Misdemeanours in United Kingdom

Definition of Misdemeanours

Until the criminal law act 1967 and the coming into force of sec 1, misdemeanours were treated as minor offences.

History: Offences committed on land outside England and Misdemeanours committed by public officers in colonies

As regards offences on land, it was found necessary as early as the reign of Henry VIII. (1544) to provide for the trial in England of treasons and murders committed on land outside England. This was largely due to the constant presence in France of the king and many of his nobles and knights, but the aid of this statute had to be invoked in 1903 in the case of Lynch, tried for treason in South Africa. The latest legislation on the subject was in 1861 (Offences against the Person Act, § 9), and any murder or manslaughter committed on land out of the United Kingdom, whether within the king’s dominions or without, and whether the person killed were a subject of His Majesty or not, may be dealt with in all respects as if it were committed in England. The jurisdiction has been extended to a few other cases such as slave trade, bigamy, perjury, committed with reference to proceedings in an English court, and offences connected with explosives. But these offences must be committed on land and not on board a foreign ship, because if a man takes service on board a foreign ship he is treated for the time as being a member of the foreign state to which that ship belongs.

The principle has been also extended to misdemeanours (but not to felonies) committed by public officers out of Great Britain, whether within or without the British dominions. Thus a governor or an inferior officer of a colony, if appointed by the British government, may be prosecuted for any misdemeanour committed by him by virtue of his office in the colony; and cases have occurred where governors have been so prosecuted, such as that of General Picton at the beginning of the 19th century, and of Governor Eyre of Jamaica in 1865, and the attempt to prosecute Governor MacCallum of Natal in 1906. As a corollary to the system of “capitulations” applied to certain non-Christian states in Asia and Africa, it has been necessary to take powers for punishing under English law offences by British subjects in those states, which would otherwise go unpunished either by the law of the land where the offence was committed or by the law of the state to which the offender belonged (Jenkyns, Foreign Jurisdiction of the Crown).

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)