A dissertation on infanticide, in its relations to physiology and jurisprudence / By William Hutchinson.

Hutchinson, William, active 1820

Date:: 1820

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dissertation on infanticide, in its relations to physiology and jurisprudence / By William Hutchinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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these to the case in question will not be recog- nized by the Court. He is supposed by the legal authorities to be sufficiently acquainted with the known physiological laws which relate to the subject under consideration, and it is his own interpretation of what he has observed that is here required. § XXI. It was stated at the commencement of this dissertation, that the destruction of the life of a child during the period of its existence, regarded in the foregoing views, was not in itself contemplated distinctly from homicide at any other epoch of life by the law of England, which attaches the penalty of death to this crime. But some statutes have been enacted, at different times, respecting the commission of this crime under certain circumstances, as, where the sub- ject is born a bastard; and it would, indeed, ap- pear that the legislature has not considered it probable that such a crime could be perpetrated, at least by the mother, in any other case than that just mentioned ; for it is to that alone all the peculiar provisions on this subject expressly relate. The murder of bastard children by the mother was considered as a crime so difficult to be proved a century or two since, when physiolo- gical knowledge was in a very rude state, that a special legislative provision was made for its pievention, by a statute passed in the reign of James the First, (12. c. 27,) which required LAWS AND LEGISLATIVE ENACTMENTS RESPECTING INFANTICIDE. Laws of Eng hud and Ireland.

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