Don't get caught tippling in the stable
December 15, 2015 8:07 AM   Subscribe

Legal Curiosities: Fact or Fable? Among its other responsibilities, Britain's Law Commission works to repeal antiquated or irrelevant laws (NYT article) such as a 1536 law extending a London graveyard or the India Steam Ship Company Act 1838. The commission's "Legal Curiosities" note provides guidance as to which notorious "silly laws" are actually in force (actual example in force: it is illegal to be drunk in charge of a horse, and it is illegal to be drunk on licensed premises, both due to the Licensing Act 1872; not a real law in force: it is illegal for a lady to eat chocolate on a public conveyance.)
posted by andrewesque (49 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
I think some of these laws should stay on the books. A while back we had a referendum to repeal a law that disallowed politicians from dueling in the streets under the premise that this was already illegal and didn't need a special law. Me? I figure the law isn't hurting anyone, and I like the idea of someday maybe a politician could actually be charged with violating it, and the law seems like a good idea to me. Politicians shouldn't be dueling. So I voted to keep it.

Not enough people agreed with me. So now we are headed toward anarchy.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:18 AM on December 15, 2015 [6 favorites]


No being drunk while in charge of a horse?

Sounds like a reasonable law to me.

I'm kind of glad that America's most anachronistic laws are embedded in Indian treaties and are almost impossible to repeal.
posted by ocschwar at 8:24 AM on December 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


We should do something about the Mi'kmaq Scalp bounties.
posted by FallowKing at 8:28 AM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


For current odd laws, it is illegal in Britain to ride one of those hoverboard things on either the pavement or the road. And yet still they're the biggest selling toy in the country.
posted by dng at 8:33 AM on December 15, 2015


It is illegal to jump the queue in the Tube ticket hall.
Yes
Under the TfL Railway Byelaws, any person directed to queue by an authorised person or a sign must join the rear of the queue and obey the reasonable instructions of any authorised person regulating the queue.
🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
posted by zamboni at 8:35 AM on December 15, 2015 [10 favorites]


Knock-door-run is illegal and not just hilarious/a pain in the arse (dependent on how old you are)? Who knew?
posted by billiebee at 8:36 AM on December 15, 2015


Politicians shouldn't be dueling.

You might not like the NRA sponsored Republican debate, then.
posted by TedW at 8:36 AM on December 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


Knock-door-run is illegal and not just hilarious/a pain in the arse (dependent on how old you are)? Who knew?

Using a flaming bag of dog poop raises it to an aggravated offence.
posted by TedW at 8:38 AM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


For a while, in the early-mid 20th c., DC had a law on the books forbidding gambling at the dump. It no longer appears in the DC code, and I've occasionally wondered, while at the dump, what prompted it.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:39 AM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless in public, except as a clerk in a tropical fish store. - No evidence

We can find no trace of such a statute, and Liverpool County Council deny that it ever existed.

posted by dng at 8:39 AM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


As an old cowboy with a few thousand miles on my saddle the horse statute is perfectly reasonable. Generally one should avoid interacting with large animals when drunk. Just because they are domesticated doesn't mean they can't trample or kick you to death.
posted by humanfont at 8:40 AM on December 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


You always hear about ridiculous laws, but somehow you never hear some sort of backstory as to how that law came to be. And that always seems like the most interesting part! If it's illegal to eat ice cream while riding a Giraffe in Idaho, well... ok, that's kind of funny I guess, but tell me what happened!

Why did a group of legislators get together and say, "this is important. This moves to the top of the docket today" about ice cream and giraffes? Was it an accident at the circus? Some rich, eccentric local being a jerk? Some personal vendetta, where one drunken dude confided that an ice-cream-fuelled giraffe rodeo was his secret life goal before puking on the other guy's shoes, and the other guy turned out to be Mayor and though, "fuck that guy, I'm going to send him a message that he can get out of my town?"

This is what happens when I read about these laws; I think of Shirky's line about how bureaucracy is an organization's allergic reaction to prior fuckups, and want very badly to know the whole, real backstory.
posted by mhoye at 8:56 AM on December 15, 2015 [23 favorites]


Radiolab did a piece on this guy a little while ago.
posted by dzkalman at 8:58 AM on December 15, 2015


I was once head butted by a horse when I tried to give him drunken hug. The horse was in charge so no law broken.
posted by night_train at 9:00 AM on December 15, 2015 [13 favorites]


I'm kind of glad that America's most anachronistic laws are embedded in Indian treaties and are almost impossible to repeal.

A couple years back I attended a city council meeting during which a law forbidding minors from entering billiards establishments was repealed. Complete with Music Man references and a for-show arrest of the local pool hall owner, followed by a ceremonious unshackling. Repealing anachronistic laws apparently makes for great theater, though I think I was the only person in attendance who wasn't being paid to be there.
posted by asperity at 9:00 AM on December 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


As an old cowboy with a few thousand miles on my saddle the horse statute is perfectly reasonable. Generally one should avoid interacting with large animals when drunk. Just because they are domesticated doesn't mean they can't trample or kick you to death.

Not to mention the horses!
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:01 AM on December 15, 2015


Politicians shouldn't be dueling.

Meh. Most disputes die and no one shoots.
posted by The Bellman at 9:07 AM on December 15, 2015 [6 favorites]


Any chance they could expand their work to include notoriously silly laws that are yet to come into force?
posted by sfenders at 9:10 AM on December 15, 2015


The Metropolitan Police Act of 1839 sounds like the very best set of laws ever enacted.

Section 54 of the Act enumerated a long list of "Nuisances by Persons in Thoroughfares" that were now prohibited. Among the outlawed activities, for which the miscreant could be taken into custody and fined, were:

"Furious Driving".

posted by dng at 9:32 AM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Also the bit about dog carts being made illegal made me wonder if a dog cart was a cart that you pulled along with dogs in it or a cart pulled along by dogs with you in it.
posted by dng at 9:37 AM on December 15, 2015


Why did a group of legislators get together and say, "this is important. This moves to the top of the docket today" about ice cream and giraffes? Was it an accident at the circus? Some rich, eccentric local being a jerk? Some personal vendetta, where one drunken dude confided that an ice-cream-fuelled giraffe rodeo was his secret life goal before puking on the other guy's shoes, and the other guy turned out to be Mayor and though, "fuck that guy, I'm going to send him a message that he can get out of my town?"

Related
posted by Mayor West at 9:37 AM on December 15, 2015


dng, check out this nice post on dog carts - it was dogs pulling the carts.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:39 AM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


In Indiana, vehicular traffic must yield to marching bands. It is a class C misdemeanor to in any way impede the progress of a duly-formed marching band. (Indiana Code § 9-21-14)

I also learned the other day that Indiana has a "log cabin rule" -- at Indiana Code § 36-7-8-3 (d) -- that, if you build your house yourself for your personal use, you are exempt from ALL building and fire codes in the state of Indiana and cannot be forced to comply with ANY local codes, with the sole exception that in the past two years the Indiana Supreme Court has ruled that if your poop disposal system is giving the neighbors cholera, you can be forced to comply with either sewer or septic rules and you can be forced to submit to an inspection (solely for sewer or septic).

The vast majority of homes built under the log cabin rule are Amish homesteads, but there are also some hipsters and a handful of anti-government cranks who keep building themselves homesteads in, like, dense residential areas of Indianapolis and refusing to submit to fire inspections and so on. (To which I say, SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMONDS, it is your right as Americans and Hoosiers to stick it to The Man, especially when you're just following a law The Man made and has not repealed!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:39 AM on December 15, 2015 [19 favorites]


dng: Huh. I didn't know the Fast and Furious movies were about being a scofflaw *both* ways.
posted by Four Ds at 10:01 AM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


(To which I say, SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMONDS, it is your right as Americans and Hoosiers to stick it to The Man, especially when you're just following a law The Man made and has not repealed!)

It's not The Man who gets hurt when the house turns out to be a firetrap. It's the neighbours.
posted by Francis at 10:08 AM on December 15, 2015 [8 favorites]


"It is illegal to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances. -- Yes; This is an offence under the Salmon Act 1986."

Well, glad we cleared the air on that count.
posted by fifthrider at 10:32 AM on December 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


mhoye,

If you're really interested in how certain laws came to be, you can try researching their legislative history. Though this can be a pain in the ass and often not all that illuminating.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:46 AM on December 15, 2015


*suspiciously handles a salmon*

Don't look at me.
posted by cmoj at 10:47 AM on December 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


"Furious Driving".

If one were to die, one would prefer to die in an historic manner upon the fury road.

nux_monocle.gif
posted by zamboni at 11:02 AM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


> "For a while, in the early-mid 20th c., DC had a law on the books forbidding gambling at the dump. It no longer appears in the DC code, and I've occasionally wondered, while at the dump, what prompted it."

The Biltmore Garage wanted a grand.
posted by kyrademon at 11:12 AM on December 15, 2015


Most of those really narrow ridiculous laws like "you can't eat ice cream with giraffes" found on the internet are either (a) complete bullshit or (b) taken out of context and misinterpreted.

As an example, it is often claimed that it is illegal to whisper in church in Delaware. This comes from an actual local ordinance in one town in Delaware that says "No person shall disrupt or disturb any congregation or assembly met for religious worship by noise, talking or whispering, or by rude or indecent behavior, or by profane language within their place of worship, or within 300 feet of the place of worship."
posted by interplanetjanet at 11:15 AM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


It is a class C misdemeanor to in any way impede the progress of a duly-formed marching band.

So have a horde of office workers taken up the triangle so they can cut through traffic on the way to work?
posted by miyabo at 11:43 AM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


it is illegal to be drunk on licensed premises

If you can't hold your booze you shouldn't be in the pub.

From a practical perspective, this is an extremely useful law for publicans and police alike. Sometimes people just need to go home because they're pissed. Having a law to back that up as needed makes it easier to deal with those situations.
posted by howfar at 12:09 PM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


Mind you, being drunk in charge of a horse is a longstanding problem in Britain.
posted by Devonian at 12:51 PM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's not The Man who gets hurt when the house turns out to be a firetrap. It's the neighbours.

Why should this stand in the way of my flammable and poop-filled Libertarian utopia?
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:59 PM on December 15, 2015


For example, the 1562 Articles for the Execution of the Statutes of Apparel prohibited anyone from appearing at the royal court wearing shirts with “outrageous double ruffs”, or hose of “monstrous and outrageous greatness”.

brb, registering the sockpuppet "hose of monstrous and outrageous greatness"
posted by Rock Steady at 1:00 PM on December 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


I am about 90% certain you can get done for drink driving in Australia if you are riding a horse while drunk. Also, bar tenders are not supposed to serve drunk people, though adherence to that one is rather rubbery.
posted by deadwax at 1:02 PM on December 15, 2015


Pedantic footnote: the Law Commission for England and Wales is not Britain's Law Commission, Scotland has its own one. Also proposing repeals of obsolete law is a small fraction of what they do. For example, they are responsible for the Bribery Act 2010, which is a major reform of English criminal law and not just a tidy up of weird anomalies.
posted by Aravis76 at 1:49 PM on December 15, 2015


If you can't hold your booze you shouldn't be in the pub.

I like the signs we have in pubs here that say "If you are drunk, violent or quarrelsome, you must leave the premises when asked".

But surely if a quarrelsome person leaves when asked, then they're not quarrelsome. So can they go back in?
posted by pompomtom at 2:53 PM on December 15, 2015 [4 favorites]


But surely if a quarrelsome person leaves when asked, then they're not quarrelsome. So can they go back in?

Daneeka: No.
Yossarian: Yes.
Orr: sighs...(surreptitiously moves on to the White Horse, down the lane.)
posted by j_curiouser at 3:02 PM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Eyebrows McGee: "I also learned the other day that Indiana has a "log cabin rule" -- at Indiana Code § 36-7-8-3 (d) -- that, if you build your house yourself for your personal use, you are exempt from ALL building and fire codes in the state of Indiana [...] (To which I say, SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMONDS, it is your right as Americans and Hoosiers to stick it to The Man, especially when you're just following a law The Man made and has not repealed!)"

I'd have no problem with that as long as they no problem if the state bars emergency personnel from entering and allows public utilities to not make a connection. Also they shouldn't be able to transfer the dwelling to a another party nor rent/lease it.

deadwax: "I am about 90% certain you can get done for drink driving in Australia if you are riding a horse while drunk."

In BC if you are on a road or operating on public lands you can get a DUI while riding a bicycle, horse, ATV, snowmobile, and, so I've heard, dog sled. Or while driving a team.
posted by Mitheral at 3:34 PM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


we need to re-enact the usury laws.
posted by marienbad at 4:46 PM on December 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


"I'd have no problem with that as long as they no problem if the state bars emergency personnel from entering and allows public utilities to not make a connection. Also they shouldn't be able to transfer the dwelling to a another party nor rent/lease it."

I spent an absurd amount of time down the rabbit hole reading court cases on this. Public utilities MAY connect you if you ask and they want to, but are not required to do so if your self-built house has not passed applicable inspections. As far as I could tell there have been no specific cases about emergency personnel, I assume they use their best judgment. You CAN NOT rent or lease it -- you can only build it for your own personal/family habitation. If you sell, rent, or lease it, it immediately becomes subject to all the various building codes.

There appear to be accepted and legal ways to transfer it within the family -- as per Amish homesteads -- but that may be something you can only do out in rural areas, like metro Indianapolis may just be waiting to pounce on you trying to leave it to your kid when you die.

Again, it's virtually all off-the-grid Amish homesteads. There are a teeny handful of cranks pissing off the government on purpose, and a small-but-growing hipster tiny house/off the grid/self sufficiency movement. The last group is who I actually have questions about, and what a lot of my reading focused around, since they don't typically have the expertise in building that Amish craftsmen do, and they're often building in small towns rather than way out in the middle of nowhere, and statistically most people who enter into minimalist/tiny house/off-grid lifestyles stick around for five years, and then their priorities change (jobs change, kids arrive, someone breaks a leg, whatever). I don't think that's a bad thing or something to be judgmental about, and the better lifestyle blogs do talk about how for most people it isn't a lifetime decision so consider resale when you buy or build your tiny house. But these guys building "log cabin rule" tiny houses in Indiana ... they can't get traditional insurance, they can't sell them, they can't turn them into Air B&B rentals, they mostly can't hook up to the grid ... I feel like a lot of them are going to be learning unpleasant lessons about resale in a few years.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:51 PM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


you can get done for drink driving in Australia

Yep, though I thought it was only on public roads. I think you can get pissed and ride your horse around a private paddock.
posted by pompomtom at 4:54 PM on December 15, 2015


For a contemporary version of these laws, look at all the local politicians who want to outlaw sagging pants that expose the wearers underwear. Of course these same arbiters of taste are untroubled by plumbers butt, which remains completely legal in all jurisdictions, as far as I know.
posted by TedW at 6:09 PM on December 15, 2015 [3 favorites]


It is illegal to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances.

Now there's one for Annual Golden Dukes
posted by mattoxic at 8:33 PM on December 15, 2015


Eyebrows McGee: In Indiana, vehicular traffic must yield to marching bands. It is a class C misdemeanor to in any way impede the progress of a duly-formed marching band.

This must have also been true back in Minnesota. I used to get such a kick when our high school marching band would go out and practice on the city streets near the school—no police, no barricades or signs or anything, just a bunch of us marching around on the roads like we owned the place. Mind you we didn't go on the busy streets but we would often end up making cars wait or detour.
posted by traveler_ at 10:00 PM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


I thought the good thing about a horse was that it knew the way home so it could just take you there when you got drunk? I feel like I saw something about this on the History Channel or something.
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:27 AM on December 17, 2015


Mitheral: "In BC if you are on a road or operating on public lands you can get a DUI while riding a bicycle, horse, ATV, snowmobile, and, so I've heard, dog sled. "

Also Zamboni.
posted by Mitheral at 4:49 PM on December 24, 2015


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