Is it legal to kill your servant?

[Yeah Bee]

I got a question this weekend in a game og Trivial Pursuit (excellent game) When was it made illegal in the state of Mississippi to kill one of your domesticc servants, the answers was 1985, can that be true

[landie]

No.

[LordyGeordie]

It wouldn't surprise me if it was true. Law is very complex and very often old laws such as being allowed to kill your servant become superceeded by other laws, which make it illegal. very rarely is the old law actually repealed as courts, judges etc. just refer back to the most recent case/ statute. so although strictly speaking there was still a law existing which said it was ok to kill a servant i doubt very much whether prior to 1985 you'd have got off with it. You'd just have been prosecuted for murder under a different law, if you see what I mean.

There's loads of these antiquated laws which are still kicking about and haven't been repealed. My favourite is apparently, in Chester it's OK to shoot a welshman with a crossbow if he's found in the city during the hours of darkness.

Incidentally, in England there's no law actually written which makes it illegal to kill anyone. The crime of Murder has developed through tradition (common law) and precedent.

[ursula62]

Apparently so....

http://www.floydpinkerton.net/fun/laws.html

 

But where Floyd Pinkerton gets his info from who knows!

 

Don't believe everything on the web (or in TP for that matter) !

[PFD]

Another example is that until the last decade it was a tresonable offence to commit arson in a royal dockyard, with the mandatory punishment being hanging

[jenstar]

Arson in the royal dockyards ceased to be a hanging offence way back in 1972 - hardly "the last decade".