Odger's English Common Law

302 JUSTIFIABLE AND EXCUSABLE HOMICIDE.
or even to do him grievous bodily harm ; and the death is
caused solely by mischance.
Such mischance may occur in many different ways.
(a) If the death be the result of a pure accident, no crime
is committed. But if the act or omission which caused the
death be one which any person of ordinary prudence ought
under the circumstances to have known would be dangerous
to human life or likely to cause grievous bodily injury, then
to do that act or make that omission is culpable negligence
and not a pure accident. Or, in the words of Sir Fitzjames
" An effect is said to be accidental when the act by
Stephen :
which it is caused is not done with the intention of causing it,
and when its occurrence as a consequence of such act is not
so probable that a person of ordinary prudence ought, under
the circumstances in which it is done, to take reasonable pre-
cautions against it." 1
Thus no crime is committed if, when a blacksmith is working with his
hammer, the head suddenly flies off through no fault of his and hits
and kills a by-stander. So if A. when walking down Fleet Street slipped
on a piece of orange-peel and lurched against B., who in consequence fell
and struck his head on the kerb with fatal results, the homicide is excusable.
(b) Homicide also is excusable if it be committed under an
honest and reasonable mistake of fact, provided the mistake
be of such a kind that, had the facts been as the prisoner mis-
takenly believed, his act would have been lawful.
Thus, no crime is committed in either of the following cases :
A. is alarmed in the night and sees a man in his house, whom he honestly
believes to be a burglar and therefore shoots. The man really was a
member of his own family.
B. administers to one of his children a drug which he has received from
& chemist and which he has no reason to suppose to be other than a salutary
medicine ; his ignorance of its true nature will excuse him, should it prove
to be a deadly poison.
But if a man fires at A. uuder such circumstances that killing him would
be manslaughter, but by accident hits and kills B., he is guilty of man-
slaughter. 2
(c) A parent or schoolmaster has the right to inflict reason-
1 Digest of the Criminal Law, 6th ed., Art. 231.
2 R. v. Gross (1013), 77 J. P. 352 ; 23 Cox, 455.
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