and it is maybe only on the first sunday in the month or something like that.

[drivenapart.livejournal.com]

I'm never ever going to Hereford again...and I love the place *boo*

Chester I can live without! ;o)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

You could take a guard of honour made of tall English people who stand around you in a tight circle all the time. If anybody wanted to shoot you they'd have to do illegal things too. It wouldn't be very helpful for seeing things though.

[drivenapart.livejournal.com]

The thought of being surrounded by a guard of honour is actually sweet :) However, my concern would be that would-be Welsh-smiters atop a castle, would see a circle of taller people surrounding an already tall chap and walking with his every step and think "A-ha! A Welshman...importantly as a bullseye!".

I wouldn't stand a chance. I think my only hope is plate armour :)

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Or persuading everybody in the city that you're great and they don't want to shoot you.

[drivenapart.livejournal.com]

It's certainly a consideration, but would probably take a full-page advert in a local newpaper, a major TV advertising campaign and a complete distortion of all the known facts! :)

[deborah_c]

I was once paid extra for a wedding in which I was singing, because the groom was fined for wearing spurs in chapel. Admittedly that was a much more local law (of the college where the wedding was happening) rather than a national one...

[strongtrousers.livejournal.com]

My school had a clause somewhere in its regulations permitting the Head Boy to grow a beard, keep a woman in his room and a goat on one of the playing fields. Unfortnately none of the Head Boys in my time took them up on this.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

There's something alarming about the way the woman and the goat are juxtaposed in that sentence.

[medieval-bunny.livejournal.com]

Here's a corker of a fact, though not a law strictly:

Berwick-upon-Tweed was technically declared another country (a la the Vatican) in the late middle Ages - somthing to do with tax districts - and thus signed the 1939 declaration of war on Germany independently. However, they were not invited to the Peace Treaty signing, so technically, Berwick-upon-Tweed is still at war with Germany!

Also, in Alabama (I think it's Alabama. Maybe Missouri), it is still illegal (or rather the law was never repealed) for a woman to take a shower naked. They thought it was evil to seduce her husband unawares by letting him catch her naked when he wasn't planning to plough her that night, so they ruled she had to wear a nightgown in the shower. And it still stands.

[aisb23.livejournal.com]

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwick-upon-Tweed) it was actually the declaration of war against Russia at the start of the Crimean War. And peace was signed in 1966.

--arthur

[redcountess]

Knew about the Chester law, and am guilty of the rug one! :-)

[tea-at-bettys.livejournal.com]

i think in york you're allowed to shoot scotsmen...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

AIUI Thatcher had a sweep-out of a lot of archaic laws in her first term, so a lot of mad things that used to be law aren't any more. Of course the Tories then went on to make lots of mad laws of their own. Did you know that it's legal for a uniformed constable who believes that a person is on their way to a music event within a 5-mile radius to stop them and direct them away from the area - but only if the music to be played at the event is "wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats"? Now there's a mad law that doesn't date from very long ago...