DRINK AND CRIME.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 298, 17 August 1865, Page 1

DRINK AND CRIME.

rProm the Eastern Homing News.] It may be fairly doubted whether Englishmen do not display greater brutality than any other civilised people in the world. They are mot passionate like the Italians ; they are not treacherous like Orientals, nor sullen like the Russians; they are probably as a people the most humane in the world, and yet from time to time they perpetrate acts of almose unparalleled atrocity. In no country art there so many splendid benevolent institutions, and in none are barbarous murders more freqnent. In England there are places of healing for well-nigh every disease to which flesh is heir. The halt and the lame are cared for ; those who are afflicted with sores have their wounds bound up, and are tended with all gentleness and love ; yet in England the murderer smashes in his victim’s skull, staves in his victim’s chest; the mother throttles her infant, the husband beats his wife on the head until it is pounded into a shapeless jell}'. Our charities are the noblest, and our crimes the most atrocious.

These remarks are forcibly suggested by a case of wife murder which lias been tried lately at the Lancashire Assizes. A working man named Burke lived in a small house in Prestos, and with him lived his wife and their five children. The fatiier and mother were not on good terms, and frequently quarreled, using threats to each other. On the night of Sunday the 29th of January Mrs Burke went to bed with her youngest being an infant ten weeks old. about ten o’clock Burke went upstairs, and did not go to bed, but sat upon the edge of it. About midnight Burke sent his eldest daughter, a girl twelve years of age, to fetch a “ bedstock,” which he said he wanted “ to beat the fire with.” She fetched it, and nothing more happened until fo«r in the morning, when the children were awakened by the prisoner beating his wife’s head with this “ bedstock.” The woman, bleeding and desperately wounded, cried out. He beat her again, and told her that he would send for a doctor the next day, but she moaned out that she would be dead before then. Her husband then colly ordered her to go to sleep and not make so much noise. The infant began to scream, and continued screaming for hours. Burke was insensible alike to the moans of his wife and the cries of his child. The first indeed were soon silent, and the unhappy woman died in the presence of her husband and her infant; the latter powerless, the former, heedless, to help. A few hours later the neighbors, having heard screams, had the door of the house forced in, and found the woman lying stiff and cold, her baby crying by her side, and Burke, quarrelsome and violent, threatening to fight anyone who came near him. The end of this tragedy was that Burke was captured, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death; when, for the first time, the wretched man, indifferent to the fate of his wife but keenly alive to his own impending doom, fainted away. To make the tragedy more miserable, the witnesses of the murder were the murderer’s own daughters, and they gave the evidence against him which will hang him. There was only one line of defence possible against testimony so clear. In the very eloquent address which Mr Pope made he could not deny the facts, but all that he could allege was that the man when he committed the murder wus suffering from delirium tremens. He. had been drunk for more than a month—ever since Christinas in fact. He got especially drunk on the day preceding the murder, a Sunday, and when be awoke from his stupid sleep early on Monday he saw those horrible visions of creeping things which always terrify the drinksodden toper. His first impulse was to strike the pillow on which he fancied he saw them crawling. It was not long before his frenzy led to strike his wife, and the mania had not passed away by" the time that the neighbors and police broke into the house, and endeavoured to apprehend him. It was probably all true which Mr Pope urged. The man would most likely have had no desire to kill his wife had he been sober; but of course drundkenness is no plea against a criminal .charge. The man who “ puts an enemy into his mouth to steal his brains” is jcespoo-

sible for all that follows from such treachery against himself. It may be that he will simply go to bed quietly, sleep off the nights debauch, and experience no worse result than a had headache. Or he may nnder the in* fluence of drink commit any offence from that of making a noise in the street to that of taking the life of a fellowbeing. He should look the worse consequences in the face before he once puts himself into a position in which the worst may happen to him. Unfortunately, it is the tendency of alchol to break down moral restraints. The man who intends to drink in moderation will probably do so, but possibly he will not, and he may wake up some morning to find himself infamous. It is one of the worst features of the present liquor laws that they permit a publican to sell intoxicating liquors to a man who is drunk. To do so is far worse than to sell gunpowder to a hoy. The latter has judgment and discretion, although only imperfectly, but the former has lost his entirely for a time. In this case the ultimate causa of the woman’s death was the publican who supplied Burke with drink after he was intoxicated. To make the matter worse, it was on a Sunday that the liquor was supplied. On that day nearly all other trades are forbidden, but the liquor trade is permitted, and the result is the tragedy at Preston, which we have described.