Protest Against Laws Authorizing the Sterilization of Criminals and Imbeciles
![handle is hein.journals/jclc4 and id is 336 raw text is: A PROTEST AGAINST LAWS AUTHORIZING THE STERILIZA-
TION OF CRIMINALS AND IMBECILES.
CHEALEs A. BOSTON.a
Good and wholesome laws. Some one's idea of the public, weal is
the excuse for every abuse ever committed by power! For example:
By the Act of 22 Henry VIII, Ch. 9, passed in the year 1530, after re-
citing that
The King's Royal Majesty calling to his most blessed remembrance that
the making of good and wholesome laws and due execution of the same against
the offenders thereof is the only cause that good obedience and order hath pre-
served in this realm.
It was enacted by authority of Parliament that Richard Rouse,
otherwise called Richard Cook,
of his most wicked and damnable disposition, did, cast a certain venom of
poison into a vessel replenished with yeast or barm, standing in the kitchen
of the reverend father in God, John, Bishop of Rochester, at his place in Lam-
beth Marsh; with which yeast or barm, and other things convenient, porridge
or gruel was forthwith made for his family there being; whereby not only the
number of seventeen persons of his said family did eat of that porridge, were
mortally infected or poisoned, [but] one of them, that is to say, Bennet Curwan,
gentleman, is thereof deceased, * * *
And therefore,
our said sovereign lord the king%, of-his blessed disposition inwardly abhorring
all such abominable offenses *
Ordained and enacted that the said Richard should stand and be
attainted of high treason; and because the detestable offense required
condign punishment, it was enacted that the said Richard Rouse should
be boilel to death, (which was accordingly done'), and that similar
aThe author of this article was educated at Baltimore City College and
Johns Hopkins University. He is now a member of the law firm of Hornblower,
Miller & Potter, New York City; Vice-President for New York of the Amer-
ican Bar Association, Chairman of its Committtee on Publicity; Vice-President
Society of Medical Jurisprudence, and Chairman of its Committee on the Law
of Insanity; Chairman, Committee on Judicial Statistics, New York State Bar
Association; member Committee on Efficiency in the Administration of Justice
of The National Economic League, etc., etc. Author of articles on Privileged
Communications Between Patient and Physician, and Laws. Regulating the
Practice of Medicine, and joint author of Mental Unsoundness in its Legal
Relations in Witthaus and Becker's Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic Medicine
and Toxicology. He has recently contributed articles upon the following sub-
jects to legal periodicals: A Codel of Legal Ethics (Green Bag, May, 1908) ;
The Spirit Behind the Sherman Anti-Trust Law (Yale Law Review, March,
1912) ; Some Practical Remedies for Existing Defects in the Administration of
Justice (University of Pennsylvania Law Review, November, 1912); Disbar-
ment for Questioning the Integrity of the Court (Central Law Journal, April,
1913); Work -of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the New York
County Lawyers' Association (Bench and Bar, December, 1912).
'Froude's Henry viii, C. iv.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jclc4&div=30&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Protest Against Laws Authorizing the Sterilization of Criminals and Imbeciles
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