APPENDIX TO CHRONICLE.. 
shall perform a stipulated task, 
which it cannnot do. The respon- 
sibility certainly lies upon the 
contract.” 
Verdict—For the plaintiff, da- 
mages 50/. 
Chief Justice—‘ Gentlemen of 
the Jury, you will recollect that 
pounds are always gutneas on the 
turf !’’—-The verdict was accord- 
ingly altered to guineas. 
Ditchburn v. Goldsmith.—This 
was an action between inhabitants 
of Gravesend, upon a wager laid 
by the defendant, who was a 
preacher of the doctrines of the 
late Joanna Southcott, of 200/. 
to 100/. that she would be deli- 
vered of a male child on or before 
the 1st of November last. Before 
Mr. Serjeant Best could state the 
Jaintiff’s case, Mr. Serjeant Ons- 
ow, for the defendant, objected 
on the grounds of indecency and 
ludicrousness that this action 
ought not to be tried, and cited 
Da Costa v. Jones (Cowp. 729.) 
which was a wager upon the sex 
of Chevalier D’Eon, in which 
Lord Mansfield held such wagers 
void as would ‘affect the inter- 
est or the feelings of a third per- 
son; for instance, that such wo- 
man has committed adultery, or 
that an unmarried woman has had 
abastard.”” In that case the de- 
fendant’s counsel objected at the 
trial, that the plaintiff ought not 
to recover, because it was a wa- 
er upon a question tending to 
Introduce indecent evidence: to 
this it was answered, that the ob- 
jection was upon the record, and 
Lord Mansfield being of that 
opinion overruled the objection ; 
but afterwards, when the case 
came before the whole court in 
arrest of judgment, bis Lordship 
Vo), LVI. 
289 
said he was sorry that the awnser 
given to the objection made at the 
trial <*that it appeared upon the 
record ” had been so hastily given 
way to by him; for though the 
indecency of evidence is no ubjec- 
tion to its being received where 
it is necessary to the decision of a 
civil or criminal right, yet the 
witnesses should have been told, 
that they might refuse to give evi- 
dence in a case where two men, 
by laying a wager concerning a 
third person, would compel his 
physicians, relations, and servants 
to disclose what they knew rela- 
tive to the subject of the wager. 
The learned Serjeant added, that 
the subject of the present wager, 
Joanna Southcott, was a single 
woman. 
Mr. Serjeant Best answered, 
that Lord Mansfield, in the very 
case cited, said ‘a wager whe- 
ther the next child shall be a boy 
or a girl hurts no one;” and he 
should be able to prove, that the 
defendant had, in one of his pub- 
lic lectures, declared that Joanna 
Southcott was to be married by 
proxy, that the child might not be 
born‘a bastard. 
The Lord Chief Justice (Gibbs) 
said, his difficulty was not whe- 
ther the present action was main-~ 
tainable, but whether any judge 
had on that account refused to 
try a cause. 
Mr. Serjeant Onslow and Mr. 
Comyn, for the defendant, in- 
stanced Lord Loughborough, who 
in an action upon a wager “ whe- 
ther there are more ways than 6 
of nicking 7 on the dice, allowing 
7 to be the main and 1] a nick to 
“7,” ordered the cause to be struck 
out of the paper ; and the whole 
Court of Common Pleas after- 
wards refused leave to restore it 
