Post by Catsmate on Jul 19, 2022 14:05:12 GMT
Another minor oddity from my collection.
The Caledonian Market and Market Overt
Market Overt, marché ouvert, is an old, medieval, and now generally rescinded legal doctrine that allowed objects of dubious provenance to be bought and sold legally at certain places and times and the purchaser to acquire legal title to them.
The Caledonian Market in Bermondsey was often referred to as the New Caledonian Market, having been established after the Second World War. The original marketr was in Islington, near the Caledonian Road there.
It started life as a cattle market but changed to a general market in the later nineteenth century.
In the twentieth century the traders began to specialise in antiques and business flourished for decades, until the closure of the market with the beginning of the Second World War.
In the post-war housing crisis the authorities decided to the use the Islington site for housing while the market moved to the dockland district of Bermondsey, reopening in 19502.
Under the law 'Market Overt' a number of designated markets, including Bermondsey Market, if an item was sold openly, publiclay and in accordance to the rules of the market between sunrise and sunset then its provenance could not be questioned, so stolen goods could be traded and good title would pass to the purchaser.
A fascinating legal quick, that has survived to relatively recently.
Game Use.
Obviously the most likely way for the matter to come up in play, other than a trawl by the Misfit Mob of the Caledonian Market for outré objects, is attempting to reclaim some objet d'art but being frustrated by the posessor managing to assert legal title. And what is the objet d'art? Why strange powers does it posess? That's up to the GM.
1. The act was intended specifically to abolish the concept, after an incident in 1992 when two valuable stolen paintings (two portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and one by Sir Joshua Reynolds, total value of around ten million pounds at the time) were sold by a stall-holder at Bermondsey Market for about one hundred pounds. The buyer received legal title to, and owndership of, the paintings.
2. It's still there.