The Law of Manslaughter.

Hastings Standard, Issue 367, 8 July 1897, Page 4

The Law of Manslaughter.

A DRUNKEN MOTHER OVERLIES HER CHILD. BUT IS DISCHARGED. Is a woman who goes to bed drunk and overlies her infant child guilty of manslaughter ? This abstract question came before the Victorian Full Court (consisting of the Chief Justice, Mr Justice Hodges, and Mr Justice Hood) on a special case reserved by Mr Justice Hodges at the sittings of the April Criminal Court. The accused, Mary Egan, was then (says the Australasian) convicted of manslaughter, but judgment was postponed through a difficulty raised by the learned judges at the trial. The evidence showed that the accused had a male child about 11 months old. On February 13 last she .bad been drinking, and was somewhat under the influence of liquor. In this state she weut to bed, taking her child with her, and in her drunken, or semidrunken sleep, she lay the child, which died from suffocation. The Judge doubted whether this amounted to an offence, but directed the jury to convict, reserving the question whether, as a matter of law, the conviction could be sustained. The Chief Justice, in delivering the judgment of the Court, said that the circumstances disclosed by the case did not support the charge of manslaughter. If the woman intentionally g°t drunk for the purpose of overlaying her child, as if by accident, with the object of causing its death, she would be guilty of manslaughter, but the mere getting drunk, as in this case, was not enough to warrant a conviction as a matter of law, and it would be going too far, under the circumstances, to find her guilty. The conviction was therefore quashed.