R v Instan

COURT FOR CONSIDERATION OF CROWN CASES RESERVED

[1891-1894] All ER Rep 1213; [1891-94] All ER Rep 1213

HEARING-DATES: 4 FEBRUARY 1893

4 February 1893

CATCHWORDS:
Criminal Law - Manslaughter - Neglect - Sick and helpless person - Failure to supply
food and medicine - Acceleration of death.

HEADNOTE:
A woman who lived alone with her sick and helpless aunt failed to provide her with
food, or sufficient food, and medical attendance, and this neglect accelerated the
aunt's death.

Held: the moral obligation to assist a sick and helpless person imposed a legal duty
not to withhold such assistance, and the prisoner was properly convicted of
manslaughter.

Case Stated for the opinion of the court by DAY, J.

The prisoner, who was unmarried and had no means of her own, was indicted for
feloniously killing her aunt, Ann Hunt, a woman of seventy-three years of age, with
whom she lived and by whom she was maintained. Until a few weeks before her death
the deceased was healthy and able to take care of herself. No one lived in the house
with or attended to the deceased but the prisoner. Shortly before her death the
deceased suffered from gangrene in the leg which rendered her, during the last ten
days of her life, unable to attend to herself or to move about, or to do anything to
procure assistance. No one but the prisoner had previously to the death of the
deceased any knowledge of her condition. The prisoner continued to live in the house
at the cost of the deceased, and took in the food supplied by the tradespeople. She
did not give nor procure any medical or nursing attendance to or for the deceased,
nor did she give notice to any neighbour of her condition or wants, although she had
abundant opportunity and occasion to do so. On August 2, while the prisoner was still
living in the house, the body of the deceased was found much decomposed, partially
dressed in her day clothes, and lying partly on the ground and partly prone upon the
bed. The cause of death was exhaustion paused by the gangrene, but substantially
accelerated by neglect, want of food, of nursing, and of medical attendance during
several days previously to the death. All these wants could and would have been
supplied if any notice of the condition of the deceased had been given by the prisoner
to any of the neighbours, of whom there were several living in adjoining houses, or to
the relations of the deceased, who lived within a few miles.

The learned judge left it to the jury to say, having regard to the circumstance, under
which the prisoner lived with the deceased, and continued to occupy the house and to
take the food provided at the expense of the deceased while the deceased was, as she
knew, unable to procure necessaries for herself, whether the prisoner did or did not
impliedly undertake with the deceased either to wait uponand attend to her herself or
to communicate to persons outside the house the knowledge of her helpless condition,
and directed the jury that, if they came to the conclusion that the prisoner did so
undertake, and that the death of the deceased was substantially accelerated by her
failure to carry out such undertaking, they might find the prisoner guilty of
manslaughter, but that otherwise they should acquit her. The jury found the prisoner
guilty.

NOTES:
Notes

Applied: R v Pittwood (1902) 19 TLR 37. Approved: R v Gibbins and Proctor (1918) 82
JP 287.

As to manslaughter by neglect, see 10 HALSBURY'S LAWS (3rd Edn) 715 et say; and
for cases see 15 DIGEST (Repl) 957-960.

CASES-REF-TO:
Cases referred to in argument:

R v Shepherd (1862) Le & Ca 147; 31 LJMC 102; 5 LT 687; 26 JP 101; 8 Jur NS 418;
10 WR 297; 9 Cox CC 123, CCR; 15 Digest (Repl) 960, 9289.

R v Friend (1802) Russ & Ry 20; 15 Digest (Repl) 1033, 10,150.

R v Marriott (1838) 8 C & P 425; 15 Digest (Repl) 959, 9280.

COUNSEL:
Vachell for the prisoner.; The Crown was not represented.

Solicitors: Irene & Morton, Kidderminster.

Reported by R CUNNINGHAM GLEN, ESQ, Barrister-at-Law.

JUDGMENT-READ:
4 Feb 1893

PANEL: Lord Coleridge CJ, Hawkins, Cave, Day and Henn Collins JJ

JUDGMENTBY-1: LORD COLERIDGE CJ:

JUDGMENT-1:
LORD COLERIDGE CJ:

(read the following judgment of the court)

It is not correct to say that every moral obligation is a legal duty, but every legal duty
is founded upon a moral obligation. In this case, as in most cases, the legal duty can
be nothing else than the taking upon oneself the performance of the moral obligation.
There is no question whatever that it was this woman's clear duty to impart to the
 deceased so much of that food, which was taken into the house for both, and paid for
by the deceased, as was necessary to sustain her life. The deceased could not get it
for herself; she could only get it through the prisoner. It was the prisoner's clear duty
at common law to supply it to the deceased, and that duty she did not perform. Nor is
there any question that the prisoner's failure to discharge her legal duty, if it did not
directly cause, at any rate accelerated, the death of the deceased. There is no case
directly on the point, but it would have been a slur and a stigma upon our law if there
could be any doubt as to the law to be derived from the principle of decided cases, if
cases were necessary. There was a clear moral obligation, and a legal duty founded
upon it; a duty wilfully disregarded, and the death was at least accelerated, if not
caused, by the non-performance of the legal duty. I am therefore of opinion, and I
express the opinion of all my brethren, that the evidence confirmed all that it was
necessary to show, and that the conviction was proper and must be upheld.

DISPOSITION:
Conviction affirmed.

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