Note 92 — OF MURDER GENERALLY.

It is said that to act upon the mind by terror, continual griefs or vexations, though with the intent to kill, is not murder, unless there be some personal violence, 1 East. P. C., p. 225: but query this, the proof of the crime may be difficult, but its perpetration is far from impossible. To act on the mind of a pregnant woman by extreme terrors, and so produce abortion and death of malice prepense, would certainly be murder in its most atrocious form; it might require some ingenuity in framing the indictment; but our law is fertile in fictions on less worthy occasions, and ought not to allow its just vengeance to be avoided. In cases of murder by starvation there may be no actual violence, yet the law reaches this offence; sometimes indeed imprisonment forms a part of the crime, but this may not always be the case; for if the deceased were confined to his bed by disease, so that he could not seek his own food, and those who were bound to supply him maliciously neglected their duty, it would be murder by omission without any personal violence committed. See Self’s case, 1 East. P. C. 226: 1 Leach, C.C. 163, and authorities there. So in an indictment for starving a servant, Lawrence, J. intimated, that he thought the indictment insufficient, in not alleging that Elizabeth Williams was a girl of tender years, and under the dominion and controul of the defendant. Rex v. Eliz. Ridley, 2 Camp. R. 650. See also Regina v. Gould. Salk. 381.