Grievous bodily harm (often abbreviated to GBH) is a term of art used in English criminal law which has become synonymous with the offences that are created by sections 18 and 20 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861.
The distinction between these two sections is the requirement of specific intent for section 18.
The offence under section 18 is variously referred to as "wounding with intent" or "causing grievous bodily harm with intent". The words "with intent" refer to the specific intent required for this offence.
The offence under section 20 is variously referred to as "unlawful wounding", "malicious wounding" or "inflicting grievous bodily harm".
Read more about Grievous Bodily Harm: The Offences, Mode of Trial, Racially or Religiously Aggravated Offence
Famous quotes containing the words grievous, bodily and/or harm:
“Roosevelt could always keep ahead with his work, but I cannot do it, and I know it is a grievous fault, but it is too late to remedy it. The country must take me as it found me. Wasn’t it your mother who had a servant girl who said it was no use for her to try to hurry, that she was a “Sunday chil” and no “Sunday chil” could hurry? I don’t think I am a Sunday child, but I ought to have been; then I would have had an excuse for always being late.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“At stroke of midnight soul cannot endure
A bodily or mental furniture.
What can she take until her Master give!
Where can she look until He make the show!
What can she know until He bid her know!
How can she live till in her blood He live!”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)