It was a principle of English common law derived from the feudal period, that anything through the instrumentality of which death occurred was forfeited to the crown as a deodand; accordingly down to the year 1840 and even later, we find, in all cases where persons were killed, records of deodands levied by the coroners’ juries upon locomotives. These appear to have been arbitrarily imposed and graduated in amount accordingly as circumstances seemed to excite in greater or less degree the sympathies or the indignation of the jury. In November, 1838, for instance, a locomotive exploded upon the Liverpool and Manchester line, killing its engineer and fireman; and for this escapade a deodand of twenty pounds was assessed upon it by the coroner’s jury; while upon another occasion, in 1839, when the locomotive struck and killed a man and horse at a street crossing, the deodand was fixed at no less a sum than fourteen hundred pounds, the full value of the engine. Yet in this last case there did not appear to be any circumstances rendering the company liable in civil damages. The deodand seems to have been looked upon as a species of rude penalty imposed on the use of dangerous appliances, a sharp reminder to the companies to look sharply after their locomotives and employÉs. Thus upon the 24th of December, 1841, on the Great Western Railway, a train, while moving through a thick fog at a high rate of speed, came suddenly in contact with a mass of earth which had slid from the embankment at the side on to the track. Instantly the whole rear of the train was piled up on the top of the first carriage, which happened to be crowded with passengers, eight of whom were killed on the spot, while seventeen others were more or less injured. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of accidental death, and at the same time, as if to give the company a forcible hint to look closer to the condition of its embankment, a deodand of one hundred pounds was levied on the locomotive and tender.