PIG Gets Death Sentence!!!

Unfortunately for many parents throughout history, a hungry pig would occasionally find an untended baby or young child and eat it.

In 1386, a court in Falaise, France sentenced a female pig to be horrifically mutilated in its head and forelegs, an application of the lex talionis because the pig had maimed and eaten the child’s head and arms. After being found guilty, the pig was dressed in a man’s clothes and hanged in the main square in town.

Other pigs which have attacked or eaten small human children were arrested and kept in prison while they awaited their trial. One pig in the town of Pont de L’Arche was kept for three weeks in the local jail and fed the same food as the human prisoners until the pig was executed by hanging.

Even more bizarre is the case of a herd of pigs in Saint-Marcel le Jessey, France, who were feeding together on September 5, 1379, when a young boy approached and was then killed by the pigs.

Not only were the three pigs who killed the boy arrested, but the entire herd was convicted in the court of being accomplices to the crime, “as the herd [of pigs] had hastened to the scene of the murder, and by their cries and aggressive actions, showed that they approved of the assault.” The “accomplices” were later pardoned by the Duke of Burgundy but the three main “defendants” were executed.

The last known case of a pig being convicted of a capital crime was in 1864 in Slavonia (now part of Croatia) when a pig was found guilty and executed for biting the ears off of an infant human girl. The family was then given a heavy fine by the court to be used as a future dowry in an effort to ensure that the girl would be able to find a husband.