[1] The filling of teeth with gold foil is recorded in the oldest
known book on dentistry, _Artzney Buchlein_, published anonymously
in 1530, in which the operation is quoted from Mesue (A.D. 857),
physician to the caliph Haroun al-Raschid.
DENTON, an urban district in the Gorton parliamentary division of
Lancashire, England, 4½ m. N.E. from Stockport, on the London &
North-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 14,934. In the township are
reservoirs for the water supply of Manchester, with a capacity of
1,860,000,000 gallons. The manufacture of felt hats is the leading
industry. Coal is extensively mined in the district.
DENVER, the capital of Colorado, U.S.A., the county-seat of Denver
county, and the largest city between Kansas City, Missouri, and the
Pacific coast, sometimes called the "Queen City of the Plains." Pop.
(1870) 4759; (1880) 35,629; (1890) 106,713; (1900), 133,859, of whom
25,301 were foreign-born and 3923 were negroes; (1910 census) 213,381.
Of the 25,301 foreign-born in 1900, 5114 were Germans; 3485, Irish;
3376, Swedes; 3344, English; 2623, English-Canadian; 1338, Russians; and
1033, Scots. Denver is an important railway centre, being served by nine
railways, of which the chief are the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé; the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific; the
Denver & Rio Grande; the Union Pacific; and the Denver, North-Western &
Pacific.
Denver lies on the South Platte river, at an altitude exactly 1 m. above
the sea, about 15 m. from the E. base of the Rocky mountains, which
stretch along the W. horizon from N. to S. in an unbroken chain of some
175 m. Excursions may be made in all directions into the mountains,
affording beautiful scenery and interesting views of the mining camps.
Various peaks are readily accessible from Denver: Long's Peak (14,271
ft.), Gray's Peak (14,341 ft.), Torrey Peak (14,336 ft.), Mt. Evans
(14,330 ft.), Pike's Peak (14,108 ft.), and many others of only slightly
less altitudes. The streets are excellent, broad and regular. The parks
are a fine feature of the city; by its charter a fixed percentage of all
expenditures for public improvements must be used to purchase park land.
Architectural variety and solidity are favoured in the buildings of the
city by a wealth of beautiful building stones of varied colours
(limestones, sandstones, lavas, granites and marbles), in addition to
which bricks and Roman tiles are employed. The State Capitol, built of
native granite and marble (1887-1895, cost $2,500,000), is an imposing
building. Noteworthy also are the Denver county court house; the
handsome East Denver high school; the Federal building, containing the
United States custom house and post office; the United States mint; the
large Auditorium, in which the Democratic National convention met in
1908; a Carnegie library (1908) and the Mining Exchange; and there are
various excellent business blocks, theatres, clubs and churches. Denver
has an art museum and a zoological museum. The libraries of the city
contain an aggregate of some 300,000 volumes. Denver is the seat of the
Jesuit college of the Sacred Heart (1888; in the suburbs); and the
university of Denver (Methodist, 1889), a co-educational institution,
succeeding the Colorado Seminary (founded in 1864 by John Evans), and
consisting of a college of liberal arts, a graduate school, Chamberlin
astronomical observatory and a preparatory school--these have buildings
in University Park--and (near the centre of the city) the Denver and
Gross College of Medicine, the Denver law school, a college of music in
the building of the old Colorado Seminary, and a Saturday college (with
classes specially for professional men).
The prosperity of the city depends on that of the rich mining country
about it, on a very extensive wholesale trade, for which its situation
and railway facilities admirably fit it, and on its large manufacturing
and farming interests. The value of manufactures produced in 1900 was
$41,368,698 (increase 1890-1900, 41.5%). The value of the factory
product for 1905, however, was 3.3% less than that for 1900, though it
represented 36.6% of the product of the state as a whole. The principal
industry is the smelting and refining of lead, and the smelting works
are among the most interesting sights of the city. The value of the ore
reduced annually is about $10,000,000. Denver has also large foundries
and machine shops, flour and grist mills, and slaughtering and
meat-packing establishments. Denver is the central live-stock market of
the Rocky Mountain states. The beet sugar, fruit and other agricultural
products of the surrounding and tributary section were valued in 1906 at
about $20,000,000. The assessed valuation of property in the city in
1905 was $115,338,920 (about the true value), and the bonded debt
$1,079,595.
At Denver the South Platte is joined by Cherry Creek, and here in
October 1858 were established on opposite sides of the creek two
bitterly rival settlements, St Charles and Auraria; the former was
renamed almost immediately Denver, after General J. W. Denver
(1818-1892), ex-governor of Kansas (which then included Colorado), and
Auraria was absorbed. Denver had already been incorporated by a
provisional local (extra legal) "legislature," and the Kansas
legislature gave a charter to a rival company which the Denver people
bought out. A city government was organized in December 1859; and
continued under a reincorporation effected by the first territorial
legislature of 1861. This body adjourned from Colorado City, nominally
the capital, to Denver, and in 1862 Golden was made the seat of
government. In 1868 Denver became the capital, but feeling in the
southern counties was then so strong against Denver that provision was
made for a popular vote on the situation of the capital five years after
Colorado should become a state. This popular vote confirmed Denver in
1881. Until 1870, when it secured a branch railway from the Union
Pacific line at Cheyenne (Wyoming), the city was on one side of the
transcontinental travel-routes. The first road was quickly followed by
the Kansas Pacific from Kansas City (1870, now also part of the Union
Pacific), the Denver & Rio Grande (1871), the Burlington system (1882),
the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé (1887), and other roads which have made
Denver's fortune. In April 1859 appeared the first number of _The Rocky
Mountain News_. The same year a postal express to Leavenworth, Kansas
(10 days, letters 25 cents an ounce) was established; and telegraph
connexion with Boston and New York ($9 for 10 words) in 1863. A private
mint was established in 1860. In the 'seventies all the facilities of a
modern city--gas, street-cars, water-works, telephones--were introduced.
Much the same might be said of a score of cities in the new West, but
none is a more striking example than Denver of marvellous growth. The
city throve on the freighting trade of the mines. In 1864 a tremendous
flood almost ruined it, and another flood in 1878, and a famous strike
in Denver and Leadville in 1879-1880 were further, but only momentary,
checks to its prosperity. As in every western city, particularly those
in mining regions whose sites attained speculative values, Denver had
grave problems with "squatters" or "land-jumpers" in her early years;
and there was the usual gambling and outlawry, sometimes extra-legally
repressed by vigilantes. Settled social conditions, however, soon
established themselves. In 1880 there was a memorable election riot
under the guise of an anti-Chinese demonstration. In the decade
1870-1880 the population increased 648.7%. The 'eighties were notable
for great real estate activity, and the population of the city increased
199.5% from 1880 to 1890. In 1882-1884 three successive annual exhibits
of a National Mining and Industrial Exposition were held. After 1890
growth was slower but continuous. In 1902 a city-and-county of Denver
was created with extensive powers of framing its own charter, and in
1904 a charter was adopted. The constitution of the state was framed by
a convention that sat at Denver from December 1875 to March 1876;
various territorial conventions met here; and here W. J. Bryan was
nominated in 1908 for the presidency.
DEODAND (Lat. _Deo dandum_, that which is to be given to God), in
English law, was a personal chattel (any animal or thing) which, on
account of its having caused the death of a human being, was forfeited
to the king for pious uses. Blackstone, while tracing in the custom an
expiatory design, alludes to analogous Jewish and Greek laws,[1] which
required that what occasions a man's death should be destroyed. In such
usages the notion of the punishment of an animal or thing, or of its
being morally affected from having caused the death of a man, seems to
be implied. The forfeiture of the offending instrument in no way depends
on the guilt of the owner. This imputation of guilt to inanimate objects
or to the lower animals is not inconsistent with what we know of the
ideas of uncivilized races. In English law, deodands came to be regarded
as mere forfeitures to the king, and the rules on which they depended
were not easily explained by any key in the possession of the old
commentators. The law distinguished, for instance, between a thing in
motion and a thing standing still. If a horse or other animal in motion
killed a person, whether infant or adult, or if a cart ran over him, it
was forfeited as a deodand. 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. Blackstone accounts for the greater severity
against things in motion by saying that in such cases the owner is more
usually at fault, an explanation which is doubtful in point of fact, and
would certainly not account for other instances of the same tendency.
Thus, where a man's death is caused by a thing not in motion, that part
only which is the immediate cause is forfeited, as "if a man be climbing
up the wheel of a cart, and is killed by falling from it, the wheel
alone is a deodand"; whereas, if the cart were in motion, not only the
wheel but all that moves along with it (as the cart and the loading) are
forfeited. A similar distinction is to be found in Britton. Where a man
is killed by a vessel at rest the cargo is not deodand; where the vessel
is under sail, hull and cargo are both deodand. For the distinction
between the death of a child and the death of an adult Blackstone
accounts by suggesting that the child "was presumed incapable of actual
sin, and therefore needed no deodand to purchase propitiatory masses;
but every adult who died in actual sin stood in need of such atonement,
according to the humane superstition of the founders of the English
law." Sir Matthew Hale's explanation was that the child could not take
care of himself, whereon Blackstone asks why the owner should save his
forfeiture on account of the imbecility of the child, which ought to
have been an additional reason for caution. The finding of a jury was
necessary to constitute a deodand, and the investigation of the value of
the instrument by which death was caused occupied an important place
among the provisions of early English criminal law. It became a
necessary part of an indictment to state the nature and value of the
weapon employed--as, that the stroke was given by a certain penknife, of
the value of sixpence--so that the king might have his deodand.
Accidents on the high seas did not cause forfeiture, being beyond the
domain of the common law; but it would appear that in the case of ships
in fresh water the law held good. The king might grant his right to
deodands to another. In later times these forfeitures became extremely
unpopular; and juries, with the connivance of judges, found deodands of
trifling value, so as to defeat the inequitable claim. At last, by an
act of 1846 they were abolished, the date noticeably coinciding with the
introduction of railways and modern steam-engines.