ABDUCTION, in Law, is the forcible or fraudulent removal of a person. Custom has limited its general application to the case where a woman is the victim, with the view of her marriage or seduction. The forcible carrying off a woman constituted the crimen raptus of the Roman law, and was a capital offence, though unattended with violation of the person of the woman. In the case of men or children, it has been usual to substitute the term kidnapping. There are many old severe laws against abduction, generally contemplating its object as the possession of an heiress and her fortune. The offence was frequent at a comparatively late period in Scotland and in Ireland, an account of the feebleness of the law and the geographical facilities of these countries, and severe laws were directed against it in vain. So late as the Act of 10 Geo. IV. c. 34, in Ireland it was made punishable with death; but by 5 and 6 Vict. c. 28, § 16, this is reduced to transportation, the punishment which had been assigned to it in England fourteen years earlier, by Sir Robert Peel's Consolidation Act, 9 Geo. IV. c. 31. In Scotland,
Abduction where there is no statutory adjustment, a similar punishment has been awarded by practice.