Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 11.pdf/257

 232

An English jury once found a watch-thief guilty, but recommended him to mercy be cause it was really very hard to say whether he had taken the watch or not. "Death by small-pox accelerated by ne glect of vaccination," was the decision of a coroner's jury; but for odd verdicts it is difficult to beat this one by a jury of our own country: "We find the defendants Not Guilty, but believe they hooked the pork." A shoplifter in Hungary — a Jewess of forty, who six months before her arrest for stealing had been baptized into the Roman Catholic Church — pleaded that she was le gally an infant and as such was not respon sible before the law. The rule of the country being that the date of birth figured from the date of baptism, the court sustained her plea and the six-months old shoplifter of forty was released. Can a child legally have two fathers? The French Parliament once practically decided that he could. Briefly the case was this : Monsieur Navre had not been long married when he went to the wars, and at the battle of Saragossa was left on the field for dead. Madame Navre receiving a certificate of her husband's death from his captain, and deem ing herself a widow, shortly married again; but on the day after the second marriage the supposed dead husband suddenly returned. There were hot words between the two men, resulting in a duel, where both fell mortally wounded. Navre survived his antagonist only three days. The unfortunate woman, now truly a widow, in due time gave birth to a son. With this young stranger arose the question to whom the paternity should be assigned. Upon this delicate subject medicine and law exhausted their science in vain. After much expense and litigation an appeal was made to parliament, and that body after considerable deliberation at length got out of the difficulty by decreeing that the boy should bear the names of both the dead men and receive the united inheritance. Quite recently it was my good fortune to

come across the following very curious story of justice in Spain. I do not vouch for the truth of it, but give it as it comes to me, merely remarking that I did not find it in a comic paper, as the reader might possi bly think; and that remembering Don Quix ote and considering how antiquated and peculiar arc many of the Spanish institutions, we may reasonably conclude that the story is, at any rate, not without some basis of fact. The anecdote is certainly an amusing one, and as it turns upon several remarka ble decisions, it may properly be incorpor ated in this article. A certain burglar broke into a house in Madrid one night, and crept up stairs to see what he could find in the way of plunder. He had hardly begun his search when he heard footsteps approaching, and to avoid discovery he darted across the room and took refuge on the balcony. Now the balcony had been considered by its owner more in the light of an ornament than as a hiding place for a heavy man, so the burglar and the balcony reached the ground together with extreme suddenness, and, for the former, with sundry uncomfortable results in the way of broken bones. The burglar, writhing with pain and anger, was picked up and taken to the hospital, where they succeeded in patch ing him up so that in a few weeks he was in a condition to depart. His first step after leaving the hospital was to bring an action for damages against the owner of the house. At the trial this gentleman admitted that the balcony had given away, but pleaded that he was not responsible for the non-ad herence of the ornamental but flimsy structure to his house. His plea was sustained and a summons was immediately issued against the balcony-maker, the guilty man whose care lessness had endangered the precious exis tence of the burglar. This man had left Madrid; but justice was not to be balked, a detective was put on his track and at length he was found in Valladolid, and brought to Madrid for trial.