Odger's English Common Law

398 ARSON.
any private building with, intent to injure or defraud any
person, any station, engine-house, &c, belonging to any
railway, port, dock, harbour, &c, or any public building, is
felony punishable with penal servitude for life. 1 The same
punishment can be given to any person who causes explosions
which are likely to endanger life or do serious injury to
property, whether or not such consequences do in fact occur. 2
To unlawfully and maliciously set fire to any other building
is felony, punishable with penal servitude for fourteen years. 8
The act must be done unlawfully and maliciously. If the
house be set on fire owing to negligence, however gross, on
the part of the prisoner, the offence is not arson. But if he
caused the conflagration by his recklessness, not caring whether
the house was set on fire or not, an indictment will lie.
A man may be convicted of arson [for setting fire to his
own house. In such a case the prosecution must prove that
he did so with intent to defraud somebody, e.g., by showing
that the house was insured. On this issue evidence is also
admissible that houses previously owned and insured by the
prisoner had been burnt down. If the accused wilfully set
fire to his own house and the fire extend to the house of his
neighbour, he is guilty of arson.* Again, he is guilty of
arson if, intending to set fire to the house of one person, he
accidentally set fire to that of another. 5
If a married woman
set fire to her husband's house with intent to injure him,
she could not at common law be convicted of arson. But
now, by section 16 of the Married Women's Property Act,
1882, 6—at all events in some cases—she can.
If the accused set fire to anything " in, under or against any
building under such circumstances that, if the building were
thereby set on fire, the offence would amount to felony, "he is
guilty of felony punishable with penal servitude for fourteen
1 24 & 25 Vict. c. 97, ss. 1—5. See the indictment No. 1, in the Appendix.
' 46 & 47 Vict. o. 3, 8. 2 ; and see as to explosives generally 24 & 25 Vict. c. 97,
ss. 9, 10, 45, 64, 55 ; as;to placing in or against ajletter-box or sending by post any
explosive, dangerous or)[deleterious substance, see the Post Office Act, 1908 (8 Edw. VII.
i-. 48), ss. 61,63.
» 24 & 25 Vict. o. 97, s. 6.
' Isaac's Case (1800), 1 East, P. 0. 1030, 1031.
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1 Hale, 669.
45 & 46 Vict. c. 75.