Hast ever seen an eagle chain’d to earth? A restless panther in his cage immured? A swift trout by the wily fisher checked? A wild bird hopeless strain its broken wing

A poison’d sting in every social joy, A thorn that rankles in the writhing flesh, A drop of gall in each domestic sweet, An irritating petty misery, That I can never look on one I love, And speak the fullness of my burning thoughts?

Because workers' slightlymaimed bodies proved advantageous in the job market, charity reformers and thepublic alike assumed that people with physical disabilities (even those with moresevere disabilities than missing fingers) should be able to find work.1

The phrase "of course" is significant here. While thegrotesque language used to describe people with disabilities in Chicago's ugly lawimplies that disabled people had such a low status in the city that they ceased tobe human and instead were nothing more than "unsightly or disgusting objects,"the actual status of disabled people in this period was far more complex. DisabledCivil War veterans and disabled workers, for example, both commanded ameasure of respect and were an accepted part of the public realm. Freakshow performances were both legal and popular. Rather than conflating all dis-abled people, I believe lawmakers took for granted that enforcers understood thecategorizations of disability well enough that they would only use the ugly law asan anti- vagrancy measure. In 1881 itwas understood that the ugly law was notintended as a blanket indictment of all physically disabled people but would onlyeffect those disabled people who were unable to support themselves through theirwages or pensions.1

temporary misfortunes into permanent poverty, for itis difficult for one who has once been forced to seek admission to an alms-houseto ever fully regain his self respect.

However, both Peevey's memoand his ordinance (which says nothing specific about disability or "unsightliness")appear over a month after the City Council of the City of Chicago passed revisionsof its 1881 municipal code in which the firstversion of Chicago's ugly law ap-pears. Therefore they cannot be the origins of Chicago's ugly law.

Chicago's ugly law was aproduct of this system of revision without deliberation.

Four series of photographs, each with between twelve and forty five frames, show people with disabilities, naked, in various stages of locomotion.  There is a man on crutches walking, a man with no legs getting on and off a chair, a disabled child crawling, and a woman with an orthopaedic disability walking with the aid of a clothed attendant.

By arranging the photographs in this way, Muybridge positioned those with disabilities lower than those with ‘healthy’ bodies and just above animals.

As Nayan Shah haspointed out, studies of law and society in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century United States tend to isolate various forms of accusation,regulation, and prosecution from one another: vagrancy is understood as aseparate problem from sodomy, say, or prostitution, and the designation ofthe unsightly beggar never even enters into the lists. Yet the history of theunsightly as what Shah calls a “distinctive social body” is tangled with otherhistories

But we know frominternal records that in 1903, at least, inmates were not allowed to leave thealmshouse more than once a week, and the Board of Managers’ minutesfrom later years refer to strong charges of neglect, charges made particularlyby blind people (Touro-Shakspeare Almshouse Minutes). We know thatthe Shakespeare almshouse population had an extremely high death rate( Janice Brown, 47)

Like other petty behavior laws, theugly law emerged in response to new disciplines of the body in post–CivilWar urbanization.

First, New Orleans shared with Chicago and its sister cities that passedugly laws an open culture of disgust—particularly open, in New Orleans’scase.

Indeed, a historically particular conjunction of compassionand disgust in equal measure produces ugly law.

In this proposed exemption clause,war injury (at least in the form of single amputation) trumped industrial ac-cidents like being drawn into wool-carding machines; begging masculinitytrumped begging femininity; and the mayor’s mendicant or peddler per-mit system—which, as we shall see, coexisted (though not peacefully) withugly ordinances in many cities—overrode blanket prohibition. The ques-tion of fairness, of worthiness, was “left open.

“the second half of thenineteenth century lives in a sort of frenzy of the visible” (122). In late-nine-teenth-century America, a particular form of visibility gained attention,associated with the politics of identifying and controlling the “ugly.” Thisdisciplinary politics reflected specific social and economic developments.In the early 1880s and the years immediately before, the nation underwenta period of prolonged economic depression; many disabled veterans ofthe Civil War were still alive and aging; disabled foreigners were notice-ably present in the city, since immigration restrictions were not as tightlydeveloped as they soon became.

That same year, across the continent in New York City, one amputeeveteran proclaimed, “I have that mark, and so conspicuous, that all cansee it. . . . No man can say, that Allen was a coward and hid from danger”(Clarke, 379). Historians who have examined photographs of amputeeCivil War veterans note that the majority of men photographed enactedAllen’s principle in their poses, prominently displaying tightly pinned-upempty sleeves and pants legs (Figg and Farrell-Beck, 467–468). For them,being maimed seems to have constituted a badge of honor, not unsightli-ness. Though Allen explicitly distanced himself from the figure of the beg-gar—“There is no man who has lost an arm or a leg,” he insisted, “but canearn a good support with the limb left him”—veterans on the street mightstill exploit the right to say “I have that mark, and so conspicuous” whenthey asked for, or demanded, alms (Clarke, 385).

It was passed in 1867,significantly earlier than the 1880s and 1890s, when unsightly beggar or-dinances were in vogue

Doctors blamed overcrowding on the rapid development of cities, machinery, and industry. Many physicians of that time believed that industrialization created pressure and stress on individuals.

Doctors were also influenced by popular ideas of eugenics in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Eugenics is the misguided belief that controlling genetics could improve the human race.

However, individuals with disabilities-- whether physical or cognitive-- were commonly sent to "lunatic" and "insane" asylums.

The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public

Portland, Oregon enacted an ugly law.

An ugly law was enacted for the state of Pennsylvania in 1891. This law contained language applying to cognitive disability as well as physical disability

In the 1860s, many surgical procedures or antibiotics were not yet available, so amputations were often the only option.

His story was widely read and affirmed what people had been led to believe and wanted to believe: a group of people in our midst who will ruin the genetic strain if allowed to do so.

Anyone who looked or acted differently was feared

Throughout the United States, great changes were occurring as the rural landscape was being replaced with the industrial city.

averaging approximately 250 persons per institution in 1890 and over 500 per institution by 1905. In a relatively short time, practices shifted from compassionate education and training to segregation.

hese women had to be careful about being considered overly active due tothe risk to their reputations and several, including Mercy Otis Warren and Hannah Griffitts, whowrote political verses and plays, published their works anonymously.

Linda Kerber, "History", Women, 21

he traditional helpmate role inthe eighteenth-century included a long-standing gender expectation that women could act as a"surrogate" husband, allowing women to stretch the division between masculine and femininewithout censure.

Linda Kerber, "'History Can Do It No Justice': Women and the Reinterpretation of the American Revolution," InWomen in the Age ofthe American Revolution, edited by Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville, VA:University Press of Virginia, 1989):22.

ome of the more common challenges faced by Revolutionary era women werecaused by the absence of their husbands and male relatives and women responded differently tothe recruitment of their loved ones. Some resented their husbands for leaving them unprotectedto care for families, fam1s, and businesses while others encouraged their men to enlist andappealed to other women to let their men join as well

too few people actually think about this truism, and even fewer understand why it matters.

that conversations about international migration and refugee policies might benefit from historical context regarding migration patterns, ethnic cultures, nativisms, and restrictions that have shaped the peopling of nations across the globe.

We know that no phenomena or ideas exist “outside of history,” and that serious consideration of just about any aspect of public or private life requires some sort of inquiry into the past.