Note 16 — Chapter VII

The following handbill, which was circulated after the second reading of the Sunday Trading Bill, and put in evidence at the Royal Commission subsequently held, will give a good idea as to the extent of the proposed measure.

"Tyrannical attack upon the Liberty of the people. Proposed prohibition of Sunday trading. The New Bill brought in by Lord Robert Grosvenor, Lord Ebrington, and Mr M. Chambers proposes to prevent trading on Sundays within the Metropolitan Police District and city of London, and the liberties thereof. It enacts 'that all persons selling, offering, or exposing for sale, or causing to be sold or exposed for sale (on Sundays) any goods, chattels, effects, or things whatsoever, shall, on summary conviction thereof, be fined 5s., and on a second conviction, this fine may be increased to 40s.; and the fines will be cumulative, and every separate act of selling will be a separate offence. The act will not apply to the sale of medicines or drugs, nor to the selling or crying of milk or cream before 9 a.m. or after 1 p.m., nor to the selling or offering of any newspaper or periodical before 10 a.m., nor to the sale of fruit, cooked victuals, or any unfermented beverage before 10 a.m. and after 1 p.m., nor to the sale of meat, poultry, fish, or game, before 9 a.m., from the 31st of May to the 1st of October in each year, nor to the exercise of the ordinary business of a licensed victualler or innkeeper. Butchers and others delivering meat, fish, or game, after 9 a.m. on Sundays, will be liable to the penalties above mentioned. Nor will that useful class of the community, the barbers and hairdressers, be exempted, if they presume to 'do business' after ten o'clock on Sunday mornings, in which case they may be fined 5s., and 20s. for a second offence. It appears, however, that the payment of one penalty will protect the offending barber from any further fine on the same day. Clause 6 saves servants from the operation of the Act, and visits their disobedience on their masters or mistresses. The police are required to enforce the provisions of the Act. Penalties and costs may be levied by distress, and imprisonment may be inflicted in default of payment for 14 days in the common gaol or house of correction. The penalties will be appropriated to the expenses of the police force. No informations are to be quashed for informality, or to be removed by certiorari into the Court of Queen's Bench. The Act (is) to commence (if passed) on the 1st day of November, or All Saints' Day, 1855. A more tyrannical measure was never attempted to be forced upon the people of this country, and if this 'Saints' Bill' is allowed to pass, a much more stringent Act will doubtless follow."