The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public

In “Where the Streets Have No Name,” one of the most famous songs in the past 30 years, the band U2 sings of an idealistic world devoid of socioeconomic and demographic divisions. The lyrics call for having nameless streets, thus “tearing down walls” and having a place where boundaries are erased. In sharp contrast, there are the streets in America where, from the late 19th through the mid-20th century, individuals with disabilities were prohibited by law from begging or even remaining in the street. In The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public, Susan M. Schweik, Professor of English and co-director of the Disability Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley, provides a thorough history of these ugly laws and offers the context that allowed for their creation and sustainment, including a discussion of other relevant social movements, mendicant literature, and concepts of society and class.

Starting in San Francisco in 1867 (and ending in Los Angeles in 1913), several municipalities and states passed laws making it illegal for a person with a disability to solicit alms in public places. What was determined to be a disability ranged from exhibiting “physical and mental deformities” (p 55) to having a body that is “deformed, mutilated, imperfect or has been reduced by amputations, or [being an individual] who is idiotic or imbecile ” (p 56). Schweik produces a convenient appendix of these laws.

Her broad aim in this book was to discuss the American concept of disability in public from the late 19th to early 20th century and how disability was iconographic in controlling the poor and less fortunate. From a legal perspective, one of her more specific stated aims was to “illuminate the conditions of disability—and municipal law's constitution of those conditions—in the late nineteenth century and at the century's turn, so as to better understand law, culture, and disability in the present” (p 2). She succeeded in attaining the first half of her goal, but unfortunately, she fell short in reaching the second. She goes into great detail about society's previous treatment of those with disabilities—such as the role of charity organizations and institutions in using the law to control the city space and comparing mistreatment based on disability status to that based on racial and ethnic minority status; however, her discussion of the law's role in how we are to understand disability today is lacking.

Although this book is meant for those who study the history of disability, it can be very valuable for those attempting to understand the role of law and how it can unjustly deny individuals with disabilities, not only rights, but dignity and socioeconomic mobility. For example, Schweik astutely observes that tort law (and its development at the turn of the 19th century) led to an increase in alms-seeking by redefining negligence in favor of the employer, thus providing workers with disabilities less legal recourse. In turn, a desire by localities to control their developing streets permitted the use of ordinances that prevented the unsightly (read, disabled) beggar from seeking assistance from others publicly, thus preventing those with disabilities from improving their economic status.

There is a brief discussion of the courts' handling of the ugly laws. Schweik found no direct legal challenges to these ordinances. As she observed, this failure by the legal community to challenge the laws was probably due to the protective and benevolent nature of the laws (the thought that those with disabilities should be recipients of charity from organizations and institutions and not in the street) and the assumption at the time that only able-bodied individuals were protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States.

One of Schweik's most shocking findings was an 1877 New York case that held that simply displaying one's disability in public (without even speaking) constituted begging and a violation of the state's law (p 217).¹ She does not blame the legal community for what appears to be apathy and even possible hostility toward individuals with disabilities. Yet after reading about the legal system's consistent lack of regard for those who experience this type of invidious discrimination, one comes to realize the strength of the social factors—explained by the author in such great detail—that led to the enactment and enforcement of the ugly laws. While there is not much analysis by her as to how these factors, sentiments, and old laws play out today in the realm of disability law and disability rights, the book provides an excellent discussion of history to aid in understanding them in their own time.

• © 2013 American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law