[analphilosopher] Keith Burgess-Jackson: Walter Woodburn Hyde on Porcine Justice

[analphilosopher at lists.powerblogs.com]

Posted by Keith Burgess-Jackson:
Walter Woodburn Hyde on Porcine Justice
http://www.analphilosopher.com/posts/1128911832.shtml


   One of the most amusing cases of the trial of a domestic animal was
   that of a sow together with her six pigs at Savigny-sur-Etang, in
   Bourgogne, France, in January, 1457. The charge against her was
   murdering and partly devouring an infant. The sow was found guilty and
   sentenced to death by hanging, though her offspring, partly because of
   their youth and innocence and the fact that their mother had set them
   a bad example, but chiefly because proof of their complicity was not
   forthcoming, were pardoned.

   (Walter Woodburn Hyde, =E2The Prosecution and Punishment of Animals and
   Lifeless Things in the Middle Ages and Modern Times,=E2 University of
   Pennsylvania Law Review 64 [1916]: 696-730, at 707 [footnote omitted])