The Ugly Laws, also known as the “unsightly beggar ordinances” prohibited ‘unsightly’ people, beggars, and people with disabilities from visiting public spaces. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these laws were introduced in cities across America. “No person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object or improper person to be allowed in or on the public places in this city, or shall therein or thereon expose himself to public view.” (City of Chicago Ordinance, 1911) Many states’ ugly laws were not repealed until the mid 1970s. Chicago was the last to repeal its Ugly Law as late as 1974.

The author Susan Schweik calls this time (the period from 1867-1920) “the era of the unsightly”. It was the time in which the Ugly Laws were drafted and introduced. It was also the time, which saw the rise of eugenics. State institutions concerned themselves with new pressures in respect to behavior in the city but also with the development of modern urban planning. “Deformed” people were seen as problems that would have to be managed as much as architecture or street layout. (Schweik 2009: 67) Chicago became a model of modern city planning and an important example of the era of the City Beautiful. “Disability disturbed the sense of self not only in the U.S. contexts, in pre-modern and modernized contexts in special ways, where biopower and institutionalization identifies something like an abnormal group vs. norm in an ongoing conflict and negotiation.”(Schweik 2009: 67) (EE)

Sources:
Schweik, Susan (2009), The Ugly Laws, Disability in Public, New York/London: New York University Press.