Deodands put a price on objects that caused death
Recorded: Sept. 19, 2026, 9 p.m.
| Original | Summarized |
How the Railways Killed a Medieval Law - JSTOR Daily Skip to content from JSTOR, nonprofit library for the intellectually curious Newsletter Collections on JSTOR Art & Art History Education & Society Education Politics & History Politics & Government Science & Technology Health Business & Economics Business Contact The Editors Cabinet of Curiosities How the Railways Killed a Medieval Law
The Great Railway Disaster between Paris and Versailles, 1842 Share Copy link By: September 16, 2026 5 minutes The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. When an object killed a person, the owner of that object was on the hook for the value of the thing in question. The jury was working from a legal concept that was over eight centuries old: the deodand, an obscure survival of medieval law. As William Pietz writes in “Death of the Deodand: Accursed Objects and the Money Value of Human Life,” More to Explore
Where Did All the Public Bathrooms Go? Another problem is how much of the object counts as a deodand. In some cases, for instance, where someone was run over by a cart, only the cart wheel would be assessed as a deodand. But when one Bedfordshire man slipped and fell on the pole of a cart “so that it entered his fundament,” the whole cart, including the load and the horses pulling it, was seized. Weekly Newsletter "*" indicates required fields X/TwitterThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.First name*Last name*Email* What best describes you?*ReaderStudentUndergraduate StudentGraduate StudentInstructor/FacultyLibrarianResearcher Δ Deodands were written out of the law in 1846. This was seen as progress, but as Harry Smith argues in “From Deodand to Dependency,” the immediate effect mostly served to protect the railroads: Have a correction or comment about this article? <a href= Resources JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR. From Deodand to Dependency By: Harry Smith The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Oct., 1967), pp. 389-403 Oxford University Press Death of the Deodand: Accursed Objects and the Money Value of Human Life By: William Pietz RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 31, The Abject (Spring, 1997), pp. 97-108 The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology The Ox That Gored By: J. J. Finkelstein Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 71, No. 2 (1981), pp. 1-89 University of Pennsylvania Press Deodands: A Study in the Creation of Common Law Rules By: Anna Pervukhin The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Jul., 2005), pp. 237-256 Oxford University Press Get Our Newsletter "*" indicates required fields FacebookThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.First name*Last name*Email* What best describes you?*ReaderStudentUndergraduate StudentGraduate StudentInstructor/FacultyLibrarianResearcher Δ Read this next
Politics & History Contesting American Citizenship… in 1784 The Longchamps Affair shows how early Americans struggled to define citizenship amid conflicting laws and revolutionary values. How the Railways Killed a Medieval Law The Women Written Out of Mining History What Came Before the American Suburb? Where Did All the Public Bathrooms Go? Minimalist Fiction in Six Short Stories
More Stories
Social History The Women Who Sold Books Door to Door Three nineteenth-century memoirs reveal the risks and rewards of life on the road as a traveling bookseller.
World History The Women Written Out of Mining History Women have mined for centuries, but laws barring them from the industry helped cement the idea that mining was men’s work.
U.S. History What Came Before the American Suburb? Hofstra University’s historic photographs capture Hempstead’s shops and streets before postwar development transformed Long Island.
World History The Nazi Car That Conquered the World The Volkswagen Beetle helped symbolize Germany’s postwar rebirth, despite its origins in Hitler’s vision of a “people’s car.” The Women Who Sold Books Door to Door Minimalist Fiction in Six Short Stories How the Railways Killed a Medieval Law How Cambodian Pop Music Survived the Khmer Rouge The Women Written Out of Mining History
About UsJSTOR Daily provides context for current events using scholarship found in JSTOR, a digital library of academic journals, books, and other material. We publish articles grounded in peer-reviewed research and provide free access to that research for all of our readers. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. © ITHAKA. All Rights Reserved. JSTOR®, the JSTOR logo, and ITHAKA® are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. |
The concept of the deodand, a remnant of medieval law, established that objects causing death were considered forfeit to God, with the owner being liable for the value of the object. This legal framework functioned by assigning value to moveable chattel property that resulted in a fatality, theoretically with compensation due to the royal sovereign or the bereaved families. As detailed in the text, the deodand arose from the idea that evil objects were sacred, charged with divine power. In English law before 1846, any movable property directly causing death became deodand, though distinctions existed; for example, a church bell, being a fixture, fell under real estate rather than chattel property. Furthermore, the concept faced ambiguities regarding motion, such as whether a falling ladder or a person in motion could be deemed the owner of a deodand. The assessment of the deodand’s value was often left to the discretion of the jury, which was influenced by factors like local opinion, public sympathy, and the desire for retribution. The transition away from the deodand was significantly impacted by the emerging industrial era. The arrival of railways served as a critical catalyst for this legal change. While a local merchant might compensate for a damaged barrel, the scale of responsibility shifted dramatically when an entire railway system was involved in a fatality. The transition was framed as legal progress, as it was formally written out of the law in 1846. However, Harry Smith argues in "From Deodand to Dependency" that the immediate effect of abolishing deodands primarily served to protect the railroads. By eliminating the liability of deodands, the law deprived railway victims of any legal recourse for compensation against the railway companies, affecting passengers who were uninsured, trespassers, and railway employees who were killed during their employment. Anna Pervukhin’s study, "Deodands: A Study in the Creation of Common Law Rules," further explored the role of these concepts in developing common law rules. She suggests that the assessment of deodands varied based on context, noting that in some instances, like a man slipping on a cart pole, the entire cart, including its load and horses, was seized, demonstrating the jury’s broad discretion in determining liability. In the context of the Industrial Revolution, public sentiment also played a role; juries sometimes assessed deodands at higher costs, potentially reflecting a desire to hold industrialists accountable, especially regarding negligent conduct. In essence, the deodand represented an imperfect but accessible mechanism for resolving tragedies without clearly identifying perpetrators. Ultimately, while abolishing the deodand simplified legal structures, scholars suggest that these historical concepts might offer a framework for understanding accountability for nonhuman entities, prompting reexamination of responsibility beyond human actors. |