A Select committee of 1816 defined a number of standards which in the end led to the Imperial system. It made a number of recommendations and this was one of them: Quote 12. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee, That it ought to be penal for any person to have in his possession any Measure or Weight that is not agreeable to the aforesaid standards. Unquote Penal for ANY PERSON to possess an illegal weight or measure! This means that not only shopkeepers and traders, but everybody could go to jail if he or she had a meter stick or kilogram in the home! This would be something for the BWMA to think of. This is much more draconian than the British (or any other)law is at present. There has never been freedom of choice in this matter for use in trade, and rightly so! Han
