A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers.

  • Chevers, Norman, 1818-1886.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    716/902 (page 680)
    the charge of felony was abandoned.* So, in this country, a lad, appa- rently about fourteen or fifteen years of age, was tried for a Rape on a girl of nine. He admitted the act, but asserted that it was with the child's consent. A woman, witness to the sooruthal, deposed that con- nexion had taken place. The Civil Surgeon's deposition was to the effect that a Rape was attempted ; but, from the tender age of the child, he did not consider it could forcibly have been effected.^ The prisoner was, however, convicted. In the case of a man tried for Rape on a child of three or four, the Civil Surgeon deposed that, on examination of the girl, he found specks of blood and laceration, from which he concluded that Rape had been attempted. The prisoner was convicted of an attempt at rape; but, the case being one of unusual atrocity, he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment -with hard labor in irons,—the usual punishment, on conviction for Rape, being imprisonment for seven years.| Again, iu a trial at Aziragurh, a lad of eighteen was convicted of an attempt at Rape, the medical evidence not sustaining the completed offence. The Civil Sur- geon was of opinion that a Rape was not effected, but he spoke to the rupture of the hymen, and to injury, from forcible connexion, having been inflicted on the vagina. Iu consideration of his youth and the slight injuries sustained, he was sentenced to the mitigated punishment of three years' imprisonment.§ It is difficult to perceive under what cir- cumstances the crime could have been held, in the above cases, to be not Rape, but an attempt to commit Rape, when it is an established principle of the English law that a sufficient degree of penetration to constitute Rape, in law, may take place without necessarily rupturing the hymen— the degree of penetration being quite immaterial; || and while it has been maintained, in India, that proof of penetration of the vulva, without rupture of the hymen, is sufficient to substantiate a charge of Rape.^[ On the other hand, I find, in the Nizamut Adawlut Reports of the North-Western Provinces, a case in which a person, apparently about eighteen years of age, was tried for Rape ou a child of seven. The evi- dence of the midwife and of the Civil Surgeon went distinctly to show that the crime had been Completed.** A second, in which the Civil Surgeon deposed that such marks of severe injury existed upon the per- son of a child of eight, as to lead to the opinion that Rape had been committed by violence.tf And another, where the sufferer was a child * Page 991. t Nizamut Adawlut Reports, N. W. P., 21st October 1853, p. 1326. J Ibid, 1st February 1853, p. 141. § Ibid, 7tb March 1855, p. 317. || Taylor, p. 991. «|| Nizamut Adawlut Reports, Vol. II., of 1852, Part 1, p. 548, and Vol. IV., p. 20. ** Nizamut Adawlut Reports, N. W. P., 5th May 1854, p. 474.