I saved a magnificent article from Time Out a couple of months ago, which listed little-known legislation that still applies in our capital city.
Did you know, for example, that a London cab driver has to ask alll passengers whether they are suffering from smallpox or the plague, before letting them in the cab? Or that it’s illegal for commoners to permit their pet to ‘have carnal knowledge of a pet of the Royal House’?
What really caught my eye, though, was the work of the “statute law revision team”, which repeals obsolete legislation. According to its team leader:
“Most of the London acts we’re repealing are about provision for workhouses.”
I wonder… Some deep, dark, dusty legal tome… An ancient Act, permitting – nay, requiring – gentlemen to administer sound thrashings for misconduct on workhouse land…. A new building, constructed on the site of the old workhouse (so still deemed legally to be covered by the Act)… A girl misbehaving… The subsequent thrashing administered with the full authority of the law, even in these modern times…
I’m pretty sure there’s still a law on the books in Detroit or Cleveland that forbids ugly people from “presenting themselves in public.” It’s a response to the circus “freaks” in traveling shows apparently.
If we open a workhouse run by Abel, can we volunteer to be inmates?
Rapunzel – but of course. When are you free to be the first girl admitted? I imagine that there’d be a compulsory thrashing as part of the entrance requirements, mind.
It is no co-incidence that so many of us signed up for a trip to China with all the consequences and yet the workhouse thing just wasn’t that appealing – one too many Irish Catholic workhouse/nunnery films I suspect. Except of course, for Rapunzel….dear Rapunzel, who just can’t bloody get enough…..LOL