History worth knowing
Britain Abolished Deodand to Stop Trains Being Seized
10 min
Under the medieval legal doctrine of deodand, any inanimate object that caused a person's death was forfeited to the crown as an accursed thing. The rise of deadly railway accidents in the 1840s forced Britain to abruptly scrap the law before entire commercial train fleets were seized by the state.
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Show notes
Examination of the medieval 'Deo dandum' doctrine.
Details of the 1841 Sonning Cutting railway disaster.
The role of Lord Campbell in the 1846 legal reforms.
How the rise of the railway forced the transition from deodand to modern tort law.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Doctrine of the Accursed Thing2 min
- 3The Railway Collision with Common Law3 min
- 4The Tragedy at Sonning Cutting2 min
- 5Lord Campbell and the 1846 Reform2 min
- 6Outro1 min
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