A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
WE were given two salutary reminders this week that it is illegal to dr6s up on a Sunday. In the course of what seems to have been a fairly hilarious session of the Ryde magistrates' court a casino manager was fined £2 for contravening the terms of the licence issued to him under the Public Health and Sunday Entertainment Acts; and it is pretty clear that he. would have got off less lightly had he not observed the condition, laid down in advance by the police, that Mr. Arthur English, the comedian, ' should not appear in his usual rather florid style of dress '; this would have been deemed ' property ' and would have been illegal. On the previous day the organisers of a tattoo in aid of ex-servicemen's charities in the North of England, which is to take place on a Sunday, announced that, for fear of possible action by the Lord's Day Observance Society, they will delete from their programme various historical items, as these would have involved the wearing of costumes and also, I suppose, the additional iniquity of false beards. We all take an affectionate pride in the streak of illogicality which runs through so many of our institutions (as long as it doesn't affect us personally); but this particular quirk of Sabbatarianism seems to me fairly idiotic, especially with the cinema and television offering uninhibited mass-entertainment every Sunday. A bishop may, and for all I know must, put on his mitre on Sunday. If in the afternoon he put on a sham mitre in order to impersonate one of his predecessors in an historical pageant, would he be liable for prosecution ? An interesting test case on these lines might be arranged; or the whole thing might supply the theme for an Ealing Studios film.
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