This point is, whether certain facts, which may be taken as clear upon the evidence, amount to an imprisonment. These facts, stated shortly, and as I understand them, are in effect as follows:—
A part of a public highway was inclosed, and appropriated for spectators of a boat-race, paying a price for their seats. The plaintiff was desirous of entering this part, and was opposed by the defendant; but, after a struggle, during which no momentary detention of his person took place, he succeeded in climbing over the inclosure. Two policemen were then stationed by the defendant to prevent, and they did prevent, him from passing onwards in the direction in which he declared his wish to go; but he was allowed to remain unmolested where he was, and was at liberty to go, and was told that he was so, in the only other direction by which he could pass. This he refused for some time, and during that time remained where he had thus placed himself.
These are the facts; and, setting aside those which do not properly bear on the question now at issue, there will remain these: that the plaintiff, being in a public highway and desirous of passing along it in a particular direction, is prevented from doing so by the orders of the defendant, and that the defendant’s agents for the purpose are policemen, from whom, indeed, no unnecessary violence was to be anticipated, or such as they believed unlawful, yet who might be expected to execute such commands as they deemed lawful with all necessary force, however resisted. But although thus obstructed, the plaintiff was at liberty to move his person and go in any other direction, at his free will and pleasure; and no actual force or restraint on his person was used, unless the obstruction before mentioned amounts to so much.
I lay out of consideration the question of right or wrong between these parties. The acts will amount to imprisonment, neither more nor less, from their being wrongful or capable of justification.
And I am of opinion that there was no imprisonment. To call it so appears to me to confound partial obstruction and disturbance with total obstruction and detention. A prison may have its boundary large or narrow, visible and tangible, or, though real, still in the conception only; it may itself be movable or fixed; but a boundary it must have, and that boundary the party imprisoned must be prevented from passing; he must be prevented from leaving that place, within the ambit of which the party imprisoning would confine him, except by prison breach. Some confusion seems to me to arise from confounding imprisonment of the body with mere loss of freedom: it is one part of the definition of freedom to be able to go whithersoever one pleases; but imprisonment is something more than the mere loss of this power: it includes the notion of restraint within some limits defined by a will or power exterior to our own.
In Com. Dig. Imprisonment (G), it is said: “Every restraint of the liberty of a free man will be an imprisonment.” For this the authorities cited are 2 Inst. 482; Cro. Car. 209. But when these are referred to, it will be seen that nothing was intended at all inconsistent with what I have ventured to lay down above. In both books the object was to point out that a prison was not necessarily what is commonly so called, a place locally defined and appointed for the reception of prisoners. Lord Coke is commenting on the statute of Westminster 2d,[[33]] in prisona, and says: “Every restraint of the liberty of a freeman is an imprisonment, although he be not within the walls of any common prison.” The passage in Cro. Car. 209, is from a curious case of an information against Sir Miles Hobert and Mr. Stroud for escaping out of the Gate-house Prison, to which they had been committed by the king. The question was whether, under the circumstances, they had ever been there imprisoned. Owing to the sickness in London, and through the favor of the keeper, these gentlemen had not, except on one occasion, ever been within the walls of the Gate-house. The occasion is somewhat singularly expressed in the decision of the court, which was “that their voluntary retirement to the close stool” in the Gate-house “made them to be prisoners.” The resolution, however, in question is this: “that the prison of the King’s Bench is not any local prison confined only to one place, and that every place where any person is restrained of his liberty is a prison; as if one take sanctuary and depart thence, he shall be said to break prison.”
On a case of this sort, which, if there be difficulty in it, is at least purely elementary, it is not easy nor necessary to enlarge, and I am unwilling to put any extreme case hypothetically; but I wish to meet one suggestion, which has been put as avoiding one of the difficulties which cases of this sort might seem to suggest. If it be said that to hold the present case to amount to an imprisonment would turn every obstruction of the exercise of a right of way into an imprisonment, the answer is that there must be something like personal menace or force accompanying the act of obstruction, and that, with this, it will amount to imprisonment. I apprehend that is not so. If, in the course of a night, both ends of a street were walled up, and there was no egress from the house but into the street, I should have no difficulty in saying that the inhabitants were thereby imprisoned; but if only one end were walled up, and an armed force stationed outside to prevent any scaling of the wall or passage that way, I should feel equally clear that there was no imprisonment. If there were, the street would obviously be the prison, and yet, as obviously, none would be confined to it.
Knowing that my lord has entertained strongly an opinion directly contrary to this, I am under serious apprehension that I overlook some difficulty in forming my own; but, if it exists, I have not been able to discover it, and am therefore bound to state that, according to my view of the case, the rule should be absolute for a new trial.[[34]]
Lord Denman, C. J. I have not drawn up a formal judgment in this case, because I hoped to the last that the arguments which my learned brothers would produce in support of their opinion might alter mine. We have freely discussed the matter both orally and in written communications; but, after hearing what they have advanced, I am compelled to say that my first impression remains. If, as I must believe, it is a wrong one, it may be in some measure accounted for by the circumstances attending the case. A company unlawfully obstructed a public way for their own profit, extorting money from passengers, and hiring policemen to effect this purpose. The plaintiff, wishing to exercise his right of way, is stopped by force, and ordered to move in a direction which he wished not to take. He is told at the same time that a force is at hand ready to compel his submission. That proceeding appears to me equivalent to being pulled by the collar out of the one line and into the other.
There is some difficulty, perhaps, in defining imprisonment in the abstract without reference to its illegality; nor is it necessary for me to do so, because I consider these acts as amounting to imprisonment. That word I understand to mean any restraint of the person by force. In Buller’s Nisi Prius, p. 22, it is said: “Every restraint of a man’s liberty under the custody of another, either in a gaol, house, stocks, or in the street, is in law an imprisonment; and whenever it is done without a proper authority, is false imprisonment, for which the law gives an action; and this is commonly joined to assault and battery; for every imprisonment includes a battery, and every battery an assault.” It appears, therefore, that the technical language has received a very large construction, and that there need not be any touching of the person: a locking up would constitute an imprisonment, without touching. From the language of Thorpe, C. J., which Mr. Selwyn cites from the Book of Assizes, it appears that, even in very early times, restraint of liberty by force was understood to be the reasonable definition of imprisonment.