Market Ouvert

February 8, 2012 10:43 PM

Normally, when you buy stolen goods, you don't legally own them. The person they were stolen from still does. Unless: Until 1995, if you bought them in Bermondsey Market, London, between the hours of sunrise and sunset, they would then belong to you, even if clearly stolen.
posted by Zarkonnen (32 comments total)

think you might have your sunrise and sunset reversed?

Otherwise fairly interesting
posted by edgeways at 10:50 PM on February 8, 2012

@edgeways: The Independent says "during the hours of daylight" and the Guardian "between sunrise and sunset", while Wikipedia says "between sunset and sunrise" - which turns out to be a recent drive-by edit. On the balance I'd say sunrise-sunset is correct - but it's certainly confusing.

As I understand it the background here is that if you sell the item in a public market during the day, the original owner has the opportunity to find and reclaim it. (Which makes sense in a medieval village market, but not so much in 1995 London!)
posted by Zarkonnen at 11:02 PM on February 8, 2012 [2 favorites]

...based on the ancient law of marché ouvert

And it even has a mysterious French name. So terribly chic. Bad guys have all the fun.

Now if you'll excuse me, I hade just received a communiqué that I am to rendezvous with a femme fatale who has been engaging in some reconnaissance

o ho ho, oui oui *nibbles baguette*
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:06 PM on February 8, 2012 [16 favorites]

In my family, there are certain board games where the rules are generally followed, but some breaking of the rules is also not just accepted, but most times expected. These include games like Monopoly - where the banker by his very Wall Street nature will often fall prey to the temptations of embezzlement, and Risk - where armies are secretly strengthened out of turn - after all, there are few rules in war.

Perhaps most importantly though is the game of Masterpiece, which my grandmother still loves to play with us. We simply can't help ourselves - to play the game strictly by the rules would be true only to the non-reality of the game itself. For the game to imitate true life, there has to be the occasional disappearance of a Cezzane, the shady side deals for mystery Renoirs that somehow disappeared from the vaults or even another player's personal collection. We've even set up insurance and security schemes where by one player can protect their interests by paying cash to a non-playing 3rd party called the "Agent" who is responsible for policing the other players.

It drives my grandmother nuts, but we feel it keeps us true to the spirit of the industry itself.
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:09 PM on February 8, 2012 [10 favorites]

Some more links: The law before it was repealed. The repeal. A 1987 Chicago Tribune article about the market.
posted by Zarkonnen at 11:18 PM on February 8, 2012 [2 favorites]

Wikipedia Link Power Extreme!
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
{{{{{{{Marche Ouvert}}}}}}}
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
posted by lemuring at 11:46 PM on February 8, 2012 [9 favorites]

I was hoping to find out whether the opening scene of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels was inspired by Bermondsey Market. Instead, I found a neat summary of all the off-street markets in London, which incidentally mentions that LSTSB was filmed in Borough Market.
posted by lemuring at 12:17 AM on February 9, 2012

think you might have your sunrise and sunset reversed?

think again?
posted by obiwanwasabi at 1:54 AM on February 9, 2012

Have you seen the police effectiveness rates for theft in the UK?

Legal ownership is a quaint notion. Possession is ten tenths of reality.

I often think they want to consider copyright violations as thefts so they can easily improve their abysmal metrics.
posted by srboisvert at 2:11 AM on February 9, 2012 [2 favorites]

Love this. My favourite bit about London isn't that it's such an old town - people have been living in Delhi's metropolitan area if you count Mahabharata as a reliable history - but that it has such old social enterprises still surviving to this day; something about modernity not displacing existing communities, but going around them, so to speak.

Not that I have travelled much, but apart from Bombay, I haven't seen too many other cities that have a similar urban culture. Too used to seeing kampong's, mohalla's, and hutong's making way to expressways and malls.

That said, have mixed feelings about Borough; it's all eclectic and colourful and historical and all that, but it also feels quite gentrified in prices, to be honest. There's cheaper, and better, street food elsewhere in London. :)
posted by the cydonian at 2:26 AM on February 9, 2012

Looking at the list of stuff stolen in one year (in the last link), most of which was taken from homes, I have to say that this is why we can't have nice things.

I wonder if the net effect of all this theft is that the valuable stuff tends to migrate toward the richest people, or the reverse?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:18 AM on February 9, 2012

I also wonder if the reason we can't learn the name or names of that "G family" has something to do with British libel laws.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:20 AM on February 9, 2012

Heh, I live five minutes down the road from Bermondsey market. It's nice to hear it has such an, uh, enterprising history. If anyone's in the area on a Saturday morning, the farmer's market (and nearby Maltby street market) is well worth a visit.
posted by fight or flight at 3:29 AM on February 9, 2012

See also Thieves' Guild
posted by jeffburdges at 3:49 AM on February 9, 2012

I wonder if the net effect of all this theft is that the valuable stuff tends to migrate toward the richest people, or the reverse?

Towards the least scrupulous in any case, which is bad enough, I would think.
posted by Skeptic at 5:05 AM on February 9, 2012

Why are all the references to money written as 'pounds 220' rather than '220 pounds' or '£220'?
posted by lovedbymarylane at 6:06 AM on February 9, 2012

Huh, I wonder how much mass production effected theft laws and policing, surely it would be easier to prove that a stolen good was yours if you had hand made it?
posted by The Whelk at 6:10 AM on February 9, 2012

This is really, really interesting -- I appreciate the post and the additional links that others have posted.

P.S. Borrowed this post and links and put 'em up on Reddit first thing this morning.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 6:14 AM on February 9, 2012

...based on the ancient law of marché ouvert

And it even has a mysterious French name. So terribly chic. Bad guys have all the fun.

Doleful Creature, that actually comes from 1066. English administration was so French that Henry V (born 1386) was probably the first post-Conquest king who spoke English as a native tongue. Edward III mandated that laws be written in English to improve comprehension (circa 1360), but there's no evidence he himself could speak or read it.

So, 300 years of French speech in English courts resulted in French legal terms being enfranchised (if you will) throughout the legal code. Pretty much all "ancient laws" are French terms, either due to actual pre-1400s origin, or to emphasize their age (akin to making sure your wine bottles are dusty before the guests arrive).
posted by IAmBroom at 6:21 AM on February 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

The concept is delightfully explained to Beth by Lovejoy and Tinker in the Lovejoy episode "Three Men and Brittle Lady" from 1993:

marché ouvert scene
posted by lefty lucky cat at 6:22 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

(don't miss the second scene at 2:22 which continues about the marché ouvert)
posted by lefty lucky cat at 6:24 AM on February 9, 2012

When my parents lived in Iran in another lifetime, every neighborhood had a neighborhood thief. You thief served as your neighborhood's security guard, but when it was time to pay for his services he broke into your house and stole something, something small, like, say a pair of silver candlesticks. He would then take his goods to the theives' market where his wife or brother had a stall. If the item you "lost" was of great sentimental value to you then you simply went to the theives' market, found his wife's stall and bought the item back. If you didn't particularly care for the object then the stall sold the item to another customer. You never reported the theif to the police, after all, he kept your house safe from robbery!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 6:55 AM on February 9, 2012 [18 favorites]

As I understand it the background here is that if you sell the item in a public market during the day, the original owner has the opportunity to find and reclaim it. (Which makes sense in a medieval village market, but not so much in 1995 London!)

This is awesome -- it's like instantaneous adverse possession, which also has great language attached to it, like the concept of "open and notorious" use of the property.
posted by The Bellman at 6:57 AM on February 9, 2012

That said, have mixed feelings about Borough; it's all eclectic and colourful and historical and all that, but it also feels quite gentrified in prices, to be honest. There's cheaper, and better, street food elsewhere in London. :)

Yes. The tightrope Borough Market walks is between tourist attraction and genuine amenity. The two elements seem co-dependent. I expect that most of the money taken on the market is street-food to tourists and daytripping suburbanites, but those people also do buy meat, vegetables, cheese &c. there, with part of what they're buying being the idea of this real, vibrant market. This supports the existence of these services, but it doesn't drive their prices down. Borough is arguably closer in nature to the modern prestige malls that cater to the wealthy of the developing world than to other surviving food markets in the UK. This isn't really a criticism of Borough, its model enables regular income and brand awareness to a big range of excellent food producers who wouldn't get the opportunity without it, and it's a fun place to be.

All that said, it's a difficult game to play, if the complaints of Borough stallholders in the last few years are to be believed. Each type of stall is vital to the survival of the market, and I'm sure that many recognise this, but on any issue, each will tend to see their own factional interests as being the thing that needs to expand/is under threat. Of course, this is an issue with lots of markets, but when you've got such a highly diverse stallholder population, and such huge amount of money pouring through the market, holding it all together is, according to accounts I've heard, not easy at all.
posted by howfar at 8:05 AM on February 9, 2012

See also Thieves' Guild

"Thieves' Guild" is actually the name a college friend coined for "the guys who sold random crap off card tables on the street in the East Village in the 90's."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:36 AM on February 9, 2012

Hey! That parking lot market in the mid 20s was called The Thieves' Market cause everything looked amazingly suspicious and cheap.
posted by The Whelk at 8:39 AM on February 9, 2012

It used to be if you had a bike stolen in Berkeley/Oakland you would go to the Ashby Flea on the weekend and look for it. I heard from one friend that he told the guy "that's my bike!" and he offered to cut it from $50 to $35.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:42 AM on February 9, 2012

Circa 1990, a friend's car was broken into in NYC, down here near City Hall. The police told him to go check 2nd Ave, between 7th and 3rd Streets.

He did, and retrieved his jacket from a vendor's blanket.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:21 AM on February 9, 2012

Huh, I wonder how much mass production effected theft laws and policing, surely it would be easier to prove that a stolen good was yours if you had hand made it?

Actually, it's more like with the advent of mass production, theft of most personal property became a lot less important.

Stealing a horse at any time before the twentieth century was a lot more like stealing a car today. Horses were integral parts of people's economic livelihood, and their loss could be crippling. But more than that, they represented a significant chunk of most people's total assets.

Which was true of many things before mass production. Tools like axes and plows were expensive and hard to replace, so not only were they easy to identify, but their loss was a really big blow. This upped the incentive to do something about it, and explains why penalties for theft were so much higher historically than they are now. We penalties like dismemberment make at least little more sense when you remember that many items of personal property were both irreplaceable and significantly more expensive than they would be today.
posted by valkyryn at 10:23 AM on February 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm remember just how many early folktales involve peasants losing their axe or scythe down a well and a saint helps them get it back cause otherwise you're never getting another axe ever again.
posted by The Whelk at 10:34 AM on February 9, 2012

On the balance I'd say sunrise-sunset is correct - but it's certainly confusing.

If it were sunset-sunrise, it would work as a Neil Gaiman story. And if the "stolen goods" were souls.
posted by xigxag at 7:40 PM on February 9, 2012

If it were sunset-sunrise, it would work as a Neil Gaiman story. And if the "stolen goods" were souls.

Yes, spent an entire afternoon going up and down the Tube trying to be in the locations being described in Neverwhere. Fun times. :)

Borough is arguably closer in nature to the modern prestige malls that cater to the wealthy of the developing world than to other surviving food markets in the UK.

Yeah, I mean, I get it broadly speaking; having a wet market in the middle of a highly gentrified area is a minor miracle in itself. Having cooked street food in the midst of it all is an even greater deal; most farmer's markets in India, for instance, only do fresh produce without any cooked food. And clearly, they've managed to retain the atmosphere quite well; no signs of Disney-fication that blights some of the more historic communities worldwide. I'm just wondering how long you could have stalls serving coffee for a price higher than Costa's or Starbucks; it's a complex game obviously with no easy answers.
posted by the cydonian at 9:54 AM on February 10, 2012