Case ID: howell-np_1/html/0251-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Superior Court of Detroit.
    
    ERNST WEIGMAN, Administrator of the Estate of WILLIAM WEIGMAN, Deceased, vs. THE FORT WAYNE AND ELMWOOD STREET RAILWAY COMPANY.
    
      Extract from, an Argument to the Jury.
    
    Plaintiff’s intestate was killed while driving a delivery wagon across the track of the street railway of defendant at the intersection of the street railway and Twentieth street, Detroit. There was an icy ridge at the point of crossing, caused principally by the acts of defendant by the aid of their scrapers and snow plows..
    Plaintiff recovered a verdict and judgment for $1,500.
    During the progress of the trial the mother of deceased sat in court listening very attentively to the testimony. While one witness was testifying he said something that wounded her mother heart, and she cried out that the fact was so and so. There was a titter around the court room. She did not further interrupt the course of the proceedings.
    In his argument to the jury one of the counsel for' the plaintiff alluded to this incident substantially as-follows:
    ‘ ‘ The mother of the dead boy, cut off so suddenly before his time, yesterday broke out in a cry which was not in strict accord with the rules of court or the wishes of counsel. But while a smile crept over the faces of some of those sitting in the court room, a deep shadow passed over her soul; while to some, her German exclamation was in the line of comedy, to this mother thus bereft of her boy, the hope and prop of her declining years, his taking off was a tragedy of most awful import.
    There is a concentration of affection in a mother’s love that at times overleaps the bounds of the conventionalities of society as fashionably constituted. Can we not pardon this in her ? Who that has been the object of a mother’s pure devotion would stifle a cry of grief from a mother bereft of her boy, even though thereby the proprieties of a court of justice are, in form, disturbed ?
    Sidney Dobell has described this singleness of a mother’s devotion most happily in his poem of £ My Boy.’
    
    
      So here the mother of the boy, the value of whoso life, so far as it can be measured by the standards of this world’s coinage, is to be weighed by you in the balances of justice, was oblivious to judge and jury, counsel and people, in her cry of anguish.”
    
      E. S. Grece and G. B. Howell for Plaintiff.
    
      E. H. Sellers and H. H. Swan for Defendant.
    
      
       A sailor boy’s mother, walking down by the quay, and seeing a .sailor, cries out:
      “Ho! sailor of the sea, How’s my boy — my boy? ”
      “What’s your boy’s name, good wife, And in what good ship sailed he? ”
      “My boy John— He that went to sea; What care I for the ship, sailor, My boy’s my boy to me!
      .“ You come back from sea And not know my Jonn! I might as well have asked some landsman Yonder down In the town, There’s not an ass in all the parish But he knows my John.
      “How’s my boy- — my boy? And unless you let me know, I’ll swear you arc no sailor. Blue jacket or no, Brass buttons or no, sailor, Anchor and crown or no; Sure his ship was the Jolly Briton.”
      “Speak low woman, speak low,”
      “And why should I speak low, sailor, About my own boy, John?' If I was loud as I am proud, I’d sing him over'the town, Why should I speak low? ”
      “That good ship went down.”
      “ What care I for the ship, sailor? I was never aboard her; Be she ashore or be she aground, Sinking or swimming, I’ll be bound Her owner can afford her. I say, how’s my John?”
      ‘ ‘ Every man on hoard went down, Every man aboard her.”
      "How’s MY BOY — MY BOY? What care I for the men, sailor? I’m not their mother— How’s my boy — my boy? Tell me of him and no other! ” How’s MY BOY — MY BOY?”*
      The poem is printed as an entirety. In his argument counsel used most of it by intermingling it with the portion of his argument above-given.