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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Provincial Case File No. 22344, New Hampshire State Archives - Peter Johnson's Mittimus
Provincial Case File No. 22344, New Hampshire State Archives - Peter Johnson's Mittimus
Documents from Making Habeas Work: A Legal History (monograph)
In New Hampshire, as elsewhere, suits by alleged slaves claiming freedom were common, and they could be brought in many legal forms. One possibility was to petition for a writ of habeas corpus and thereby commence ordinary proceedings under that writ. That is what Peter Johnson of Portsmouth, New Hampshire did in the summer of 1748 in claiming that he had been wrongfully “imprisoned for refusing to serve as a slave
Provincial Case File No. 22344, New Hampshire State Archives - Peter Johnson - Case Summary
Provincial Case File No. 22344, New Hampshire State Archives - Peter Johnson - Case Summary
Documents from Dimension I: Habeas Corpus as a Common Law Writ (article)
Johnson was in prison because his alleged master, George Massey, had complained to a local Justice of the Peace that he “refuseth to labour and is stubborn and rebellious” and had requested “that the said Peter may be detained in Prison until he shall become submissive and dutiful,” whereupon the J.P. had issued a mittimus that ordered the sheriff to confine Johnson “until he the said Peter shall behave himself.”