ONCE UPON A TIME

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 62, 6 December 1930, Page 27

ONCE UPON A TIME

, Animals were Tried for Murder

If the bull that recently gored a farm labourer to death.. had done the same thing two or thrge hundred years ago It would have been promptly arrested and tried for homicide; History abounds with Instances of the indictment, trial, sentence to death, and execution of animals that had caused the death 'of ’-human beings. This was in many cases that “an example may be made and justice maintained.” The practice apparently grew out, of the belief that animals were intelligent, and, therefore, morally responsible for their acts. The animals were summoned to appear at the court, and were provided with counsel to defend them, while the prosecution was conducted by trained lawyers. ■ ' • In 1457, at Clermon-lez-Montcornet, in France, a sow was convicted of “murder flagrantly committed on the person of Jehan Martin, aged, five, the son of Jehan Martin, of Savigny.” The sow’s six sucklings, .were also prosecuted as accomplices.. Witnesses were called and gave evidence on oath. The sow was sentenced, to be hanged by. the hind feet from a tree or gibbet. The sucklings escaped the same fate because there was not sufflcient evidence that they had assisted in the destruction of the child. They were

released bn bail on the undertaking of their owner that they would , come up foi trial if further evidence was found of their participation in their mother’s crime.

.' In 1499 the bailiff of the Abbey of Beaupre sentenced to death by hanging from a tree or gallows a red-coated bull for “ferociously killing and putting to death” Lucas Dupont, a boy farm labourer, aged fourteen.

In 1606, at Chartres, Guillaume Guyart was sentenced to be hanged, and his body ordered to be burned, together with that of a dog which was to be slaughtered by the executioner before Guyart was hanged. - In 1621 a cow was sentenced as “a loathsome creature” to “be shot or otherwise slaughtered” and placed in an uncovered grave for killing a woman near Leipzig. Sentences were sometimes commuted. In 1379 Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, reprieved- and pardoned two herds of swine which had been connemned to death as accomplices of three sows found guilty of infanticide. In 1750, in France, a she-ass which had been condemned to death was pardoned because of her former good character.

Appeals to higher courts were made and resulted sometimes in an acquittal arid sometimes in a modifica,tion of the sentence. —“Sunday Express.”