Sometimes a fine was imposed upon the owner of the offending animal, as was the case with Jehan Delalande and his wife, who were condemned, on the 18th of April, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat near Chartres, to pay a fine of eighteen francs and to be confined in prison until this sum should be paid, “on account of the murder of a child named Gilon, aged five and a half years or thereabouts, perpetrated by a porker, aged three months or thereabouts.” The pig was condemned to be “hanged and executed by justice.” The owners were punished because they were supposed to have been culpably negligent of the child, who had been confided to their care and keeping, and not because they had, in the eye of the law, any proprietary responsibility for the infanticidal animal. The mulct implied remissness on their part as guardians or foster-parents of the infant. In general, as we have seen, the owner of the blood-guilty beast was considered wholly blameless and sometimes even remunerated for his loss. (_Vide_ Appendix N.)
According to the laws of the Bogos, a pastoral and nominally Christian tribe of Northern Abyssinia, a bull, cow or any other animal which kills a man is put to death; the owner of the homicidal beast is not held in any wise responsible for its crime, nevertheless he practically incurs a somewhat heavy penalty by not receiving any compensation for the loss of his property. This exercise of justice is quite common among the tribes of Central Africa. In Montenegro, horses, oxen and pigs have been recently tried for homicide and put to death, unless the owner redeemed them by paying a ransom.
On the 14th of June, 1494, a young pig was arrested for having “strangled and defaced a young child in its cradle, the son of Jehan Lenfant, a cowherd on the fee-farm of Clermont, and of Gillon his wife,” and proceeded against “as justice and reason would desire and require.” Several witnesses were examined, who testified “on their oath and conscience” that “on the morning of Easter Day, as the father was guarding cattle and his wife Gillon was absent in the village of Dizy, the infant being left alone in its cradle, the said pig entered during the said time the said house and disfigured and ate the face and neck of the said child, which, in consequence of the bites and defacements inflicted by the said pig, departed this life (_de ce siècle trépassa_).” The sentence pronounced by the judge was as follows, “We, in detestation and horror of the said crime, and to the end that an example may be made and justice maintained, have said, judged, sentenced, pronounced and appointed, that the said porker, now detained as a prisoner and confined in the said abbey, shall be by the master of high works hanged and strangled on a gibbet of wood near and adjoinant to the gallows and high place of execution belonging to the said monks, being contiguous to their fee-farm of Avin.” The crime was committed “on the fee-farm of Clermont-lez-Montcornet, appertaining in all matters of high, mean and base justice to the monks of the order of Premonstrants,” and the prosecution was conducted by “Jehan Levoisier, licenciate in law, the grand mayor of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon of the order of Premonstrants and the aldermen of the same place.” The plaintiffs were the friars, who preferred charges against the pig and procured the evidence necessary to its conviction. (_Vide_ Appendix O.)