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

[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.

[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.

[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)

[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.

[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.

[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...