BEATING AND WOUNDING, or simply vounding, is the name sometimes found in law books for the offense of inflicting on another some dangerous hurt or wound; and it has been otherwise described as an aggravated species of battery (q.v.). A still more aggra vated and atrocious offense of this kind used to appear in the list of offenses against the criminal law of England under the term 31AICHEM, which was a violently another of the use of a member proper for his defense, such as an arm, a leg, a finger, an eye, a fore-tooth, and some others; but it was laid down quaintly enough, that the loss of one of the jaw-teeth, the ear, or the nose, was no mayhem in common law, because these members can be of no use in fighting.
The offenses to which we have referred—viz., battery, beating and wounding, and mayhem--can. however, be best considered under the important and well-known term ASSAULT, which is indeed often used to express the above injuries, and which is implied in them all. The above offenses, it will have been observed, all involve an actual attack on and injury to the person of the party assaulted. But there may be an assault without such actual hurt. This is a common assault, and hence, in criminal law, assaults are distinguished by their being common or aggravated. A common assault has been defined as an attempt or offer to do a corporal hurt to another, as by striking at another with a stick or weapon. or without a weapon, though the party striking misses his aim. principal is, that it is sufficient, in order to constitute such an offense, that there has been such an exhibition of a violent and offensive animus as to show at once the inten tion, and the power, to commit it. So, drawing a sword or bayonet. or even holding up a fist in a manner, throwing a bottle or glass with intent to wound or strike, presenting a gun at a person who is within the distance to which the gun will carry, pointing a pitchfork at a person who is within reach, or any other similar act, accom panied with such circumstances as denote at the time an intention, coupled with a present ability, of using actual violence against the person of another, will amount to an assault.—ltussell on Misdemeanors, vol. i. p. 750. It has even been laid down, that to present a pistol, purporting to be loaded, so near as to produce danger to life if the pistol had gone off, is an assault in point of law, although, in fact, the pistol was not loaded.
But no words, however provoking or irritating, can amount to an assault. On the other hand, the injury need not be effected directly with the hand of the person making the assault. Thus, there may be hu assault by encouraging a dog to bite, by riding over a person with a horse, or by willfully and violently driving a cart, etc., against the carriage of another person. Nor is it necessary that the assault should be immediate, as where a defendant threw a lighted squib into a market-place, which, being tossed from hand to band by different persons, at last hit the plaintiff in the face, and put out his eye, it was adjudged that this was actionable. And the same has been held where a person wantonly pushed a drunken man against another, and thereby hurt him. A defendant put some cantharides into coffee, in order that a female might take it; and she did take it, and was made ill by it; and this was held to be an assault. It is also an assault, willfully and of malice, to expose another to the inclemency of the weather; so is the taking indecent liberties with females without their consent, although they did not actually resist; and to such indecent liberties a very wide application has been given, even to the extent of holding a medical practitioner guilty of assault, who stripped as young girl of her clothes. on the pretense that he could not otherwise judge of her illness. Philanthropists and benevolent people will likewise be glad to be told. that not only does the striking that takes place at a constitute an assault as between the com batants themselves. but all persons present in concert and co-operation may be punished as alders and abettors. Again, an assault may be committed by unlawfully imprisoning or detaining the person of another; and by such detention is meant every confinement of the person, whether it be in a common prison or in a private house, or by a forcible detaining in the public streets. Numerous other cases could be slated, showing how nicely and protectively the law on this subject has been elucidated; but the explanation we have given is sufficient for its popular illustration.