BASTARDY. The offense of begetting a bastard child. The condition of a bastard. Dinkey v. Com., 17 Pa. 129, 55 Am. Dec. 542.
BASTARDY PROCESS. The method provided by statute of proceeding against the putative father to secure a proper maintenance for the bastard.
BASTON. In old English law, a baton, club, or staff. A term applied to officers of the wardens of the prison called the "Fleet," because of the staff carried by them. Cowell; Spelman; Termes de la Ley.
BATABLE-GROUND. Land that is in controversy, or about the possession of which there is a dispute, as the lands which were situated between England and Scotland before the Union. Skene.
BATAILLE. In old English law. Battel: the trial by combat or duellum.
BATH, KNIGHTS OF THE. In English law. A military order of knighthood, instituted by Richard II. The order was newly regulated by notifications in the London Gazette of 25th May, 1847, and 16th August, 1850. Wharton.
BATIMENT. In French marine law. A vessel or ship.
BATONNIER. The chief of the French bar in its various centres, who presides in the council of discipline. Arg. Fr. Merc. Law, 546.
BATTEL. Trial by combat; wager of battel.
BATTEL, WAGER OF. In old English law. A form of trial anciently used in military cases, arising in the court of chivalry and honor, in appeals of felony, in criminal cases, and in the obsolete real action called a "writ of action." The question at issue was decided by the result of a personal combat between the parties, or, in the case of a writ of right, between their champions.
BATTERY. Any unlawful beating, or other wrongful physical violence or constraint, inflicted on a human being without his consent. 2 Bish. Crim. Law. § 71; Goodrum v. State, 60 Ga. 511; Razor v. Kinsey, 55 Ill. App. 614; Lamb v. State, 67 Md. 524, 10 Atl. 209, 298; Hunt v. People, 53 Ill. App. 112; Perkins v. Stein, 94 Ky. 433, 22 S. W. 649, 20 L. R. A. 861. And see Beat.
A battery is a willful and unlawful use of force or violence upon the person of another. Pen. Code Cal. § 242; Pen. Code Dak. § 306.
The actual offer to use force to the injury of another person is assault; the use of it is battery; hence the two terms are commonly combined in the term "assault and battery."
—Simple battery. In criminal law and torts. A beating of a person, not accompanied by circumstances of aggravation, or not resulting in grievous bodily injury.
BATTURE. In Louisiana. A marine term used to denote a bottom of sand, stone, or rock mixed together and rising towards the surface of the water; an elevation of the bed of a river under the surface of the water, since it is rising towards it; sometimes, however, used to denote the same elevation of the bank when it has risen above the surface of the water, or is as high as the land on the outside of the bank. In this latter sense it is synonymous with "alluvion." It means, in common-law language, land formed by accretion. Morgan v. Livingston, 6 Mart. (O. S.) (La.) 111; Hollingsworth v. Chaffe, 33 La. Ann. 551; New Orleans v. Morris, 3 Woods. 117, Fed. Cas. No. 10,183; Leonard v. Baton Rouge, 39 La. Ann. 275, 4 South. 243.
BAWD. One who procures opportunities for persons of opposite sexes to cohabit in an illicit manner; who may be, while exercising the trade of a bawd, perfectly innocent of committing in his or her own proper person the crime either of adultery or of fornication. See Dyer v. Morris, 4 Mo. 216.
BAWDY-HOUSE. A house of prostitution; a brothel. A house or dwelling maintained for the convenience and resort of persons desiring unlawful sexual connection. Davis v. State, 2 Tex. App. 427; State v. Porter, 38 Ark. 638; People v. Buchanan, 1 Idaho, 689.
BAY. A pond-head made of a great height to keep in water for the supply of a mill, etc., so that the wheel of the mill may be turned by the water rushing thence, through a passage or flood-gate. St. 27 Eliz. c. 19. Also an arm of the sea surrounded by land except at the entrance.
In admiralty law and marine insurance. A bending or curving of the shore of the sea or of a lake. State v. Gilmanton, 14 N. H. 477. An opening into the land, where the water is shut in on all sides except at the entrance. U. S. v. Morel, 13 Amer. Jur. 280, Fed Cas. No. 15,807.
BAYLEY. In old English law. Bailiff. This term is used in the laws of the colony of New Plymouth, Mass, A. D. 1670, 1671. Burrill.
BAYOU. A species of creek or stream common in Louisiana and Texas. An outlet from a swamp, pond, or lagoon, to a river, or the sea. See Surgett v. Lapice, 8 How. 48, 70, 12 L. Ed. 982.
BEACH. This term, in its ordinary signification, when applied to a place on tide-
