The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-03-15 00:00:00

SENTENCED TO DEATH.

At the aulzes held at Swansea, Andrew Joseph Duncan has
been charged with the murder of his wife, Emma Dwacan, at
Swansea, on the 25th day of October, 1e72.

The prisoner and his wife were married about seven
years ago, and there were four children by the marriage.
In the year 1869 they went to live in Swansea, but did
not move into the house in which the murder was
committed until about three weeks before it happsned.
This house was in a street in Swansea called the
Strand, and as it was larger than the prisoner
and his family required they only occup!ed three
rooms in it, the remainder being left tenantless. The
bedroom in which the prisoner and his wife elept
was on the first floor, and wins next to a bed-
room in the adjacent home on the east side, from which
it was separated only by a thin partition. At about
four o'clock in the morning of the 25th of October the
people who slept in this room, a man and his wife,
were awakened by screams and cries of "Murder !"
and the crying of children. According to the evidence
of the wife, the cries were continued for nearly an hour,
and after a wLile she got up and went to the window
and raised an alarm, her husband all the time remain-
ing in bed. Nothing, however, appears to have been
done at this time, but at about aix o'clock, just aftor
the day policeman had euoieeded the night police-
man on the brat in the neighbourhood of the
prisoner's house, he was met by the prisoner, who
went up to him and told him that he wished to give
himeelt up for the murder of his wife. The
prisoner had no clothes on except a shirt and a pate
of drawers, which were all streaming wet, and he told
the policeman that he had been to the docks and jumped
in, but had determined not to drown himself or run
away. The policeman asked him how he had killed his
wife, and he rep;ied with a flat iron, and on being asked
where his house was he offered to lead the way. The
policeman followed him and went into the house, but
before he entered he blew his whistle to summon any
other police-constables who might be near. He then
went with the prisoner upstairs, and upon his requesting
to be allowed to change his clothes permitted him to do
so. By the time the change was completed, another
policeman arrived, and the three went together into the
prisoner's bedroom. Here they found his wife lying
on the bed, breathing, but unconscious, with the clothes
of the bed undisturbed, and with her youngest child
lying on her left arm asleep. On her head there were
esveral severe wounds, which appeared to have been
inflicted with a heavy weapon, and blood was flowing
from the wounds and streaming over the pillow on to
the ground. In another corner of the room were the
three other children of the prisoner in bed, awake and
crying. On the floor by the bedside of the dying
woman was found the flat iron with which the blows
had been etruck, with traces of blood upon it. There
were no eigns of any struggle • it appeared as if the
woman must have been rendered insensible by the
first blow, and, in the opinion of the medical witness,
one of the wounds inflicted would have produced that
effect instantaneously. She never recovered her con-
sciousness. brit lingered no in &ewe of insensibility until
about eighto'clock in the evening, when she died. The
pris .ner, on being asked by the policeman why he had
killed his wife, answered, "A man nextdoor kept looking
through a hole in the wall, and making faces at my
wife. I have cautioned her about it often, and she
knew my temper well." No hole, however, could be
found in the wall, nor any mark that looked at all
like one. At the time when the prisoner gave himself
up to the police, and for some time aftewards, he ap-
peared to be nervous and excited, and the doctor who
was called in to attend the wife was of opinion that
he nmet have been suffering very recently from de-
lirium tremens, but he considered the worst form of
the disease must have passed off before the deed was
committed, and that the appearance of the prisoner
miitht have been produced by the position he was in.
The defence raised was that tire accused was insane,
and at the time he inflicted the injuries which canted
the death of his wife was labouring under a delusion
which rendered him incapable of dietinguishing be-
tween rig and wrong, and that this view was coto
firmed by the absence of any motive for the crime.
The Judge, in summing up to the jury, told them
that in order to acquit on the ground of insanity a per-
son charged with murder they ;mist be satisfied that
the delustion under which he laboured was one which
imagined a state of things which if it really existed
would excuse the act which caused the death, as if the
accused supposed that the person he was striking was not
a human being, or that the implement with which the
blows were struck was not one likely to cause death, or
if he fancied that he was acting in cell-defence; but if
he imagined only a state of things which, even if it
really existed, would not excuse the act—for instance,
circumstances which would rouse his feelings of revenge
—such a delusion as that would not entitle a prisoner
to be acquitted on the ground of insanity. It would
s'nn be a very dangerous thing to infer from the absence
of motive and the atrocity of the deed that the ac-
cused must be insane, and to hold that a motive must
be sought for before a man can be found guilty of
murder.

The jury, after retiring for about a quarter of an
hour, returned a verdict of Guilty, and the prisoner
was sentenced to death.

SPUTTERINGS FROM "JUDY'S' PEN.
THE Spanish Republicans are guilty of a glaring blunder.
The President, Senor Figueru, ought to have been appointed
Minister of Finance.

THE difference between a journalist an -I a philosopher Is,
that one writts leaders and the other leads writers.

DURING the recent continu.ce or wet weather, toy-
dealers have been chirfly engaged in gelling Soak's arka.

nig n End " we all long ter:-Walls end.-
IF • flute could speak, it would probably say, " Well, I'm
blared."

SOLDIERS are generally rather tired on the let of April.
Perhaps ft Is because they have just had a March of thirty-
one days.

ROYAL 7if arines—Wliales.
THE man who said he was "wedded to immortal worse
used to disigree with his wife.

'119; difference between an apt quotation and a shut up
lancet is this ; one le a case In point, and the other Is a
point in case.

A 'RISING" Business—A c-ml-inerchant's.
WHY Is a coal-mine lies a graveyard ?—Because they
both contain natural remain. Inch are alien very dear.
... _ • •

WHAT I. the difference between a Jew and C lawyer ?
The one gets hia law from the prophar, the other hl prntite
from the law. -