[3] Under this law, a chattel (i.e. some personal property, such as a horse or a haystack) was considered a deodand whenever a coroner's jury decided that it had caused the death of a human being.
[4] In theory, deodands were forfeited to the Crown, which was supposed to sell the chattel and then apply the profits to some pious end.
[4] Before 1066, animals and objects causing serious damage or even death were called banes and were handed over directly to the victim in a practice known as noxal surrender.
[6] Early legislation also directed people to pay specific sums of money, called wergild, as compensation for actions that resulted in someone else's death.
By the second half of the thirteenth century, however, the coroner's rolls were replete with references to vats, tubs, horses, carts, boats, stones, trees, etc.
On the other hand, if death were caused by falling from a cart or a horse at rest, the law made the chattel a deodand if the person killed were an adult, but not if he were below the years of discretion.
[11] On Christmas Eve 1841, in an accident on the Great Western Railway, a train ran into a landslip in Sonning Cutting and eight passengers were killed.