From Wikipedia: Ugly Laws

Ouch - this is rude.

I suppose this applies to our look at equal protection.

- Click here for the entry.

In the United Kingdom, in 1729 punishment was recommended for people with physical disabilities, whether they were born with disabilities or acquired later in life, who appeared in public.

Ugly laws in the United States arose in the late nineteenth century. During this period, urban spaces underwent an influx of new residents, which placed strain on the existing communities. The new residents were sometimes impoverished. This meant large numbers of people who were strangers to each other now occupied closer quarters than they had in small towns, where such local institutions as schools, families, and churches helped moderate social relations. As a reaction to this influx of people who were impoverished, ministers, charitable organizers, city planners, and city officials across the United States worked to create ugly laws for their community.

The language of the unsightly beggar ordinances pertained to hiding the parts of the person that may appear disabled or diseased. This includes any movements that would indicate a disability or disease, like limping.[3]

The first American ordinance pertaining to preventing people with disabilities from appearing in public was one passed in 1867 in San Francisco, California. This ordinance had to do with the broader topic of begging. It is noted that people who were perhaps in need of money traveled to California to "strike it rich" during the California Gold Rush. When they did not find themselves wealthy, they remained in California. Letters and documents from the period just after the California Gold Rush note the large number of "insane" people wandering the streets. Helper (1948) even refers to the "insane" people as "pitible nuisance" and remarked that they were allowed in public with no one to care for them.

New Orleans, Louisiana had a similar law police were strictly enforcing in 1883. A New Orleans newspaper reported on the City adopting a tough stance on begging as other cities in the United States had.

Portland, Oregon enacted an ugly law in 1881.

The Chicago ordinance of 1881 read as follows:

Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, or an improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places in the city, shall not therein or thereon expose himself or herself to public view, under the penalty of a fine of $1 for each offense (Chicago City Code 1881)

The fine of $1 equates to more than $20 in 2018. In most cities, punishments for violating an ugly law ranged from incarceration to fines of up to $50 for each offense.

In May 1881, the unsightly beggar ordinance went into effect in Chicago, Illinois. It was created by Chicago alderman James Peevey. Peevey is quoted in the Chicago Tribune from May 19, 1881 saying of the ordinance, "Its object is to abolish all street obstructions." Ugly laws identified groups of people as disturbing the flow of public life and banned them from public spaces. Such people, deemed "unsightly" or "unseemly," were usually impoverished and often beggars. Thus ugly laws were methods by which lawmakers attempted to remove the poor from sight.