BAHADUM - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

BAHADUMAuthored

The Law Mind • 580 words

Definition

A chest or coffer. In historical legal usage, *bahadum* denotes a strongbox or storage chest, referenced in medieval legal contexts as a receptacle for valuables, documents, or goods. The term appears in Fleta, the thirteenth-century Latin legal treatise describing English law and court practice, where it is used in an administrative or custodial sense.

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Why It Matters in Research

*Bahadum* is a term of narrow historical significance. Researchers are most likely to encounter it when working through Latin legal sources, particularly Fleta, or through early editions of Black's Law Dictionary where it appears as a brief standalone entry. Its presence in Black's signals that nineteenth-century American legal lexicographers were still drawing directly on medieval Latin sources to supply vocabulary for an English-language dictionary — a reminder that early editions of Black's function partly as Latin glossaries for common law terms, not merely as American legal reference tools.

The practical research risk here is misreading the term or its context in a scanned or transcribed historical source. In digitized corpora, *bahadum* may be difficult to locate by keyword if OCR has rendered the Latin imperfectly. Researchers working with Fleta or related medieval administrative records should watch for variant spellings common in manuscript Latin.

The entries in both the first and second editions of Black's are virtually identical and extremely brief — one line each — which itself tells you something: this term carried no independent doctrinal weight in American law and was included for completeness and historical grounding, not practical utility. It does not appear to have generated case law or statutory usage in the Anglo-American tradition.

Note also that both Black's entries for *bahadum* appear immediately adjacent to the entry for BAIL, v. This is an artifact of alphabetical arrangement, not a substantive connection between the terms. Researchers navigating early editions of Black's in physical or image form should be careful not to conflate the truncated *bahadum* entry with the beginning of the substantially longer BAIL entry that follows it on the same page.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Both Black's editions agree precisely: *bahadum* means a chest or coffer, and both cite Fleta as the sole authority. No elaboration is provided in either edition beyond this single-sentence definition. The two entries are functionally identical, indicating no revision or expansion of understanding occurred between the first and second editions on this point.

Fleta, the source cited, is a late thirteenth-century Latin treatise on English law, likely written during the reign of Edward I, possibly by a judge or legal official imprisoned in the Fleet Prison (from which the work takes its name). It draws heavily on Bracton and was a recognized authority in early common law scholarship. The citation to Fleta without further elaboration in Black's is typical of how medieval Latin terms were handled in early American legal dictionaries — acknowledged, briefly defined, and not developed further.

No other major historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus appear to have developed *bahadum* beyond this minimal treatment. The term does not appear in Bouvier's Law Dictionary or Tomlin's Law Dictionary entries available in comparable corpora, suggesting it was treated as a purely antiquarian reference even in the nineteenth century.

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BAHADUMmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

A chest or coffer. Fleta. BAIL, 0. To procure the release of a person from legal custody, by undertaking that he shall appear at the time and place designated and submit himself to the jurisdic- tion and judgment of the court. To set at liberty a person arrested or im- prisoned, on security being taken for his ap- pearance on a day and a place certain, which security is called "bail," because the party arrested or imprisoned is delivered into the hands of those who bind themselves for his forthcoming, (that is, become bail for his due AM.DICT.LAW-8

BAHADUMmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

A chest or coffer. Fleta. BAIL, v. To procure the release of a person from legal custody, by undertaking that he shall appenr at the time and place designated and submit himself to the jurisdiction and judgment of the court. To set at liberty a person arrested or imprisoned, on security being taken for his appearance on a day and a place certain, which security is called “bail,” because the party arrested or imprisoned is delivered into the hands of those who bind themselves for his forthcoming, (that is, become bail for his due appearance when required,) in order that he may be safely protected from prison. Wharton. Stafford v. State, 10 Tex. App. 49. BAIL, 7. In practice. The sureties who procure the release of a person under arrest, by becoming responsible for his appearance at the time and place designated. Those persons who become sureties for the appearance of the defendant in court. Upon those contracts of indemnity which are taken in Icgal proceedings as security for the performance of an obligation imposed or declared by the tribunals, and known as undertakings or recognizances, the sureties are called “bail.” Civ. Code Cal. § 2780 The taking of bail consists in the acceptance by a competent court, magistrate, or officer, of sufficient bail for the appearance of the defendant according to the legal effect of his undertaking, or for the payment to the state of a certain specified sum if he does not’ appear. Code Ala, 1886, § 4407. —Bail absolute. Sureties whose liabi.§‘y is conditioned upon the failure of the principal to duly account for money coming to his hands as administrator, guardian, etc.—Bail-bond. A bond executed by a defendant who has been arrested, together with other persons as sureties, naming the sheriff, constable, or marshal as obligee, in a penal sum proportioned to the damages claimed or penalty denounced, conditioned that the defendant shal] duly appear to answer to the legal process in the officer’s handg, or shall cause special bail to be put in, as the case may be.—-Bail common. A fictitious proceeding, intended only to tO the appearance of a defendant, in cases where special bail is not required. It is put in in the same form as special bail, but the sureties are merely nominal or imaginary persons, as John Doe and Richard Roe. 3 BI. Comm. 287.— Bail court. In English law and practice. An auxiliary court of the court of queen’s bench at Westminster, wherein points connected more

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