BRUTAL HUSBANDS.

Evening Star, Issue 3965, 9 November 1875, Page 3

BRUTAL HUSBANDS.

I Reading over the criminal calendars in the English papers to hand by the mail we are 1 struck by the infinite variety and utter I brutality of crime therein. Take two instances. The * Liverpool Alb on ' in one issue contained four columns filled with the details of terrible crimes, many of them distinguished by f-ome ingenious contrivances in the way of brutality. One candidate for the gallows is charged with placing fagotß of burn ng wood uuder his wife's clothes, as she lay in bed in a state of intoxication. Another husband, who had depeodet for some months upon his wife's earnings for support, found his supplies growing shorter and shorter in consequence of her failing health, and proceeded to punish her for pre-umiDg to besick by a procesß of strangulation, which throws " Othello's " icats in that line into the shade. If these were exceptional casjs the deduction to be d rawn from them would not be so bad; but they only exceed in ingenuity scores of otherß. hut th sec-sea sink into insignificance compared with the following, which is reported ic one of the latest issues of the Melbourne ' Age' :~" Wm. Fulton, a laborer, aged 48 vears, was brought up on remand at the St. Kilia ( ourt, charged with the manslaughter of Isabella I homson Fulton, his wife. The facts deposed to were that the prisoner was brought from Mordialloc on Friday, the 22nd inst., as his wife wished to take farewell of him, she being in a dying condition from a complication of disorders. He was sober when he reached home, but subsequently he got drunk, a; d ordered away some neighbors who were performing kindly offices for the poor woman. Late at night he called the ■lying creature vile names because phc moaned with piiu, and tors up and burned her marriage certificate, to prove to her how hj s temper had been joused. On Saturday following he continued drinking, and also on Sunday. On the morning of that day he sent away a young girl who attended on his wife, and took charge of the latter hinvelf. In the evening he thrashed his enly son unmercifully, and the lad had to se.k shelter with a neighbor. .Shortly afterwards an old lady went in to inquire after the dying woman, and found Fu ton drunk and lying across hi* wife's body. She roused him and expostulated w tli him, for which she received a torrent of abuse, which drove her away. Mrs Fulton was then unable to speak or move, but there was no appearance of any wound about h»r. An hour or to later, the son ventured back, and on looking through the window he saw his mother's face covered with blood, and his father prostrated on the bed alongside her. He procured assistance and the police, when it was found that the woman had been rendered insensible and wounded, evidently by blows ; and the prisoner admitted to his son-in-law that he had 'given her a tap.' He übecquently said she must have fallen out of bed and injured herself and then uot in, but all the evidence tended to prove that it was physically impossible that she could have moved herself sufficiently to fall out even. The prisoner was committed to take his trial for mausl tughter at the Central Criminal Court on the 15th .November."