Trial of Duncan Terig, alias Clerk, and Alexander Bane Macdonald for the Murder of Arthur Davis, Sergeant in General Guise's Regiment of Foot

Excerpt

Although the giving information concerning the unfair manner in which they were dismissed from life, is popularly alleged to have been a frequent reason why departed spirits revisit the nether world, it is yet only in a play of the witty comedian, Foote, that the reader will find their appearance become the subject of formal and very ingenious pleadings. In his farce called the Orators, the celebrated Cocklane Ghost is indicted by the name of Fanny the Phantom, for that, contrary to the King's peace, it did annoy, assault, and terrify divers persons residing in Cocklane and elsewhere, in the county of Middlesex. The senior counsel objects to his client pleading to the indictment, unless she is tried by her equals in rank, and therefore he moves the indictment be quashed, unless a jury of ghosts be first had and obtained. To this it is replied, that although Fanny the Phantom had originally a right to a jury of ghosts, yet in taking upon her to knock, to flutter, and to scratch, she did, by condescending to operations proper to humanity, wave her privileges as a ghost, and must consent to be tried in the ordinary manner. It occurs to the Justice who tries the case, that there will be difficulty in impanelling a jury of ghosts, and he doubts how twelve spirits who have no body at all, can be said to take a corporal oath, as required by law, unless, indeed, as in the case of the Peerage, the prisoner may be tried upon her honour. At length the counsel for the prosecution furnishes the list of ghosts for the selection of the jury, being the most celebrated apparitions of modern times, namely, Sir George Villiers, the evil genius of Brutus, the Ghost of Banquo, and the phantom of Mrs Veal. The counsel for the prosecution objects to a woman, and the court dissolves, under the facetious order, that if the Phantom should plead pregnancy, Mrs Veal will be admitted upon the jury of matrons.