Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Outlawry

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

A request by our producer Dave C, we explore how totally on your own you were in Medieval England when the court declared you an outlaw.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey Will, do you ever get overwhelmed by how much science happens these days? Constantly. I'm like, ah, there's so much science, I can't keep track of it all. Then it's a good thing our podcast, Part-Time Geniuses, is counting down the 25 greatest science ideas from the past 25 years. That's right, Mango. We're talking animals. In a paper called, quote, chickens prefer beautiful humans.

Right. This was actually the title of the paper. I like this. They all discovered that that much like humans, chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces. We're talking medical miracles. He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin producing cells using,

wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster. There's no way to make that not sound crazy. We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs. It's a week full of fact-packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the part-time genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years, starting Monday, March 3rd on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too sitting in for Dave. And this is a very special Short Stuff, Chuck, because Dave requested this topic so long ago that I don't even remember when he did. Yeah. Every once in a while a colleague will drum up the nerve to approach us very sheepishly with head bowed, say, what do you guys think about this idea? And Josh will wave them away and say, it shall be on the list in seven years' time. Yes, hence. Or so.

Right, give or take seven more years. We shall do outlawry. And we are, finally. So this one's for you, Dave. And it's a good idea, too, because most people think of outlaws as a specific, you know, like a person. Like Johnny Cash. Yes, exactly.

A lot of people think of Johnny Cash when they think outlaw, don't they? Yeah, outlaw country music, it's a thing. But this turns out to have been an actual legal... Standing? Yes. That could be applied to people that was not a pleasant thing to have applied to you. And it basically meant that, buddy, you're on your own. It was applied, at least in a lot of cases, to fugitives. But we think of fugitives today as people who the US

Marshal Service goes and gets. We talked about an Operation Flagship. That kind of falls under the same rubric. But this was a fugitive in that they were summoned to court. They decided not to come to court. And after a certain procedure, they were declared outlaws and that meant like the law no longer applies to them. All the protections that are afforded to you are gone.

And it does seem a little harsh, I have to say, for just failing to appear in court. Yeah. This is a long time ago though, so who knows what was going on back then. Sure. Mainly medieval England is what we're talking about, but the earliest kind of this outlaw status became a law in sixth century Frankish law called the De Lex Salica. This was under King Clovis, early 500s, so this is a long, long time ago, and this is basically like, yeah, if you don't respond to a summons, then you're outside of the king's protection. This kind of started

the legal basis for that, but medieval England is where it's sort of most known if you were over the age of 14 and you were a man, if you were a woman, you were said to be waived even though it was basically the same thing. But if you were over 14 and you were a male, you could be outlawed and basically say like you said, like, hey, anything you do or anything anyone does to you rather, like, we're not even going to prosecute them. Somebody could break into your house and steal your stuff and you're an outlaw, so sorry, TS for you. Yeah, and so like today, our conception of outlaw,

or modern conception, like say applying to Johnny Cash, like you said, or Jesse James, or even Robin Hood, they're not types to show up to a legal summons. So they definitely do kind of fall into that same category, but we kind of have it backwards, in that we think of those people as like they chose a life of crime outside the law, right? They're outlaws. But in reality, without lawry, the law itself has withdrawn itself from you and left you

outside the law. Kind of in a really catty turn, the law is like, oh, you don't recognize my jurisdiction over you, you're not going to come to court when we ask you to? Well, then fine. I guess you don't need my protections anymore either. Hence you're an outlaw. Matthew Feeney Exactly. And you mentioned a process.

There was a process. It wasn't immediate. It was a pretty slow process even. But what would happen is the sheriff of wherever you were would locate these fugitives. They would do some investigating, see if they owned any property that they could get to basically say like, hey, we've got your stash of chickens. Come to court, maybe you'll get those chickens back if that never happens and they can't get them to come to court or whatever Then the sheriff has to sit through this five different times in court Calling, you know the fugitive to come forward and after the fifth non appearance

Then they hit the gavel or drop the glove or whatever the heck they did back then and said, you sir are an outlaw. Yeah. And it was a big deal to be declared outlaws. We'll see. I say we take our little break. Let's do it. Come back and talk about outlawry a little more. How about that? Let's do it. Hey Will, do you ever get overwhelmed by how much science happens these days? Constantly. I'm like, ah, there's so much science, I can't keep track of it all.

Then it's a good thing our podcast, Part-Time Geniuses, is counting down the 25 greatest science ideas from the past 25 years. That's right, Mango. We're talking animals. In a paper called, quote, chickens prefer beautiful humans. Right. This was actually the title of the paper. They all discovered that much like humans, chickens are attracted to symmetrical faces. Got it. We're talking medical miracles. He's an endocrinologist who found a way to stimulate insulin producing

cells using, wait for it, the saliva of a Gila monster. There's no way to make that not sound crazy. We even talked to some of the experts behind these breakthroughs. It's a week full of fact-packed stories you won't want to miss. So listen to the part-time genius countdown of the 25 greatest science ideas of the past 25 years, starting Monday, March 3rd, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so when you were declared an outlaw, essentially the way I saw it written was that it amounted to a conviction as well as an extinction of civil rights.

So there were different kinds of outlawry. Just failing to appear in court seemed like outlaw light, spelled L-I-T-E. But there was also major outlawry, in which case you were really in trouble. Big felonies, treason, rebellion, big deal stuff could have you labeled a major outlaw. And again, if they did find your cache of chickens, those were theirs now. They could take them. Any real property you had, anything that was yours, they could seize and keep. And that's pretty standard stuff even still today. Like if you get caught with suspected drug money,

the sheriff just keeps your money and says prove it's not drug money. That's not like completely out of the norm. The thing that really makes outlawry very surprising to us today is anybody could come and take your property. Anybody could come and beat you up and kill you. And because the law no longer applied to you, there was no law that was broken when they murdered you. They weren't breaking a law. You had no protection any longer.

And that's the thing that makes it really kind of shocking as far as like a legal formality is concerned to us today. Yeah, and even if someone, you know, your neighbor didn't come and rob your house or try and kill you or something, if you had outlaw status, you were definitely not a part of the community anymore. You were totally ostracized and shunned. Sometimes it was just sort of the way that, you know, everyone shuns somebody, which is very quietly and passive aggressively. Sometimes it was very much official, though.

If they had an outlaw they captured, they could say like, hey, we're going to really ostracize you. We're going to send you to Australia. Have fun over there. Yeah, or America. Yeah. And you would end up being an indentured servant. And one of the other things I read about that, that was kind of interesting, that really drove the point home, it's not just like, I'm an indentured servant over here now,

I wish I wasn't. Like, maybe around your area, you might have some sympathetic friends that might hide you or bring you food out in the woods or something like that. In America or Australia, you might have some sympathetic friends that might hide you or bring you food out in the woods or something like that. In America or Australia, you probably knew no one. So you had no help whatsoever, and you truly were ostracized.

So that in and of itself was a big deal. Another thing that could happen to you too, is if the sheriff ever did catch up with you, like there was a very high chance you were just killed on sight, because it was a death sentence for you as well. Like they had no obligation to bring you in if they wanted to just kill you and get over with it,

the sheriff could do that to you. You were so close to saying oz-ter-cized. Oh, I walked right past that on purpose. Oh, okay. I'm kidding, I didn't, Chuck. Okay. It was a good one. I'm glad you pointed it out.

So, this was, you know, usually like real outlaws, like real criminals, even if it was something like not appearing in court. You said it was oftentimes a lot worse, but it wasn't always that. In some countries, I know we talked about it in our, I think we had a leprosy episode many years ago, right? Yeah. In India, if you had leprosy, you could be banned and ostracized and essentially get something akin to an outlaw status by being sent to a leper colony where you didn't have the same rights as everyone else.

I think they call leprosy Hansen's disease now, is that right? Yeah. But no one would know what we that right? Mm-hmm, yeah. But no one would know what we meant if we just said that, so. Probably not. A few people would. And those people were very satisfied that you just said that, you know? Yeah. And I knew the leper was not something that people say anymore.

No. Yeah. But yeah, I can't remember who Hansen was. I think we talked about them in the episode, too, but yeah, that was a long time ago. I'll bet it's a good episode. Haven't heard it in a while. Same. There were some ways to have your outlaw status revoked.

One of them was just showing up to court. Yeah. There was a specific court you had to go to. It was the King's bench in London. And so you had to make your way to London and you basically pled to have it removed. And I think that that was part of the procedure because again, so you had to make your way to London, and you basically pled to have it removed. And I think that that was part of the procedure, because, again, if you showed up to the court

that had called you in the first place, you might be murdered, and that would be that. So that was, I think, the initial part of the process. And there does seem to be, like, a pretty generous amount of forgiveness for, you know, lesser crimes, I think like that, where you just hadn't shown up. Especially if you're like, I'm sorry, my foot,

I twisted my ankle jogging, and I just couldn't make it to court, or, you know, my stupid cousin was supposed to take me, but his cart broke down, that kind of thing. The court would probably take pity on you and remove your outlaw status because now you were playing ball with them, which is the whole point of them conferring you an outlaw is that they, you hadn't in the first place.

What was really shocking to me is that this same stuff could be applied to somebody in a civil case. Like somebody's like, this guy stole my chickens, I'm going to sue you. And you didn't show up. You could also be considered an outlaw for that too. That's just nuts. Yeah, that is remarkable to hear. And it wasn't until 1879 that England revoked that part of their outlaw statute. Um, that it couldn't be used in civil cases anymore.

But as far as I know, and I looked high and low for definitive proof of this, but just from references I saw, it seems like there's still outlaw books or outlaw statutes on the books for criminal acts. Wow. Yeah. Let's get rid of those. So, do it. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, Dave, this was a great idea. Thanks for it.

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