London’s ancient cart marking ceremony | Hacker News Reader

London’s ancient cart marking ceremony

ianvisits.co.uk

64 pointszeristor18 comments

To understand how ancient this is, the Worshipful Company of Carmen's history began in 1272.

For US audiences, this operated as something like the DMV, hundreds of years before anyone had thought of such a thing. Over time obviously, these functions were taken over by a national government agency, but as the Worshipful Company of Carmen had had hundreds of years of history until that point, the traditions were kept in ceremonial form.

The whole area of this place is very interesting from a governmental perspective. You got the City of London which has its own governing and even police, and you got an area called Temple which also has its own powers historically.

This just had me reading about Livery Companies of the City of London for an hour. It's great that some history and traditions are kept alive. And now I can walk around the City and keep an eye out for their coats of arms on the buildings.

“I’d like a vehicle licence for my pet steam traction engine Eric.”

Perhaps one might get to see the mythical cat detection van?

Wot, it's got the word "car" crossed out and the words "steam traction engine" written in in crayon.

Luckily the Lord Mayor will be there to personally approve it:

https://youtu.be/8nmfRzRlhMw

Edit: A better video linked

This is from 2008:

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/cart-marking-287/

Just a rather barmy selection of vehicles, shouldn’t some be electric?

From the article:

> The range of vehicles can be anything from a Smithfield meat cart to old wagons, steam engines, and buses to the very latest in electric cars and lorries. It’s a very eclectic mix.

I love London

For every anachronistic ritual there is always some simpleton who believes it to still be legally important. I give it about a week until one of the "freemen" idiots gets ticketed for using a soldering iron to create his own wooden license plates.

I've been involved in a few Livery Company/City things, and I've never met someone like this. Some livery companies still have a strong connection to their trades and some do still even retain regulatory roles - for example the Scriveners and the Farriers.

Mostly the people who are involved view these things as a combination of a fun day out with the opportunity to meet interesting people and support some form of charitable cause (the older Livery Companies these days are effectively large charitable foundations).

There was quite a good documentary series about the City including the Livery Companies a few years ago called Stephen Fry's Key to the City (you might be able to find some of it on YouTube) - I'm not usually a fan of his but it actually gave a very good insight into it all.

Search youtube for "sovereign citizen". There are thousands out there who are obsessed with license plate issues, people who believe they can issue their own plates because "government" doesn't really exist or that all plates need to be signed with quill and ink. These people will latch onto any old ritual or tradition to justify their warped views.

Yes, but you are trying to connect a largely US-centred type of nuttery with an ancient UK ritual.

Indeed, you could consider the freemen/sovereign citizen thing to be an ancient US ritual (for definitions of "ancient" applicable to the US).

The ceremony itself is over 400 years old and its current form is about 170 years old.

If there are issue with it as you describe, it shouldn’t be too hard to link to a news story about one.

We don't have license plates. We have number plates.

the rights of the Freeman in the City are still very real

if you're drunk and disorderly and are a Freeman the police will put you in a taxi home, instead of in a cell

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