Nuisances!

Here's what the Victorians found legally objectionable in their neighbours, giving you some idea of what 'zero tolerance' meant in 1879. Quite a nice insight into Victorian urban living, if you read it through. No mat-shaking after 8 a.m., for a start.

Nuisances. — A few of the desagremens to which metropolitan flesh is heir have been legally settled to be “nuisances”.

(a) THE FOLLOWING WILL be summarily suppressed on appeal to the nearest police-constable:

• Abusive language; Advertisements, carriage of (except in form approved); Areas left open without sufficient fence.
• Baiting animals; Betting in streets; Bonfires in Streets; Books, obscene, selling in streets.
• Carpet-beating; Carriage, obstruction by; Cattle, careless driving of; Coals, unloading, between prohibited hours; Cock-fighting; Crossings in streets, obstructing.
• Defacing buildings; Deposit of goods in streets ; Dogs loose or mad; Doors, knocking at; Drunk and disorderly persons; Dust, removal of, between 10 am, and 7 p.m.
• Exercising horses to annoyance of persons; Exposing goods for sale in parks.
• Firearms, discharging; Fireworks, throwing in streets; Footways, obstructions on; Footways unswept; Furious driving; Furniture, fraudulent removal of between 8p.m. and 6 am,
• Games, playing in streets.
• Indecent exposure.
• Lamps, extinguishing.
• Mat-shaking after 8 a.m; Musicians in streets.
• Obscene singing; Offensive matters, removal of, between 6 am. and 12 midnight.
• Posting bills without consent;  projections from houses to cause annoyance.
• Reins, persons driving without; Ringing door bells without excuse; Rubbish lying in thoroughfare.
• Slides, making in streets; Stone-throwing.
• Unlicensed public carriage.

(b) THE FOLLOWING WILL require an application to the police-courts:

• Cesspools, foul.
• Dead body, infectious, retained in room where persons live; Disease, person suffering from infectious, riding in public carriage, or exposing himself, or being without proper accommodation; Disorderly houses; Drains, foul.
• Factory, unclean or overcrowded. Furnace in manufactory not consuming its own smoke; Food unfit for consumption, exposing.
• Gaming houses.
• House filthy or injurious to health.
• Infected bedding or clothes, sale of.
• Letting infected house or room; Lotteries.
• Manufactures (making sulphuric acid, steeping skins, &c.); Manure, non-removal of; Milk, exposing, unfit for consumption.
• Obstructions in highways, bridges, or rivers; Overcrowding of house.
• Powder magazine, or keeping too large a quantity.
• Theatres, unlicensed; Trades, offensive (keeping pigs, soap-house, slaughter-house, or manufactures in trade causing effluvia, &c.).
• Want of reparation of highway; Warehousing inflammable materials; Water-fouling or polluting.

(c) THE FOLLOWING WILL require a summons in the County Court:

• Any of those nuisances next-mentioned where the value or the rent of the premises in dispute, or in respect of which and over which the easement is claimed, shall not exceed £20 per annum; or where damages in a personal action not exceeding £50 are sought to be recovered, unless by consent of both parties.

(d) THE FOLLOWING WILL require a regular action at law:

• Buildings from which water falls on to another house.
• Commons, injury to soil, digging turf, injuring pasture.
• Drainage, interruption of.
• Encroachments on highways, rivers, streets, or squares.
• Gas company fouling any stream.
• Lights, obstruction of.
• Party wall, paring off part of; Publication of injurious advertisements.
• Rivers, pulling down banks of; Right of way, interruption of.
• Sewage, conducting, into river; Stream, pollution or diversion of.

(e) THE FOLLOWING HAVE NOT been definitely settled either way, but may, under certain circumstances, be worth the cost and trouble of a trial:

• Church bell-ringing
• Hospital, infectious.
• Manufactory, near house, introducing more noisy machinery, or new way of working it; Music,  powerful band near house.
• Rifle practice; Rockets or fireworks, letting off, frequently.
• Sewage contributed by several persons, amount contributed by each not being sufficient to cause a nuisance.

Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879