npedrazzini/19thc_murder_suicide_news huggingface dataset:
The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1890-07-30 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

NEW BRIGHTON TRAGEDY.  THE JUDGE'S CHARGE.  In his charge to the Grand Jury at the Chester Assizes on Monday, Mr. Justice Stephen referred at length to the charge against Felix Spicer, of murdering his two sons at New Brighton. He said the case was certainly by far the worst and most serious on the calendar. It was one, too, which he wee sure would take a long time for its investigation. It was the case in which a man named Felix Spicer WWI accused of the most shocking crime of mordering two of his illegitimate children, and there could be no question that the injuries of which the children died, and which were immediately fatal, were wilfully inflicted, nor could there be any question that the iolliction of those injuries WM murder. There was, therefore, no necessity for any of the explanations as to what constituted the crime of murder which were often necessary in putting cases of the kind to a jury. Spicer was living with a woman who was generally looked upon as, and called, Mrs. Spicer, but whose real name was Mary Ann Falba, and it seemed that at the time of the crime the two were on extremely bad terms altogether. Patio bad lived with him for a considerable number of years, and they had seven children, whose ages ranged from somewhere about thirteen downwards. She lived in an eating.house at New Brighton, near Liverpool, which she carried on, and as far as could be made out she had an agreement which made her the tenant of the place. She refustd to let her husband into the house, or to allow him to be master of it, and by that means excited him—as one could very easily understand—to the most eager resentment and anger. After the offence with which he was charged, but before hie committal, there were found in his possession various letters, constituting • correspondence between him and her, the effect of them being that prisoner was in an almost heartbroken etate, the letters being the most lamentable appeals to her for pardon, and to take him back into her good graces. There were also letters in which she moat bitterly—but his lordship had no right to say improperly or unjustly—reproached him with his conduct towards her, and she said she would never have anything mere to do with him, and would never see him again, and would never allow him to enter the house. His lordship did not mean to go into any question between them as to which was in the right and which was in the wrong, but whichever was wrong, It was a most lamentable state of things to have such bitter ill-will between them. After alluding to certain evidence that would be produced, his lordship said all these things formed • very strong chain of evidence, and lithe grand jury thought those facts, or enough of them, were fully made out, and that the prisoner was the man who had attacked the children, they would have to find a true bill against him for the charges on which he was indicted.
The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1890-06-18 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

THE CANONBURY MURDER. PRISONER AGAIN BEFORE MR. PRESTON. On Monday the young man Frederick Bedford;;. again brought before Mr. Preston, at the Borough Police Court, charged ander his own confession with being concerned in the murder of Francis Maria Wright, 19, Canceabury- terrace, London, on May 16th, 1889.  Superintendent Clarke reported that he had received information from London concerning the prisoner, but it was virtually of no use, as the London police did not say whether they would fetch the prisoner or not. They seemed to have known some little about him, as he had resided in London some years ago. A written report was to the effect . that prisoner twelve years ego had been employed in grocers' shops there, under what name they could not say, but h• had left on his own accord. He was filled 40s. and costs, or a month, at Hammersmith, on October 23rd, 1813, for travelling without ticket from Edge Hill Station to Willesden Junction, and in that case b• gave the name of Frederick Russell. On the 4th September, 1885, lie was charged at Horton Polies Station, on his own confession, with being ooncerned in a burglary with • man named George Platt, at the Crown and Sceptre public house, Ware-street, Kingland.roed, on the 27th August previous. He was tried at the Central Criminal Court, in September, 1885, and Platt, who was caught in the act, was sentenced to 18 months' hard labour, and " Russell" to six months' hard labour. The Chief Commissioner supply forwarded the facts and offered no comments. Mr. Preston: Is this true? Prisoner: Yea, your worship, they are the only times I ever was convicted in my life, and I gave myself up to the_police then. Mr. Preston: Have you anything further to say with the charge made on your own confession? Prisoner: No sir, I have not, bet the detective said I was not the one he wanted, and I suppose that clears me, you know. Mr:Preston : I think there ought to be something more definite from the police regarding this, whether ,Itsy will prosecute or not. Supt. Clarke: The detective said they would not prosecute, but he is not here now. Mr. Preston : I know he said in his opinion they would not prosecute, and that in his opinion the Prisoner was not the man. Sept. Clarke: It was the opinion of the police that they could not make out a case against him. Mr. Preston: I shall hot discharge him ttntil I have • more definite answer from the Criminal In. vestigation Department whether they well prosecute him or not. If they will, he will be sent to London; if they will not I shall be bound- to discharge him. He most be further remanded till Thursday: (To .the prisoner). You have nothing to complain about regarding this delay,as you have brought it upon yourself, supposing it is not trtie. Prisoner: I did not know until the detective said they had had eleven persons arrested for it, or I would not have come.  Mr. Preston: Well, you must take the consequence DOW of your act. Prieoner wee then again moved to the cell.
The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1881-01-08 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

SHOCKING CASE.  Intelligence of a peculiarly shocking case comes from Sheffield. It affords a striking illustration of the horrible effects which may be brought about by a too free indulgence in alcoholic liquors. The principal actor in it was a man named Charles Henry Sampson. He is a file forger and 28 years of age. He has been married eight years, and up to the other morning had five children, the youngest of whom was six months old. He had been drinking heavily during the Christmas holidays and had taken scarcely anything to eat. On Friday he was seized with delirium tremens, and his wife became so alarmed at his conduct that she got her brother and a brother-in-law to stay in the house as a protection. On Saturday evening he became more excited than ever, and his wife sought, for medical assistance. The surgeon advised that an order should be obtained for his removal to the workhouse, where he could be placed under some restraint, but although the wife went to the residence of the medical officer twice on Sunday, she was unable to find him in, and as she could not' otherwise obtain an order for her husband's admission to the workhouse nothing further could be done. It seems odd that in a town like Sheffield officials who are wanted at all times and in all seasons should be thus difficult to find. It is pitiful to think of what happened through the prolonged absence from home of the doctor. At an early hour in the morning the wife was compelled to leave her bedroom in consequence of the restless behaviour of her husband, who implored her to fetch him a little brandy. She went out of the house for that purpose. Almost immediately afterwards Sampson had a violent struggle with her brother. The latter succeeded in getting away, and ran out with the intention of preventing the wife from bringing in the brandy. Whilst he was absent Sampson took up his infant child by the legs and dashed out its brains on the hearthstone. He then broke every pane in the window, and did the same in a room above. He next made his way to the garret, in which four of his children and his wife's father were sleeping. After smashing all the window panes with his hands, he went to the old man, but did not injure him. Then going to his children's bed he felt them, but on his eldest boy asking him not to hurt them ' he said he would not, but that they would not see the baby any more. Running downstairs he jumped through the kitchen window, and ran into the street in a state of semi-nudity. He wandered about the streets for some time, and was at length seen by a policeman, who took him to the workhouse. He was there placed in a padded room. The case is melancholy in all its aspects. But it will be absurd to treat the demented Sampson as a common murderer. Yet that is how he will, in all probability, be treated, if the law of the land is observed.
The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1881-06-25 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. .  On Wednesday evening, in the House of Commons, Mr. Pease moved the second reading of the Capital Punishment Abolition Bill. The weight of argument was decidedly on his side, but be was defeated by 175 votes to 79. He pat his case very well. He maintained—and his contention is clearly proved by the statistics which have just been obtained from those favoured countries in which no such thing as capital punishment exists— that human life would be as safe as it was now if the punishment of death were altogether abolished. Although he admitted that in certain conditions of society the right of taking life did exist, he regarded capital punishment as a barbaric one, and contended that no human tribunal, being fallible, ought to have the power of tak ng life. He then went on to quote numerous cases of mistaken identity which hati occurred, and where men had been put to death who were afterwards proved to be innocent. He deprecated private execution, while condemning the sensational accounts of them which are published by newspapers, and he cited cases in which the rope had broken and the victim had been hanged a second time. Such cases were regarded. with horror when they took place in St. Petersburg, but they had actually taken place in our own country. He went on to deplore a system by which a woman who was proved to be pregnant at the time of the sentence was kept and nursed for months in the prison until the babe was born, when the prison child was handed over to some benevolent lady, and the woman was hanged. The Home Secretary, however. could not allow that to pass in silence, and made the satisfactory declaration that each cases did not occur now. Hr. Pease was ready with a reply. "Perhaps," he remarked, "such cases did not take place under the regime of the right hon. gentleman, but they hai taken place, and he cited one which occurred in his own county not many years ago. But even if that were not so, the law existed in this country under which spch things might happen. Cases had also happened in which the criminal had after death been proved to be insane. He urged that capital punishment had not proved successful in preventing murder, and maintained that there were other punishments which would prove equally as deterrent. Austria, Spain, France, and Hungary had abolished capital punishment to a much larger extent than in England. In France there had been executed in ten years. 93 convicts out of 1,241 condemned, or nine annually. The English proportion of the French number would have been to execute 682, or 68 annually. In Norway, Belgium, and many of the United States they had found a way to deal with murderers without hanging them." His most thorough-going opponents were politicians of the Warton and New&gate type, good old Tories who believe in the good old doctrine of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth and a life for a life. It appeared to be the general impression that some alteration of the law was desirable; and it is not improbable that before long the
The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1881-02-05 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1881.  EVENTS OF THE WEEK.  A DIABOLICAL MURDER.  At Chester, on Wednesday, a man named Stanway was sentenced to death, with every indication that the sentence would be carried into effect, fur the murder of a woman. The crime was committed at Macclesfield on the eve of the greatest Christian festival of the year, and was of a phenomenally sickening churacter. The man and the woman had lived together. He had been wandering in the Northern counties, meeting with little prosperity, and had just returned home. Receiving an affectionate reception, he persuaded the: woman to accompany him to several public-houses. As a natural sequel to their debauch they quarrelled, and he ill-used her so shamefully that a number of onlookers found it necessary to interfere. He maltreated her a second time, performing the operation of " running her out " of the house. However, such violence, so far from slaking his passion, seemed to convert him into an absolute demon. Having carefully made a poker red hot he fiendishly thrust it into the body of his hapless victim, injuring her in such a manner that she subsequently died in great agony. In the interval between the committal of the outrage and the woman's decease the miserable wretch displayed a certain amount of solicitude on her behalf: he even went so far as to summon a doctor to her assistance. Great stress was laid on this by Mr. Julyan Dunn, who appeared for the defence, and eloquently urged the jury to rettun a verdict of manslaughter. But the judge pointed out that what was done after the deed was no excuse .for the deed itself; and when the jury had given their decision he ominously declared that it would have been a misfortune to the community had they come to a different one. At the same time he stated—we do not see why, as it is not the function of the judges to study dramatic effect or to tell stories which have no direct bearing on the matter under consideration—that one of the very worst cases of murder which had come before his notice was that of a priest who, having inflicted fatal wounds on a woman, knelt at her feet, administered to her the last sacrament, and prayed for her salvation. We should scarcely think of comparing Stanway with that priest. He seems more bovine than man-like. In the dock he presented an abject appearance, and on receiving sentence knelt down and declared that he did not remember anything about the matter and never meant to kill the woman. We can quite believe that when he earned the death penalty he was not morally responsible for his actions, and, though he is a hopelessly degraded being, it seems to be opposed to common sense and justice for him to be hanged. However, the administrators of the law are not very discriminating—they do not look below the surface when they have an appalling enormity to deal with—and so he will, as we have said, probably have his ill-starred career cut short in a shameful and barbarous way.  •
The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1881-04-09 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

THE WIGAN ELECTION.  A vacenoly has been created in the representation of Wigan by the unseating of Mr. Powell. This most unfortunate of candidates has issued an ad- I dress in which "he ventures to hope that he may at a future time have another opportunity, and, under more favourable circumstances," of soliciting the suffrages of the free, enlightened, and 'independent voters of the grimy coal centre. It is not likely that there will be another election there for some little time.  A HORRIBLE mugnert. A horrible murder was committed in Rose-place, Liverpool, the other evening. The victim, a woman, was. most brutally beaten. When her body was found it was bruised all over, and there were about her neck awful gashes which must have caused immediate death. Her assailant left her where she fell, in the middle of the floor, which wag .00vered with blood when the police appeared on the scene. The crime was not discovered until mego time after Its commission, as, with considerable cunning, a large keyhole in the door of the lobby leading to the room had been stuffed up with paper so as to prevent anyone from seeing into the room from the outside, whilst bras knobs had been wrenched off both the inside and the outside of the door. The only fastening was the latch, which, without the knob, could not be lifted from the outside, and when the alarm was given by the persons occupying the upper room the constable called to the spot had to burst the door open. The murderer is believed to be ' a man named M'lntee, the husband of the woman. He was captured late on Tuesday night at Garston. He had walked out there early in the day, though he has no friends in the locality, having previously pawned his watch for 80s. Part of his money he had spent, and when taken into custody, at a quarter.past ten o'clock at night, he was under the influence of drink, being in a hag-dazed and muddled condition, though he knew perfectly well tbe nature of the charge which was to be made against. him. He had completely altered his appearance. Some hours previous to his arrest he went into the shop of Mr. Ross, barber, in St. Mary's-road, and asked to be shaved. The barber jocularly told him he would have some difficulty in shaving him with all the whiskers he had, and M'lntee, who wore a long dryrk beard and moustache, sat down and told , him to "Go on, and give him a clean I shave." Mr. Ross complied with this somewhat unusual request without having any suspicion of the object or character of his customer, and the latter afterwards went into some of the beerhouses of the district. When the constable who was on the look-out for " strangers " met him he was seeking lodgings, and he replied evasively to several questions put to him. The constable then I told him, "I'll have to take you into custody :" and M'lntee answered, "It's. all right; I know all about it." On the way to the station, on being told that he would be charged with murdering his wife, he did not deny the accusation, but said, "I've only to die once." On Thursday he was brought before Mr. .Raffies and remanded.
The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1881-04-02 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

GREEK AND IS MISTRESS.  It is not very easy to sympathise with the gentleman who has to beg a court of law to protect him from a mistress whom he has cast off. Mr. Nicholas Contopolis, a cigarette manufacturer of Queen Victoria-street, Loudon, is in this unfortunate predicament, and he really 'would appear to have reasonable ground for complaint against Bertha de Sterke, who, it will be remembered, was a witness in the Lambri-Labouchure case ; bat we doubt whether he will obtain any very great amount of practical solace from the legal steps which he has been constrained to take. At the Mansion House, on Wednesday, he was represented by Mr. Abrahams, who euphemistically stated the case. According to that legal luminary, Mr. Contopolis "had, unfortunately for himself, been acquainted with the prisoner for some time, but their relations with each other had now beeu broken off for a considerable period. Since then she had pursued a continuous and violent system of annoyance, rendering his life almost unbearable. She walked backwards aud forwards in front of his place of business all day long, and at night went to his private residence and frightened his wife and family. The annoyance had recently culminated in sending him post cards and letters accusing him of odious crimes and threatening to disfigure him with vitriol and murder him. OS the 16t11 inst. she was arrested and taken to Westminster Police Court, and Mr. D'Eyncourt bound her over in her own recognisances in £5O and two sureties is 4 £25 each to keep the peace for sis months. In spite of this she had continued, without a day's intermission, the previous course of annoyance, end on Friday night last she as. him in Queen Victoria-street." The woman, as became a daughter of Mother Eve, had plenty to say for her- ,  lEAD Aipyille_.l "Obi, d*,4l thtzhililnits holier" czipil: he had had f between  svii 22;  and 28,,  of her money, and that she was now a beggar, she annonncod that she was Lproseolgi4iyav a,ts Larnbeth nouat If elainlng* her* goOds. Bhe also stated that she had twice been pre__  sweeesel- -frees - -deetroying herself, that .ebe. had kept a ,garbling and ,d,issolute house in Chelsea, am 4. that she had given the whole of her property to her accuser. Mr. Abrahams, however,:sai,l that there was no lbandation for her statements, and that he fancied she must be insane. She was then remanded, in order that the gaol surgeon might certify as to her condtion. The story,is repulsive, but it is full of tragedy and a sort of ghastly pathos. It will not have been told in vain if it induces some unfledged libertine to think that he silt better display his virtue by refraining from forming a liaison with a woman than by forming the liaison and breakitag off relations with her when he has become weary of her charms and animated br a wi 1 longing to take unto himself a wife and Bet up as an intensely respectable member of society.  RD thigltrome4oss ea e; t hattireckted '‘,4l Waving iffirtned Unit 'l.OOO '1,00(