‘A SCENE IN A POLICE COURT--A PAINFUL CASE.’
These words headed a paragraph of police news in the daily papers one morning in June. But the few commonplace words that told the story gave no idea of the intense suffering. Four weeks before an old sorrowful-faced man had tremblingly stood in the dock charged with a violent assault upon his wife. Four times he had been assisted back to the cells. Four times in the cupboard of the prison van had he been conveyed to the house of detention, for his wife lay hovering between life and death in the infirmary. ‘Erysipelas had set in,’ said the doctor. On the fifth occasion she was just well enough to come, and was carried into court, her head bandaged all over, one arm in a sling, and her face all covered with cuts and bruises. A chair was placed for her before the magistrate, and she was called on for evidence. ‘I don’t know much about it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want him punished; he has been a good husband to me; I suppose he did it; if he did, it was my fault, for I was drunk at the time.’
Not another word could be got from her. The landlady was called, and said: ‘These people have lived with me for a long time. A better man never lived; a worse woman could not be found. She has sold or pawned all his goods time after time. She has been in prison again and again. Many a time the prisoner has spent the night looking for his wife, and once brought her home dead drunk on a wheelbarrow; he had found her in a dustbin. On the present occasion she had only been a week out of prison, where she had been for two months. During that time the prisoner, who is a basket-maker, had got a new home together, had made it very nice, and went to meet her at the prison. When she got home, and saw how nice it was, she promised never to drink again; but during the week she pawned many of the things, and when the prisoner came home on Saturday she was lying drunk in her rooms. He had a walking-stick in his hand, and as he passed my door I said, “Your wife has been at it again.” Presently I heard screams and cries of “Murder!” The prisoner came down and said, “Good-bye; you will never see me again.” Thinking he was going to commit suicide, I followed him, and told a policeman, who took him into custody. When we got back to the room, we found the woman lying in a pool of blood on the floor, and the stick lying beside her.’