Commonwealth v. Carroll

Decided January 2, 1878

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1878-01-02

Indictment, under the Gen. Sts. c. 87, § 6, for keeping and maintaining a tenement in .Woburn, used for the illegal sale and illegal keeping of intoxicating liquors, the same being a common nuisance. Trial in the Superior Court, before Pitman, J., who allowed a bill of exceptions in substance as follows : The evidence tended to show a sale of several glasses of ale by the defendant’s wife on a single occasion, in his presence.

Relies on Commonwealth v. Barry · Commonwealth v. Wood · Commonwealth v. Kennedy

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1878-01-02

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently February 1927

6 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Ames, J.

¶1We find no error in the rulings of the presiding judge. It is true that the dwelling-house was the property of the wife, but it was also the domicil of the family, and as such was under the legal control of the defendant, who was the head of the family. Commonwealth v. Wood, 97 Mass. 225. Commonwealth v. Kennedy, 119 Mass. 211. The statutes which have been passed to enlarge the rights and privileges of married women have made no change in the law in that respect. Commonwealth v. Barry, 115 Mass. 146. Primd facie, the husband *32is able to prevent the wife from making an illegal use of the family dwelling-house. The jury were instructed that, if the circumstances were such that they believed he did not in fact permit and suffer such use, he could not be convicted. This instruction was all that, upon this point, the case required.

¶2Exceptions overruled.