The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-07-22 00:00:00

SENTENCED TO DEATH.

At the assizes held at Northampton, Richard Addington
h. !seen tried hr the m List murder at wary Addington, at
Boles st, on the ;ash s 4 may last :
The prisoner is a slept:maker by trade, and lived with
him wife Mary soil their two children at Holcot. Ile
was generally of solx-r mei industrious habits, but at
times gave way to drinking, when, asline of the wit-
nesses e pre•ed it, h, eiiie,ltssl,siehisseuwo. Ordinarily
he was a gosal father awl a kind hut-hand, and, in fact,
lived on exceptionally affectionate terms with his wife.
On the 1...0th of NI ay, which was Whit Monday, the pri-
soner attens led Isis did, feast, on which occasion it seems
to be tin oists tc ,erve slink gratuitously Gs the mem-
Isere from ten smn, till nine p.m., the dinner being held
in the mid, Ile lit the hay. After the dinner the
dotal up to make a speech, but sat down again without
addressing the meeting ; he went home about half-
joist eight in the evening, when the neighbours heard
.angry words loam loetween him and his wife, and he was
seen to carry ilOr into the house. On the folls swing morn-
ing, between ten and eleven, a neighbour saw the pri-
soner and his wife in a garden together, and heard the
wife say to him, " 1 told you I would not come into the
house ;‘' saw the primner carry Isis wife into the house;
heard a fearful seremn, and immediately afterwards saw
tlw a air woman come snit ssf her house covered with
lusd, allli stabbed in the neck, the chest, and the A-
ii. smen, each wound being inflicted with such violence
that death would have ensuetl from any one of them.
The instrument used was a shoemaker's knife. The
poor woman said, " My husband has cut my throat
isis a dying woman ;" Islam which the prisoner said to
her, " Will you forgive me? " and (lie replied, "Yes,
my dear husband, 1 forgive you," aud died shortly after-
wards. The prisoner also told another of the neigh-
its that he had cut his wife's throat, and -that she
uld go in and look at her," and when in custody of
the police he maid that "he would rather die than that
she should be wronged, and that he hoped they would
hang him as assist as possible." There semis ti have
been no motive for this brutal murder except that when
drunk the prisoner entertained feelings of jealousy
towarsls his wife, for which there was not the slightest
foundation.

Mr. Merewether, for the prisoner, urged that he
could have no motive for clestroying the object which
he cherished above everything, and that the act was the
act of one irresponsible for his actions. He also elicited
Iron, the medical witness, Mr. Marshall, that the
prisoner had been ticket on the head' by a horse some
20 yearn ago, and endeavoured to persuade the jury
that this had effected the pri,uner s brain, and retu
tiered Mutat tiniesincapable of distinguishingright from
wrong.

Several witnesses were also called on the prisoner's
behalf to prove that he was strange at tinnst and
lid ; but there CAD be little doubt that on all these Ut.1.11-
8111112, he hail been ithinkaw• in drink. All the wit-
nesses, however, declared that both 1m the day pre-
vious to and on the morning of the oecurrenee he was
quite sober.
Mr. Metcalfe having replied,

The learned judge summed up the U.., to the jury.
lie said that two things seemed clear that the unfor-
tunate deceased died from certain Wollll,lr, and that
thosc wounds were caesool by the hand of theprismer
that, moreover, tiome was nit evidence llf Inv,otathal
ti excullmte the ii slier si reduce the crime ti
ijaitit-
sliiiizhttr, nil that the real defence. if :my, v.a, that
the prisoner WI 4 of unsound mind, but that paltial
,aqui,bw,s was ii,ll,k:we at all, lilat that 111,oliiiie-
blay ut,.1.4-tamling produced by drink did wit ex-
Oise a 'hail Ili the eVe Fa the law. The question .b,r
the jury ivonbl MI the prisoner know what hu was
doing at the time, and did he know that what he was
doing was wrong? The learned Judge then read
through the whit.- 14. the eviilenee, explaining Most
Carrillfly alla lucidly how each part affected the case.
The jury retired to consider their verdict, and, after
an absence if ten minutes, returned with a verdict 14
"Wilful murder."

'ne tear: c,l Judge then tont"unced sentence of
death up.,li the prisoner.