Commonwealth v. Wise

Before the jury was empanelled, the defendant filed a motion to quash the indictment on the ground that it set forth no offence known to the law. We are of opinion that this motion should have been granted. The indictment alleges that the defendant on a day named, at Lancaster, “ unlawfully did keep and maintain a certain common, ill-governed and disorderly tenement there situate.” It was probably intended to charge the common law offence of keeping a disorderly house; but the word *182“ tenement,” though it includes a house or building, has a much more enlarged signification. It signifies land…