time that it would procure abortion, and administered it with that intent, the case is within the statute, and he is guilty of the offence laid to his charge.
The prisoner urged that he had given the young woman an innocent draught for the purpose of amusing her, as she had threatened to destroy herself, unless enabled to conceal her shame; and the Jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
The prisoner had been previously tried on the first section of the statute[1] for the capital charge, in administering savin to Miss Goldsmith to procure abortion, she being then quick with child.[2] In point of fact, she was in the fourth month of her pregnancy. She swore, however, that she had not felt the child move within her before taking the medicine, and that she was not then quick with child. The medical men in their examinations, differed as to the time when the fœtus may be stated to be quick, and to have a distinct existence; but they all agreed that in common understanding, a woman is not considered to be quick with child till she has herself felt the child alive and quick within her, which happens with different
- [Footnote: bound to find the prisoner guilty. The jury immediately found the
prisoner guilty. The learned judge expressed himself perfectly satisfied with the verdict, and animadverted in strong terms on the enormity and cruelty of the prisoner's crime; public example required the severest visitation of punishment that the law authorised, in order to warn others against committing a similar crime, which unhappily was too prevalent. The sentence of the Court was that the prisoner should be transported for the term of fourteen years.]
- ↑ Whereby it is enacted that "if any person shall wilfully, maliciously and unlawfully administer to, or cause to be administered to or taken by any of His Majesty's subjects, any deadly poison or other noxious and destructive substance or thing, with intent thereby to cause and procure the miscarriage of any woman then being quick with child, the offender shall suffer death as in cases of felony without benefit of clergy."
- ↑ By the law of most countries this crime is punished with more severity if committed after the quickening of the child, than before. The Roman Penal Code made the same distinction. By the decretals of the canon law (p. ii, causs. 32, p. ii, c. 8), "Non est homicida, quæ abortum procurat, antequam anima corporis sit infusa."
