Outraging public decency

Outraging public decency is a common law offence in England and Wales, Hong Kong and the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria.

It is punishable by unlimited imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine. But in Hong Kong, as a common law offence, offenders can only be imprisoned for 7 years at maximum.

The first recorded case of the offence was Sir Charles Sedley’s Case or namely Sedley's Case (1663) 1 Keb. 620, 83 ER 1146; (1663) 1 Sid. 168, 82 ER 1036. Sir Charles Sedley was prosecuted for urinating on a crowd from the balcony of Oxford Kate's tavern in Covent Garden. Samuel Pepys' diary recorded Sedley's acts in detail:

Sir Charles Sydly ... [came] in open day into the Balcone and showed his nakedness, ... and abusing of scripture and as it were from thence preaching a mountebank sermon from the pulpit, saying that there he had to sell such a powder as should make all the [women] in town run after him, 1000 people standing underneath to see and hear him.

And that being done he took a glass of wine … and then drank it off, and then took another and drank the King’s health.

— Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 1 July 1663

Sedley's Case was the very first case brought to trial under the premise of regulating immoral behaviours. After hearing the case, the King's Bench established itself as the primary custos morum of the British Empire due to the abolition of the Star Chamber a few years prior.

Modern case law has established two elements that must be satisfied for the offence to have been committed: