An Act to amend an Act for punishing idle and disorderly Persons and Rogues and Vagabonds.
Citation
1 & 2 Vict. c. 38
Territorial extent
Great Britain
Dates
Royal assent
27 July 1838
Other legislation
Amends
Vagrancy Act 1824
Amended by
Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981
Status: Repealed
The Vagrancy Act 1838 (1 & 2 Vict. c. 38) was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It amended the Vagrancy Act 1824 to provide that any person discharged from custody pending an appeal against a conviction under that Act who did not then reappear to prosecute the appeal could be recommitted. It also provided that the penalty established by that Act for exposing indecent prints in a street or highway would extend to those who exposed the same material in any part of a shop or house.[2]
This latter part of the Act was to prove significant in a number of prosecutions of artists for allegedly exhibiting obscene works of art, even when those exhibitions took place in a private space such as an art gallery. One of the most notorious successful prosecutions of an artist under the act was in 1929, when thirteen paintings by D. H. Lawrence at the Warren Gallery, London, were seized by the police. A ban was placed on the paintings being shown in England, which is technically still in force, but they were shown again in London in December 2003.[3]
The last artist to be successfully prosecuted under the 1838 Act was Stass Paraskos in 1966, following a police raid on an exhibition of Paraskos's work at Leeds College of Art. Again a ban was placed on showing the offending paintings and drawings in England, which is also still legally valid. However one of the paintings was shown at Leeds City Art Gallery in 1993,[4] and again at Scarborough Art Gallery in 2000, and several others are now owned by the Tate Gallery, London.[5] In 1969 a total of 35 people were prosecuted under section 2 of the Act and section 4 of the 1824 Act for acts of public display of obscene images in shop windows and exhibitionism.
Although aspects of the Act had been repealed in a piecemeal fashion by subsequent legislation, the full Act was formally repealed in 1981 by the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981 (c. 42), partly due to the lack of clarity in distinguishing between indecency and obscenity.
[6] For example the advertising of contraceptives was considered obscene from 1857, but fell under the ambit of the new act of 1981.
^The citation of this Act by this short title was authorised by the Short Titles Act 1896, section 1 and the first schedule. Due to the repeal of those provisions it is now authorised by section 19(2) of the Interpretation Act 1978.
^The British Almanac of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, for the year 1839. The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, London, 1839.
^Demetriou, Danielle (4 December 2003). "Obscene art of D. H. Lawrence goes on show after 70-year ban". The Independent.
^Perrie, Robbin (24 November 1993). "Banned Painting Goes on Display". The Yorkshire Evening Post.
^Benedict Read; David Thistlewood, eds. (1993). Herbert Read: A British Vision of World Art. London: Lund Humphries. p. 18.
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charged under Section 4 of VagrancyAct 1824 and Section 2 of the VagrancyAct1838, and under the Obscene Publications Act 1959. Following this, Paraskos...
be successfully prosecuted for showing obscene paintings under the VagrancyAct1838. 1968: The inaugural exhibition in the Nash building The Obsessive...
Lawrence from a Mayfair gallery on grounds of indecency under the VagrancyAct1838. 11 July – Gillingham Fair fire disaster kills nine boys and six men...
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Director of Public Prosecutions under the Vagrancy Acts of 1828 and 1837, and the Obscene Publications Act 1959. When the exhibition opened it was allegedly...
idle and ungodly life and company". UK immigration law UK labour law VagrancyAct 1824 s 4, contained the offence of telling fortunes Raithby, John, ed...
to one month at the house of correction in Brixton, Surrey, under the VagrancyAct 1824. Dando spent some time in solitary confinement after he stole bread...
Britain into surrender, but again was unsuccessful. Canada Corn Act 1843 VagrancyAct 1824 - catch-all legislation that criminalised destitution in the...
the Transportation Act 1717. In 1597, a session of Parliament was called to deal with the issues of increased poverty and vagrancy, among other things...
contract with white farmers by January 1 of each year or face punishment for vagrancy. Blacks could be sentenced to forced labor for crimes including petty theft...
taken, lyke as it were extorcion or bribery'. See Inclosure Acts and VagrancyAct 1547. cf T More, Utopia (1516) Book I, "wherever it is found that the...
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