Ugly law

Ugly laws also sometimes known as unsightly beggar laws were a type of local ordinance enacted in a number of U.S. communities beginning in the mid 19th century. Advocates of such laws generally presented them as tools to keep "ugly people" - those who were "diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any other way deformed" as one put it. Such laws are the subject of a 2009 book by Susan Schweik.