Punch (39.1860)

December 15, I860.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. m

QUITE IN LUCK’S WAY.

“An uncommonly likely place, that, for a Jack, underneath the Willows there ; and what's more, I don't think

any one has been here this morning to Disturb the Water."

A Bare Pack to give
Tongue.

Mr. Marsh informs
us that out of the voca-
bulary of the English
language, which now
consists of nearly a
hundred thousand words,
the generality of intel- j
ligent people contrive to !
get along with not more
than three or four thou-
sand. If that is the usual
consumption of an ordi-
narily intelligent person,
we should like to know
how many words does
the verbal appetite of an
average-minded M. P.
prompt him to devour
before his voracity is
satisfied? We should
think that a Member
with pretensions to any-
thing like wealth of
garrulity, was well worth
his thirty or forty thou-
sand, at the very least.
With Mr. Ayrton and
others, who are regular
Rothschildren of words,
it would be absurdly
impossible to compute
what they were worth.

Observation oe a
University Tailor.—
It is not always the gent
who takes the highest
honours that gets the
most credit.

SUICIDE AND MANSLAUGHTEE.

Yesterday, at an extraordinary meeting of the Society for the
Amendment of the Law, a paper was read by Mr. Punch, Q.C., on
the subject of “ Crowner’s . Quest Law.” The learned gentleman
began by directing the attention of the Society to the subjoined verdict
of a Coroner’s Jury touching the death of an unfortunate man who
j had died by his own act. The deceased, Thomas Bates, aged sixty-
one years, a cabinet-maker, disabled, out of work, and destitute, had
applied at the Shoreditch Workhouse for admission as an in-door
pauper. He had been turned away with an order of Is. 6cl. per week and
a four-pound loaf. This was all he had to live upon. He hanged himself.

“ The jury found—‘ That the deceased committed suicide by hanging : and the
;urors do further say that the act was committed while he was in a state of unsound
'mind, through his feelings being operated upon by being refused admission into the
workhouse of Shoreditch.”

Mr. Punch then reminded the Society that only the week before, in
the case of John Watson, sixty-three years old, starved to death in the
streets, another Jury had agreed to a special verdict to the effect—

“ That the deceased died from the effects of exhaustion and the want of the
-common necessaries of life, nroduced by exposure in the public streets, death
having been accelerated by the great neglect of the parochial authorities of St.
Leonard, Shoreditch, when the deceased was in a state of utter destitution and
without a home.”

With these cases before them, the Society would be prepared for a
proposition that an enactment should be framed for the better regu-
lation of the verdicts of Coroners’ Juries. If the driver of a locomotive
engine, or a railway guard, happened, by the smallest oversight or least
want of precaution, to cause the loss of human life, a verdict of man-
slaughter was returned against him. A surgeon who had the mis-
fortune to kill his patient by an error in judgment, incurred, in the
event of an inquest, the same impeachment. This was, it should be,
] on the principle which some gentlemen avowed, that punishment
should regard acts, and not motives. At least this was as it should be,
so far as it went. But it did not go far enough—on that principle,
everybody who had the misfortune to kill another ought to be hanged.
Hang misfortune. There ought to be no such thing as homicide by
misadventure. Hang unlucky individuals for the protection of the
mass; hang consideration; hang justice and all that twaddle! How-
ever, a new law would be required for this purpose: a law which
i would declare the accidental killing of anybody wilful murder.

There was this difficulty in the way of such a law; that it would put
and an end to the railways and abolish the medical profession. The
anxiety of gentlemen to enforce responsibility would deprive them of
engineers, guards, and doctors. As regards these persons it would be
best that the law should remain as it was. Unfortunately it generally
turned out that indictments for manslaughter iu cases of homicide by
misadventure could not be sustained, and the accused got off, after
temporary anxiety and incarceration, with mere ruin. An express
statute, therefore, might be passed declaring all acts whatsoever, of
casual omission or commission, resulting in any one’s death, man-
slaughter. The only objection to this step was derived from cases
such as those of the Shoreditch paupers of whom one died, and the
other was driven to self-destruction by the neglect of workhouse
authorities. The projected law might subject officials to a charge of
manslaughter for every wretched pauper whom they turned away
from the workhouse to starve in the streets. This would never do.
All law was primarily intended for the protection of the ratepayers;
and relieving officers and poor-law guardians should enjoy a special
exemption from liability under the new Act. He would add exemption
from liability under the existing law; for if coroners’ juries are em-
powered to return verdicts of manslaughter against careless railway
servants and doctors, they also have the right, if they choose to exer-
cise it, of sending negligent officials of workhouses, at whose doors lie
the deaths of paupers, to take their trial, at least, for felony.

Mr. Punch concluded by suggesting another alteration in “ Crowner’s
Quest Law.” He would ask—Did a man, who, knowing what he was
about, jumped out of a burning ship into the waves and perished,
commit an act of felodese? If not, what should his drowning him-
self be legally described as? “Justifiable Suicide?” Juries might
perhaps be allowed to return that verdict in the case of a pauper who
had hanged himself at once in preference to dying slowly of cold and
famine. Verdict of respectable Coroner’s Jury of the Future—
Justifiable Suicide! If you hold all suicide unjustifiable, you should
make starvation impossible.

Sir C. C.'s Last.

What Denison makes seems to turn out but ill:

There’s a flaw in his jell, and a dent iu his will.

Court of Probate. Cresswell Cresswell.

L_