DEODAND. Any personal chattel what ever, animate or inanimate, which is the im mediate cause of the death of a human creel Lure. It was forfeited to the king to be dis tributed in alms by his high almoner "for the appeasing," says Coke, "of God's wrath." The word comes from Deo dandum, a thing that must be offered to God.
A Latin phrase which is attributed to Bracton has, by mistranslation, given rise to some erroneous statements in some of the authors as to what are deodands, Omnia quce ad mortem movent, although it evidently means all things which tend to produce death, has been rendered move to death,—t1;tus giv ing rise to the theory that things in motion only are to be forfeited. A difference, however, according to Blackstone, existed as to how much was to be sacri ficed. Thus, if a man should fall from a cartwheel, the cart being stationary, and be killed, the wheel only would be deodand: while, if he was run over by the same wheel in motion, not only the wheel but the cart and the load became deodand. And this, even though it belonged to the dead man. Horses,
oxen, carte, boats, mill-wheels, and cauldrons were the commonest deodande. The common name for it was the "bana," the slayer. In the thirteenth cen tury the common practice was that the thing itself was delivered to the men of the township where the death occurred, and they had to account to the king's officers. In very early records the justices in eyre named the charitable purpose, to which the money was to be applied ; 2 Poll. & Maitl. 471. In 1840, a railway company in England was amerced £2,000, as a deodand. Deodande were not abolished till 1846. See 1 Bla. Com. 301; 2 Steph. Com. 551 ; Holmes, C. L. 24.
No deodand accrues in the case of a fel onious killing; 1 Q. B. 818; 1 G. & D. 211, 481; Dow. 1048. Deodands, as droits for merly attaching to the office of the Lord High Admiral, are defined as "things instru mental to the death of a man on shipboard, or goods found on a dead body cast on shore." See 2 Browne, Civ. L. 56.