ENGLISH BRUTALITY
A harrowing account, reprinted from an English paper, of a husband's fatal beating of his wife and the son who tried in vain to save her — a stark record of ordinary domestic violence largely forgotten to history.
NewsPipe summary
The Morning Star And Catholic Messenger · April 10, 1870 · Page 1
1 min readLet me give a typical case. Last Sunday night a man and his wife went to market together. Both went to [...] and there the man began to beat and kick and knock about his wife.
Several different persons at intervals remonstrated with him, for he was treating her most brutally; but his answer was, "What business is that of yours? She's my wife," and he went on beating her.
By early morning, when her head and body were covered with bruises, and she had fallen insensible, he dragged her up against a blacksmith's shop, put a board over her, and went off. This was five o'clock Sunday morning.
His son, who had been up all night nursing [...], said, "Where's mother?" [He was told] "Down by the blacksmith shop, looking so you wouldn't know her." The boy started up at once and insisted upon his father going with him to help bring her home.
The father lighted his pipe and followed. The boy found his mother with her jaw shattered, and her body a mass of bruises, and she still breathing. He put his ear against hers and felt her breath, but she could not move. He carried her on his father's back, but when they got home she was quite dead.
At the inquest it was found her jaw, collar bone, and several ribs were broken. She had been slowly [...]
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