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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
William styles was tried at the Oxbridge Assizes on charges of murder and arson. The evidence for the prosecution showed that Styles was the owner and manager of a shop with extensive storerooms, and that at 10 p.m. on the 21st June, Styles deliberately set fire to the building in order to claim the insurance money. John Doe, a storekeeper employed by Styles, was burned to death. No evidence was produced as to why Doe was in the building at that hour. The staff usually left at 6 p.m. though it was not unknown for members to stay later, although no instance of anyone staying as late as 10 p.m. could be adduced. Styles did not search the building before he set it on fire.
1 Horsey (1862) 3 F. & F. 287Google Scholar; Luck (1862) 3 F. & F. 483Google Scholar; Vamplew (1862) 3 F. & F. 520Google Scholar; Skeet (1866) 4 F. & F. 931Google Scholar; Serné (1887) 16 Cox, 311Google Scholar; Whitmarsh (1898) 62 J. P. 711Google Scholar; Bottomley and Earnshaw (1903) 38 L. J. N. 311Google Scholar; Lumley (1911) 22 Cox, 635.Google Scholar
2 (1919) 14 Cr. App. R. 110 and 160.
3 At p. 187.
4 22 Cr. App. R. 148.
5 53 T. L. R. 1046.
6 (1919) 4 Cr. App. R. 110 and 160.
7 29 Cr. App. R. 18.
8 [1946] 1 K. B. 74, 80.
9 Lumley (1911) 22 Cox, 635.Google Scholar
10 Turner, J. W. C., paper in The Modern Approach to Criminal Law (1945), p. 257.Google Scholar
11 22 Cr. App. R. 148.
12 (1919) 4 Cr. App. R. 110 and 160.
13 53 T. L. R. 1046.
14 29 Cr. App. R. 18.
15 [1945] 1 K. B. 74.
16 ‘If a person is engaged in doing a lawful act, and in the course of doing that lawful act behaves so negligently as to cause the death of some other person, then it is for the jury to say, upon a consideration of the whole of the facts of the case, whether the negligence proved against the accused person amounts to manslaughter, and it is the duty of the presiding Judge to tell them that it will not amount to manslaughter unless the negligence is of a very high degree. The expression moat commonly used is “unless it shows the accused to have been reckless as to the consequences of the act.” That is the law where the act is lawful. Where the act which the person is engaged in performing is unlawful, then if at the same time it is a dangerous act, that is, an act which is likely to injure another person, and quite inadvertently the doer of the act causos the death of that other person by that act, then he is guilty of manslaughter.’ Larkin (1942) 29 Cr. App. R. 18, at p. 32.Google Scholar
17 Franklin (1883) 15 Cox, 163Google Scholar; the unlawful act of taking a box and throwing it off Brighton pier did not ground liability for manslaughter when a person swimming in the sea was accidentally killed.
18 See n. 17, previous page.
19 Stringer (1933) 24 Cr. App. R. 30.Google Scholar
20 See Turner, J. W. C., Modern Approach to Criminal Law, p. 231et seq.Google Scholar
21 See footnote 1 above. In all those cases it was taken for granted that if the act Was not murder it was manslaughter.
22 The House of Lords considered the law of manslaughter in Andrews v. D. of P. P. [1937] A. C. 576Google Scholar, but that does not preclude the House from making a comprehensive survey of the law if opportunity arises.