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.

    729/902 (page 693)
    In his ruling upon the case of Sookoor Mahomed, cited at p. 690, the Judge of the Nizamut Adawlut, Mr. D. J. Money, observed : In a similar case of Bawool Saba, tried by this Court, on the 4th October 1843 (see Nizamut Adawlut Reports), the opinion of the Mahomedan law officer was called for before sentence was passed. He declared that the defence was punishable under the Mahomedan law, provided the hus- band had not previously had actual connexion with his wife, and the Court sentenced the prisoner to fourteen years' imprisonment with hard labor. Dr. Chevers, in his work on medical jurisprudence, has a note upon this case, see page 482 (now 692), where he states that 'from this and other facts, it is evident that the ancient law-givers of this country, in pro- viding for the early marriage of females, were careful to protect them against too early cohabitation. The practice of sending immature children to their husband's houses, which at present obtains, is evidently as much an infracture of the law of the land as it is a violation of the law of nature.' It is impossible to doubt that such cases must often occur, although the marital right may throw a shield over them, and pre- vent disclosure or discovery. It is one of the consequences of the perni- cious system of early marriages which, when followed by early co- habitation is, as Dr. Chevers justly remarks, opposed as much to the law of the land as to the law of nature. Whatever may be the popular opi- nion on this subject, the unnatural practice has not the sanction of law, and some restriction might be imposed, by legislative enactment, upon the parent to prevent his surrendering his child, at too early an age, to what can only be called the prostitution of marriage. I do not see by what right a girl of tender years is to be delivered over to a husband's custody and the rites of marriage before she is fit for their consumma- tion. In a case tried in 1857, at Jessore, where a wretch hacked his wife, a child of eleven, nearly to pieces, writh a dao, because she refused to have connexion with him, the Sessions Judge, Mr. E. Jenkins, observed : It is an abominable, cruel, heartless custom among the lower classes in this part of the country, to allow betrothed girls to go to their husbands, though of too young an age to cohabit with them. It occasions endless misery, and necessai'ily often brings on premature death to the wife, whose parents, regardless of consequences, seem to think their duty is discharged again. Several of the Lords, and especially the Bishops, spoke against allowing a divorce; and the matter was put off till the 3rd of May, when it was, upon debate, carried by 50 against 48 to reject the petition, all the Bishops being against a divorce, lest it should weaken the obligation of marriage.—The Annals of King George, Year the First, 1716. The whole Peerage might be gone through with similar results. Immature children were always separated for a few years. Still the practice certainly often led to disgracefully earlv unions.