Cruelty

This word has F ifferent meanings as it is applied to diferent things. Between ‘hocba and wife those acts which affect the life, the health or even the comfort of the party aggrieved, and give a reasonable apprehension of bodily hurt, are called cruelty. What merely wounds the feelings is seldom admitted to be cruelty, unless the act be accompanied with bodily injury, either actual or menaced. Mere austerity of temper, petulance of manners, rudeness of language, a want of civil attention and accommodation, even occasional sallies of passion, will not amount to legal cruelty; a fortiori the denial of little indulgences and particular accommodations, which the delicacy of the world is apt to number among its necessaries, is not cruelty. These negative descriptions of cruelty are perhaps the best, under the infinite variety of cases that may occur, by showing what is not cruelty.

1 Hagg. R. 35; 8. C. 4 Eccles. Rep. 461, 489; Poynt. on Mar. & Div. c. 15, p. 208.

Cruelty towards weak and helpless persons takes place where a party bound to provide and protect them either abuses them by whipping them unnecessarily, or by neglecting to provide for them those necessaries which their helpless condition requires. To expose a person of tender years, under a party’s care to the inclemency of the weather, 2 Campb. 650; or to keep such a child, of inability.to provide for himself, without adequate food, 1 Leach, 137; Russ. & Ry. 20; or for an overseer neglecting to provide food and medical care to a pauper having urgent and immediate occasion for them, Russ. & Ry. 46, 47, 48, are examples of this species of cruelty. By the civil code of Louisiana, art. 192, it is enacted, that when the master shall be convicted of cruel treatment of his slave, the judge may pronounce, besides the penalty established for such cases, that the slave shall be sold at public auction, in order to place him out of the reach of the power which his master has abused. Cruelty to animals is an indictable offence. A defendant was convicted of a misdemeanor for tying the tongue of a calfso near the root, as to prevent its sucking, im order to sell the cow at greater price, by giving to her udder the appearance of being full of milk, while affording her calf all he needed.

6 Rogers, City Hall Rec. 62.

A man may be indicted for cruelly beating his horse.

3 Rogers, City H. Rec. 191.