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When did the Riot Act come into force?
What does it mean to read the Riot Act?
Why was the Riot Act passed in 1715?
What was the Riot Act 1714?
When was the Riot Act repealed?
What does the preamble of the Riot Act say?
At the federal level, the principle of the Riot Act was incorporated into the first Militia Act (1 Stat. 264) of 2 May 1792. The act's long title was "An act to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions".
The Act allowed local officials to read a proclamation ordering illegally assembled groups of more than twelve people to disperse. Refusal to disperse was a felony offence which carried the death penalty. It is from this we get the phrase ‘reading the Riot Act'.
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Since the early 19th century we have used 'read the riot act' as a figurative phrase to describe attempts to calm groups of rowdies - along the same lines as 'you noisy louts, don't you know there are people here trying to sleep?'. It wasn't always so. Had we been 'reading the riot act' in 1715 we would have noticed capital letters. At that date th...
The punishments for ignoring the Act were severe - penal servitude for not less than three years, or imprisonment with hard labour for up to two years.
After the Hanoverians were established in power the Riot Act began to fade into disuse. It was read to a group of demonstrating mill workers at Manchester Town Hall in 1842, but was used with decreasing frequency and had become a rarity by the 20th century. Surprisingly, the Act remained on the UK statute books into modern times and wasn't formally...
The first record of the figurative use of the phrase is in William Bradford's Letters, December 1819:
6 days ago · An Act to prevent civil disorder passed by the British Parliament in 1715. The Act made it a serious crime for anyone to refuse to obey the command of lawful authority to disperse; thus the Act imposed upon the civil magistrates the dangerous duty of attending a riot, or a large meeting which might become riotous, and reading the Riot Act.
Feb 11, 2017 · The Riot Act was an Act of Parliament passed in 1714 (and not in 1715 as indicated in the Oxford English Dictionary – 3 rd edition, 2010), at the beginning of the reign of George I.
Sep 17, 2021 · The British Riot Act of 1715, or giving its official title An Act for Preventing Tumults and Riotous Assemblies, and for the More Speedy and Effectual Punishing the Rioters (Anno primo Georgii I. Stat. 2. C. 5.), was passed in the first year of the reign of George I.
Sep 18, 2013 · When does a gathering of people become a riot? In the United Kingdom it’s when local authorities say so, according to the 1714 Riot Act, the topic of the latest installment of the Documents that Changed the World podcast series.
