CHATTELS FORFEITED

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 27, 1 August 1932, Page 9

CHATTELS FORFEITED

INSTRUMENTS OF DEATH

THE LAW IN THE OLD DAYS

Apropos of the recent,comment from the Supreme Court bench . in a case where there had been a killing, it is.of interest to know that in bygone years a chattel found to have caused the death of any person was forfeited to

the Crown,

Dealing with this subject in his book on the Crimes Act, 190S, Professor Garrow sets out that the old law was that any chattel found, by a jury to have been the immediate cause.of the death of a person whether by accident or by design was a deodand (to be given to God), and was forfeited to the Crown to be> devoted to pious uses. For example, it" a mail were run over by a.cart-and killed, the cart was forfeited1 as a deodand; so also if a tree fell upon a man, or a horse threw his rider and the man were killed, or if an ox gored a man and killed him, or if a person fell from a boat and was drowned. The chattel was valued by the Coroner's jury, and the township where the death occurred was held responsible to the officers of the :Crown for the value. Deodands were abolished in 1846.

Reference is made in the book to an interesting ease illustrating the old law as to deodands, which was decided in 13S8. Iu a tin mine in Cornwall a mass of earth fell upon a man and killed him.' In the belief that the whole mine should be forfeited the King (Richard IT.) gave it to two of the officers of his household. The inquest had found that the death was caused by the falling of a certain mass of earth. "This matter was a long time debated between the Sergeants and the Justices and apprentices as well, and at the last it was decided that the grant should be repealed and that nothiitg- should be forfeited except the mass of earth that fell."

Operation of the law as to dcodands in modern times would mean that the State would probably have a number of motor-cars on its hands.