A SCENE IN COURT.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 219, 20 February 1875, Page 3

A SCENE IN COURT.

An occurrence perhaps without a parallel was witnessed at the close of the assizes at Chester, of which the Manchester Guardian gives the following account: —“Mary Lancaster, thirty-three, was indicted for the manslaughter of her husband, John Lancaster, at Birkenhead. The deceased had long led the prisoner a wretched life, and on September! 13th he came home drunk, and kicked over the meat which she was preparing for his dinner. He then thrashed her, and in a passion the prisoner threw at him a sharpening steel, and caused his death. The prisoner was a hard-working woman, and in spite of her husband’s brutal ’treatment of her, had done her best to make his home comfortable. The jury found the prisoner ‘Guilty.’ Mr Justice Brett, addressing the prisoner, then said ; I believe that if I thought it right to act according to your own feelings, I should say nothing about this unhappy husband of yours. As far as I can see yon were a respectable, hardworking, well-behaved wife, and I feel bound to say a greater brute than your husband was I have seldom heard of. There are circumstances in the depositions even worse than those which have been brought forward. They show that, even on the very last day you were together, you were doing all you could to make his home comfortable, and to make him happy. With a brutality Avhich made me shudder when I read it, he cast away that which you had prepared for him. He has been beating and ill-treating you for months, probably for years, and it is nothing but the tenderness and forgiveness of the woman and wife which prevented you from having him punished for crimes he committed against you time after time. It was only when he has driven you to desperation by ill-treating you the whole day, and I dare say was on the point of ill-treating you again, that you, in a moment of passion, took up a formidable weapon an threw it at him, 1 believe, without the intention of striking him. It did strike him, and you immediately ran for assistance, and did all you could to save him. All the real right in this case was on your side—all the real wrong on your husband’s; and God forbid that I should punish you. I will be no party to it. I will not even make this judgment complete. I will not allow it to be •said by anybody that you arc a convicted felon—(hear, hear) —for a conviction is not complete until a sentence is passed, and I mean to pass no sentence at all. (Loud cheering, which for some time the officials of the court vainly endeavored to suppress.) I shall merely ask you to enter into your own recognisances to come up for judgment if called upon, and nobody in the world will ever call upon you—God forbid they ever should.”