On March 5, 1986, some villagers in Malaysia beat to death a dog, which they believed
was one of a gang of thieves who transform themselves into animals to carry out their crimes.
The story was reported on the front page of the London Financial Times.
"When a dog bites a man," it is said, "that's not news; but when a man bites a dog, that is news".
Such stories, however, are apparently not news for very long. Indeed the most extraordinary examples
of people taking retribution against animals seem to have been almost totally forgotten.
However, if we turn to publifations from the turn of the century
you might notice a different perspective
-today, we look back at a time when animals could be tried in a court of law
I’m your host Ryan Socash and your watching IT’S History
ln 1906’s, an oddly titled publication: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment
of Animals by E.P.Evans, author of Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture,
Bugs and Beasts before the Law, etc., etc. sheed light on a bizarre practice that would be
unthinkable in modern times. - legal prosecution and defence of animals.
The frontispiece showed an engraving of a pig, dressed up in a jacket and breeches, being
strung up on a gallows in the market square of a town in Normandy in 1386;
the pig had been formally tried and convicted of murder by the local court.
it almost seems like a joke today…
[COURT ROOMS + ANIMALS]
No, it was not a joke. All over Europe, throughout the middle-ages and right on
into the 19th century, animals were, as it turns out, tried for human crimes.
Dogs, pigs, cows, rats and even flies and caterpillars were arraigned in
court on charges ranging from murder to obscenity.
The trials were conducted with full ceremony: evidence was heard on both sides,
witnesses were called, and in many cases the accused animal was granted a form of legal
aid -- a lawyer being appointed at the tax-payer's expense to conduct the animal’s defence.
[PIG + FRANCE] In 1494, for example, near Clermont in France,
a young pig was arrested for having "strangled and defaced a child in its cradle".
Several witnesses were examined, who testified that "on the morning of Easter Day,
the infant being left alone in its cradle, the said pig
entered during the said time the said house and disfigured and ate the face and neck of
the said child .. which in consequence departed this life." Having weighed up
the evidence and found no extenuating circumstances, the judge gave sentence:
We, in detestation and horror of the said crime, and to the end
that an example may be made and justice maintained, have said, judged, sentenced,
pronounced and appointed that the said porker, now detained as a prisoner and confined in
the said abbey, shall be by the master of high works hanged and strangled on a gibbet of wood.
[BOOK]
Evans' book details more than two hundred such cases:
sparrows being prosecuted for chattering in Church,
a pig executed for stealing a communion wafer, a cock burnt at the stake for laying an egg.
For an animal found guilty, the penalty was dire. The Normandy pig, depicted in the frontispiece
of the Evans book, was charged with having torn the face and arms of a baby in its cradle.
The pig was sentenced to be "mangled and maimed in the head forelegs",
and then - dressed up in a jacket and breeches - to be hung from a gallows in the market square.
[COURT ROOMS + ANIMALS]
Curiousy, In doubtful cases the courts appear in general to have been lenient,
on the principle of "innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt".
In 1587, a gang of weevils, accused of damaging a vineyard,
were deemed to have been exercising their natural rights to eat
- and, in compensation, were granted a vineyard of their own.
[gallows + pigglets with mom]
In 1457 a sow was convicted of murder and sentenced to be "hanged by the
hind feet from a gallows tree". Her six piglets, being found stained with blood,
were included in the indictment as accomplices. But no evidence was offered against them,
and on account of their tender age they were acquitted.
[donkey]
In 1750 a man and a female donkey were taken together in an act of “buggery”.
The prosecution asked for the death sentence for both of them. After due process of law,
the man was sentenced, but the animal was let off on the ground that she was the victim of violence
and had not participated in her master's crime of her own free-will.
The local priest gave evidence that he had known the said donkey for four years,
that she had always shown herself to be virtuous and well-behaved,
that she had never given occasion of scandal to anyone, and that therefore he was "willing to
bear witness that she is in word and deed and in all her habits of life a most honest creature."
[historic images]
What was the purpose of these lengthy and extravagant procedures?
A desire for revenge cannot have been the only motive.
Evans cites cases of inanimate objects being brought before the law. In Greece,
a statue that fell on a man was charged with murder and sentenced to be thrown into the sea;
[bell tower]
in Russia, a bell that peeled too gleefully on the
occasion of the assassination of a prince was charged with treason and exiled to Siberia.
The protection of society cannot have been the only motive either.
Evans tells of the bodies of criminals, already dead, being brought to trial.
Pope Stephen VI, on his accession in 896, accused
his predecessor, Formosus, of sacrilegiously bringing the papal office into disrepute.
The body of the dead pope was exhumed, dressed in the pontifical robes and
set up on a throne in St. Peter's, where a deacon was appointed to defend him.
When the verdict of guilty was pronounced, the executioner thrust the deceised pope from the
throne, stripped him of his robes, and threw his body "as a pestilential thing" into the Tiber.
Taken together, Evans' cases suggest that again and again,
the true purpose of the trials was psychological.
People were living at times of deep uncertainty.
Both the Greeks and medieval Europeans had in common a deep fear of lawlessness:
A statue fell on a man out of the blue, a pig killed a baby while its mother was at mass,
swarms of locusts appeared from nowhere and devastated the crops, the Holy See was
becoming riddled with corruption. In other words, the job of the courts
was to domesticate chaos, to impose order on a world of accidents -- and specifically to make
sense of certain seemingly inexplicable events by redefining them as crimes.
[Taiwan timelapses]
and as prideful as we might feel about our comparably
“enlightened” approach to life - a London newspaper more recently reporeted:
A jilted woman who attempted suicide by leaping from a 12th
floor window but landed on and killed a street salesman has been charged with manslaughter.
Prosecutors in Taiwan said 21-year-old Ho Yu-Mei was responsible for the death of the food salesman
because she failed to make sure that there was no one below when she jumped.
Ho had argued that she thought the man would have moved away by the time she hit the ground.
She also said she had threatened earlier to sue the salesman because "he interfered" with her
freedom to take her own life. If convicted, Ho could be imprisoned for two years.