I begin with Public Hotels or Inns, because the rule with regard to
them may be traced to the earliest periods of the Common Law. In the
Chronicles of Holinshed, written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, is a
chapter “Of our Inns and Thoroughfares,” where the inn, which is the
original term for hotel, is described as “builded for the receiving
of such travellers and strangers as pass to and fro”; and then the
chronicler, boasting of his own country as compared with others, says,
“_Every man_ may use his inn as his own house in England.”[187] In
conformity with this boast was the law of England. The inn was opened
to “every man.” And this rule has continued from that early epoch,
anterior to the first English settlement of North America, down to
this day. The inn is a public institution, with well-known rights and
duties. Among the latter is the duty to receive all paying travellers
decent in appearance and conduct,--wherein it is distinguished from a
lodging-house or boarding-house, which is a private concern, and not
subject to the obligations of the inn.
For this statement I might cite authorities beginning with the infancy
of the law, and not ending even with a late decision of the Superior
Court of New York, where an inn is defined to be “a public house of
entertainment _for all who choose to visit it_,”[188]--which differs
very little from the descriptive words of Holinshed.