Animals on trial

WHAT A SWINE

Crime: Pig kills a child

Sentence: Hanged

Of all the animals brought before the court throughout the ages, none appears so often as the pig.
In one such example, from 1494, a hog was arrested near Clermont in France for having
“strangled and defaced a child in its cradle”. Multiple witnesses claimed the porker let itself into
the house and “disfigured and ate the face and neck of the said child”. The judge found the swine
guilty and sentenced it to be hanged.

FALLING FOWL OF THE LAW

Crime: Cockerel lays an egg

Sentence: Burned to death

In 1474, the Swiss city of Basel bore witness to a satanic atrocity – a cockerel committing “the
heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg”. Deemed an act of heresy, the rooster was
condemned to be burned alive at a judicial hearing. A sombre crowd gathered for the feathered
heathen’s immolation, with it being treated as seriously as the execution of a human heretic.

MONKEY BUSINESS

Crime: Primate acts as a French spy, supposedly

Sentence: Hanged

During the Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815), anything French was treated with suspicion in Britain.
So after a French ship wrecked off the coast of Hartlepool and the sole survivor made it into
town, the locals were concerned he was a spy. Even though he was a monkey. According to local
legend, the townsfolk held an impromptu trial, found the primate guilty and hanged him. Though
the
story may be apocryphal, Hartlepudlians are still known today as the ‘Monkey Hangers’.