The Battle Against 'Charivari' Noise
When the city council of Vancouver, Washington, decided that raucous wedding serenades were 'disgraceful' to the public order, they took a stand against the tradition of the charivari.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The authorities of Vancouver are charivarized. The Council denounced them at a meeting last week as 'disgraceful to the city and contrary to the spirit and intent of its ordinances,' and they resolved that they, like other descriptions of disturbance, were contrary to city ordinance and should be suppressed. The city marshal is hereby instructed to arrest and complain against any and all persons who shall conduct or in any way engage in a charivari within the corporate limits of the city. Similar enactment should be made in every town in the Territory.
“The Council denounced them, at a meeting last week, as 'disgraceful to the city and contrary to the spirit and intent of its ordinances.'”
A charivari was a noisy, raucous mock-serenade often directed at newlyweds or unpopular neighbors. Vancouver's 1880 attempt to legislate away this communal disorder highlights the tension between informal community enforcement and the formalizing city government—a familiar dynamic in modern debates over noise complaints and 'quality of life' ordinances in growing cities like Seattle.
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