Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/486

 Inviolability of the Hitman Body.

447

last accounts the shield had recovered she had restricted him to one, she was held $25,000 damages, but the end is not yet. to be without remedy because the surgeon It is common law that a husband is thought the double operation necessary. entitled to have his wife's body inviolable (See 9 GREEN BAG, p. 136.) from the wily seductions or forcible attacks The absence of all malice and the evident of others. One court goes so far as to hold intention to be merry will not justify an that if a druggist sells her opium, and thus assault. As where one in sport threw a demoralizes her body, the husband has an piece of mortar at A and hit B. Peterson v. action against him. Hoard v. Peck, 56 Barb- Haffner, 59 Ind. 130; 26 Am. Rep. 81. In 2O2; Holleman v. Harvard, 119 N. C. 150; the " City Hall Recorder," which contains a 34 L. R. A. 803. But it has been held by the good deal of humor and scholarship on the former court that the husband has no criminal part of the reporter, we find in Volume I redress for an assault on her person invited at page 167, the case of Duffie v. Matthewby her. People v. Bushnell, 5 Barb. 156. son and several others, in the marine court, And that he cannot recover damages for presided over by Henry Wheaton, the head note of which runs as follows: "The captain a surgical operation upon her at her re quest, provided it is reasonably deemed and crew of a vessel on the high seas have necessary to prolong her life, although it no right to permit or excite Old Neptune to deprives the husband of a part of her body. shave a passenger and immerse him in a tub State ï». Housekeeper, 70 Md. 162; 2 L. R. of water, contrary to his will." The British A. 587. But again it has been adjudged that ship " Thomas " had no sooner begun to stir he may have damages of a physician who up with her prow the schools of cod on the brings a layman to her bedside to assist him in Newfoundland Banks, than the crew began her accouchement, this being regarded as playing those pranks customary on crossing equivalent to Clodius's penetration into the the equator. Refusing the demand of Nep mysteries of Roña Dca. De May r. Roberts, tune for " a bottle of cognac or rum," the 46 Mich. 160; 41 Am. Rep. 154. A wife has recalcitrant Mr. Duffie was seized upon by a corresponding theoretical monopoly of her the nautical masqueraders, shaved with a husband as against erring sisters or envious razor formed from an iron hoop, and then brethren who entice it away from her. So dropped into a tub of sea water. Duffie say the courts of New York, Ohio, Connecti had enjoyed the lark when it was at the cut, New Hampshire, Indiana, Michigan, expense of Ann Jones, another passenger, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa; but — it does not appear that the lady was Minnesota, Maine, Wisconsin and Tennessee shaved, — but objected that when applied to him the custom was unreasonable and are of the contrary opinion. But the husband's right to his wife's body invalid, that it was not such an essential incident of the contract of carriage that he is valid only as against interlopers; he can not imprison his wife, in the absence of her must have been presumed to contract with misconduct, nor compel her to live with him. reference to it, and that it was an assault and So it was declared in the celebrated case of battery not alleviated by the humorous Jackson v. Clithero, 25 Am. Law Rev. 254, intention. The jury gave him forty-six to the intense disgust of English husbands, dollars damages. The case is reported in who overwhelmed the columns of " The a mock-heroic and classical strain which is quite amusing. The legal view of practical Times " with their complaints. In the recent English case of Miss Beatty, joking is somewhat set forth in a note, 40 a hospital nurse, who sued an eminent Am. Rep. 591, annexed to the case of the surgeon for removing both her ovaries when playful gentleman who put gunpowder in