Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/409

QUAINT EARLY ENGLISH SOAP LAWS. Bv L. G. Smith. THE making of soap was first begun in its manufacture were locked up by an excise London about the year 1542, that used officer as soon as the fire was damped or in England previous to that time having been drawn out after a boiling. The penalty for imported from the Continent. One wonders opening or damaging these looks was one that any manufacturer of concentrated clean hundred pounds. liness had pluck enough to set up his shop Officers were required to inspect the on English soil, so strict were the laws and premises at all times of the day and night, regulations which governed the business at and any owner obstructing this examination that period. At no hour of night or day was fined fifty pounds. The officer could was he free from possible visitation of a unlock and examine every part of the outfit limb of the law in the form of the Excise between the hours of five in the morning and eleven in the evening. Commissioners. During the reign of George III., 1760The penalty for privately making soap 1820, the laws governing the soap industry was one hundred pounds, and owners of were particularly stringent. Every soap- houses where it was done were held liable maker was required annually to take out a to the extent of two hundred pounds. If a license, for which he paid two pounds, and person withheld soap from inspection, he no person within the limits of the office of forfeited the same and was fined five hun the excise in London was permitted to make dred pounds. Every barrel of soap must contain two any soap unless he occupied a tenement for hundred fifty-six pounds avoirdupois, and which he paid ten pounds a year. That it was the intention of those early the maker was obliged to enter weekly in writing at the public office the amount of jurists to emphasize the close connec tion between cleanliness and godliness is soap made, with the weight and quantity of evidenced by the law no one in England each boiling. He was also required to keep outside of London could make soap unless .just scales and weights for use in weighing he paid his tithe to the Church and the the soap, and permit and assist the officer to use and test the same, on pain of ten poor. Certain duties were imposed on all soaps pounds; and if he falsified the weights, the made in Great Britain and all places for penalty was one hundred pounds. Verily the life of the London soap man making it were entered in the public books. The furnace door and the utensils used in was not a happy one.