by Clay, Jeremy
The acquaintance it would seem ripened into friendship, and finally a still more tender feeling sprang up in the breasts of both Mr Bradley and his fair enslaver. The gentleman proposed and the lady accepted him, although it was known that she was in the last stage of consumption.
Upon reaching Florida arrangements were made for a speedy union, but the bride elect became so weak and prostrate that she could not venture to move out of the house, and there was some idea of having the ceremony performed in her sick chamber, but this was overruled by his parents before it could be solemnised, and the ill-fated young woman breathed her last, and now comes the most remarkable, and what has been, with justice, termed the most unpleasant and discreditable part of the tale.
The coffin containing the dead body of the young woman was taken into the church, and several young ladies habited as bridesmaids surrounded it, while the clergyman read the marriage service, and then proceeded with the funeral service.
It was stated that Mr Bradley had given his spiritual wife his solemn promise that her body should not be consigned to its last resting place until this objectionable formula had been gone through.
The Illustrated Police News, September 17, 1881
A Young Lady in Ticklish Circumstances
An uproarious scene has occurred at Worksop. On Sunday evening a tradesman escorted to his home and introduced to his wife a young lady, to whom he paid the most marked attention.
The wife protested against her husband’s conduct; a row ensued, and the assistance of neighbours was invoked. This only made matters worse, and the husband, to extricate himself from his difficulty, knocked his wife down, and, presenting a pistol at her, threatened to shoot her.
A crowd quickly gathered about the house, and the husband was threatened with summary punishment. He, however, escaped, and the injured wife went and procured a warrant for his apprehension.
On Monday, a large crowd assembled near the house, and with pots and kettles created a most unseemly disturbance. It was not to be supposed that a young lady who could act the part already described would be discomposed by the noisy indignation of a street crowd, and to show that she did not care she made her appearance at the window, and then proceeded up stairs and sat down at the piano.
The crowd thought it improper that such coolness should not be further tested, so a party proceeded up stairs and brought her down into the yard amid the snow. Here she was greeted with loud yells, and a volley of snowballs fell thick and fast upon her.
She succeeded in escaping from the yard, but was closely followed by her tormentors. A friendly door was opened to her, where she found refuge. When it was dark she quietly left the town by train.
The Dundee Courier and Argus, January 5, 1867
A Jealous Woman’s Revenge.
Ludicrous Scene.
A most remarkable case of jealousy and revenge reaches us from Blythe. It appears that a young man named Walkingshaw, who is connected with a large London firm who make mantles, skirts, bodices, and other articles of female attire for the trade, paid marked attention to a Miss Bradley, the well-known teacher in a first-class establishment in their neighbourhood.
For some reason or another the Mantelini in the case treated his quondam enslaver with coldness and neglect, and eventually turned her off for another and newer flame. Miss Bradley was a prey to the ‘Green-eyed monster.’ The demon of jealousy raged in her breast.
On Saturday night last she chanced to meet the ‘gay Lothario’ with her rival on his arm. Her head seemed to swim, she breathed with difficulty, but contrived to follow the loving pair at a respectful distance.
A turning in the road, however, for a brief period concealed them from her sight. Nevertheless she followed on. Presently she observed young Walkingshaw enter one of the houses in an adjacent street. The people who rented the house in question were well known to her.
She entered, and followed her quondam lover upstairs. In the corner of the passage was a regulation rifle; Miss Bradley seized hold of this as a host of contending passions raged within her breast. Walkingshaw, unconscious of her presence, entered one of the apartments on the second storey.
Miss Bradley, rifle in hand, burst open the door, and beheld her cruel lover’s arms round the waist of what she supposed was her rival. She raised the gun to her shoulders, levelled the piece at the hateful object before her, and fired. When the smoke cleared away the real facts were but too apparent.
No mischief was done; the gun was loaded with blank cartridge only; and so far from embracing her rival before her very eyes, Mr Walkingshaw was but trying the effect of a shawl on a dummy made of wood, canvas, and tow. How matters have been arranged we cannot at present say, but rumour says the case will engage the attention of the gentlemen of the long robe.
The Illustrated Police News, November 9, 1872
Married By a Dying Man
An extraordinary phonograph story comes from America. It is said that a Protestant clergyman was very anxious to perform the marriage ceremony for his daughter, but shortly before the day fixed for her wedding he became dangerously ill, and his recovery was pronounced hopeless.
Under these circumstances the dying man ordered a phonograph to be brought to his bedside, and spoke into the instrument his part of the Marriage Service. The phonograph was placed on the Communion table of the church in which the daughter was married to a young merchant of Louisiana, and this voice from the grave, as it were, united the young couple.
The Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette, September 5, 1900
Remarkable Fatality.
Five Husbands Meet With Violent Deaths
A remarkable case of fatality attaching to the many successive husbands of one woman is reported from Nevers. A man named Chandiour has just hanged himself in the locality. The circumstances of the suicide are in no way extraordinary, except for the fact that the man was the fifth husband of a woman, all of whose previous husbands came to a violent end.
The first hanged himself, the second perished in a fire, the third drowned himself and the fourth and fifth have both been found hanged, and in each case, strange enough, on a pear tree.
The Western Gazette, Yeovil, January 18, 1901
Kissing In Public Strictly Prohibited
A sensation has just been caused in the States by order issued by the Baltimore Park Board against love-making in the park. General J.S. Berry, secretary of the board, has declared that public parks are not meant as courting-places, and that in the future anything in the way of love-making will be held to be improper conduct and punishable by the police.
Two young people have, in fact, been arrested for kissing, and fined – the man twenty dollars, the woman five dollars: a curious distinction in the value of a kiss.
The order and the decision have caused considerable stir in New York, and the commissioners of the Central Park have been inundated with letters protesting against the Baltimore precedent being followed.
The Citizen, Gloucester, June 10, 1893
Sold His Wife for a Shilling
In Upper Heiduk, in Silesia, a working man recently, so a German paper reports, sold his wife for a term of two years to an acquaintance for a shilling. The wife lived with her new partner in harmony, when one day, the lawful husband thinking he had surrendered her too cheaply, called upon the man and demanded a further sum of 15s. The lady, he said, had a set of beautiful teeth. He had forgotten that, and he considered 15s a small sum under the circumstances.
The ‘man in possession’ demurred, and the husband sought the aid of the law. The authorities, it appears, pronounced that as he had contracted himself out of his legal rights for two years, and for a 1s, he was not entitled to any further amount.
The Worcestershire Chronicle, May 17, 1890
Glass Eye as a Plea for Divorce
A judge in Ohio has given a decision of peculiar interest to young women. A man sued for divorce on the ground that his wife had a glass eye which she skilfully concealed during
courtship by the use of glasses.
The judge refused to grant a divorce, holding that it is not necessary for a woman during her courtship to inform the intended husband of any device or attachment used to improve the work of nature in the construction of the face, form, or figure.
He holds that a glass eye is no more fraudulent than false teeth or hair.
The Leeds Times, April 1, 1899
Her Husband Tickling Her Feet
On Thursday last week, a very serious charge was preferred against a man named Michael Puckridge, who resides at Winbush, a small village in Northumberland. The circumstances, as detailed before the board of guardians, are of a harrowing nature.
It appears that Puckridge has lived very unhappily with his wife, whose life he has threatened on more than one occasion. Most probably he had long contemplated the wicked design which he carried out but too successfully about a fortnight since.
Mrs Puckridge, who is an interesting looking young woman, has for a long time past suffered from varicose veins in the legs. Her husband told her that he possessed an infallible remedy for this ailment.
She was induced by her tormentor to allow herself to be tied to a plank, which he placed across two chairs. When the poor woman was bound and helpless, Puckridge deliberately and persistently tickled the soles of her feet with a feather.
For a long time he continued to operate upon his unhappy victim, who was rendered frantic by the process. Eventually she swooned, whereupon her husband released her. It soon became but too manifest that the light of reason had fled.
Mrs Puckridge was taken to the workhouse, where she was placed with the insane patients. A little girl who lived in the house, niece of the ill-used woman, spoke to one or two of the neighbours, saying her aunt had been tied to a plank, and that her uncle, so she believed, had cruelly ill-treated her.
An inquiry was instituted, and there is every reason to believe that Mrs Puckridge had been driven out of her mind in the way already described. But the result of the investigation is not yet known.
The Illustrated Police News, December 11, 1869
The Beardless Man
A St Louis woman waked up the other night and putting out her hand touched the smooth face of an unknown man. She jumped out of bed and screamed for help.
Her brother, who slept in the next room, entered, and not finding any matches, seized the intruder by the hair of the head, pummelled him soundly, expressing at the same time in the most vigorous terms, his opinion of a scoundrel who would be guilty of such an act. Then he dragged him into the middle of the room, thumped him, kicked him, and threw him out of the window into the yard below.
The neighbours, aroused by the noise, came in, and a light was procured. Nothing had been taken, and attention was directed to the miserable object who lay groaning in the yard.
It would, says the St Louis Republican, be useless to describe that face, with its nose spread all over the middle of it, one eye bulging out and the other closed up, both covered like an indigo bag, an open mouth, and a row of twisted teeth, much less to recognise it: but as the excitement slowly subsided and cool reason began to reign, a thought suddenly struck the wife that made her turn pale with horror. ‘Why it can’t be – it must be – yes, it is John! He has been to the barber’s!’
It was true, he had. He was her husband, and on his way home in the evening, feeling his long and heavy beard oppressive in the heat, he had it shorn. His wife was asleep when he crawled into bed, and he soon fell into a comfortable nap, from which he was rudely awakened to the experience above recorded.
She is now making the best poultices and chicken soup for him she knows how.
Supplement to the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, November 11, 1882
A Remarkable Story.
Children Confined to a Room for Eighteen Years.
A Leeds contemporary says: A Cleckheaton correspondent who has visited a village less than six miles from York, has been told a strange story, and saw children who had been confined to one room for eighteen years without the knowledge of the villagers.
About twenty-four years ago a woman went to reside in the village with two babies and a girl. The neighbours considered the woman eccentric, and shunned the house. Imagine their surprise when, after the woman’s death, they found in a private room two persons – the children of eighteen years before.
They talked rationally, and admitted never having left the room. They had to be taken about the village in a mail cart, and are said to receive the best of everything from the daughters of a millionaire. It is not known who the parents are.
The Yorkshire Gazette, June 10, 1899
Child Buying!
Last Monday a cab proprietor who resides in Belgrave Gate, and whose name begins with a T, happened by some mischance to be in a ‘merry mood.’
Not being blessed with any children in his connubial state, as he was passing along Mansfield Street he took a fancy to a child that a woman whom he met was leading, and asked her ‘what would she take for the darling?’
The woman replied a sovereign; on which the eager cab-man said ‘Done!’ and thought he had made a cheap and capital bargain.
The sovereign was readily paid, and the child transferred to the purchaser, who carried off his prize in high spirits to his home, in the blissful anticipation that his ‘better half’ would give the ‘young stranger’ welcome greeting.
But alas! his spouse was obdurate, and would not allow the young interloper house room at any price.
He then took the child back to its parents and wanted to get rid of the contract; but they would neither return him his money nor take back the child, telling him he had bought the child and must keep it.
He at last got rid of his ‘little responsibility’ by giving the parents 5s to take the child back.
The Leicestershire Mercury, April 17, 1847
A Corpse in a House for 20 Years
A curious discovery was made at Birmingham on the 9th inst. An old man, named William Owen, who has been living by himself for the last eight or nine months at Hockley Hill, and been known in the neighbourhood as the ‘old miser,’ was visited on Wednesday by the relieving officer, as he was in necessitous circumstances.
The officer noticed in one of the rooms a large box, and was informed by Owen, on his being pressed, that it contained the body of his sister, Ellen Perry, who died in Islington Workhouse in 1863.
His sister always had a horror of being buried by the parish, and she was promised by Owen that she should be buried in Birmingham. He had the body enclosed in a zinc and wooden coffin, and brought to Birmingham, where he expected the family to help him defray the expenses of the funeral, but as they did not do so he determined to keep the corpse in the house as long as he lived.
This he had done, and when he moved from one district to another some months ago, the box containing the coffin was taken with the other things.
Owen was always an object of considerable curiosity and suspicion, and for 15 years no one entered his door. He lived in one room, and was never known to have a light in the house.
As the certificate of his sister’s death was in Owen’s possession, no inquest will be held. The man has been taken to the Workhouse.
The Western Gazette, Yeovil, January 18, 1884
Singular Circumstance Attending the Birth of a Child
A curious incident occurred in a family the other day at Birkenhead, in which a husband actually lost his reason with excessive joy at the announcement that he had become a father.
The man is a joiner, and resides in Brook Street, Birkenhead. It appears that on Monday night last week, he returned home from his work, when he was informed that his ‘better-half’ had borne him a child.
The circumstance, although by no means unexpected, seemed instantly to produce a most joyous effect upon his mind, for he immediately danced and jumped about the room in a very excited state.
He was then told that his wife required a plaste
r for her chest, when he hurried to a druggist’s shop for the purpose of obtaining it. Whilst in the shop his manner appeared frantic, and after shouting that the police were pursuing him, he rushed out of the premises.
Nothing was heard of the man for two days, although a diligent search was made for him, but on Wednesday night he made his appearance at his own house, and had scarcely entered when the cries of his new-born child were heard, which produced on him the greatest excitement.
Without speaking to any one, he sallied forth into the yard, where he stripped himself of all his apparel, except his shirt and trousers, which he threw into an adjoining yard. He then rushed out of the house, and fled in the direction of Claughton Park, after which he was seen to enter a plantation at Bidston.
Several parties were deputed to endeavour to discover his whereabouts, but although he had been seen rambling about Bidston Hill in his wild and naked state, none of them succeeded in securing him.
On Friday morning, after being worn out with hunger and fatigue, he entered a small cottage at the foot of Bidston, kept by a person named Davies, and requested to be supplied with some milk. An old woman, pitying the forlorn condition of the wretched man, prepared him some bread and milk, which he ate with avidity, after which he again made his way into the plantation.
On the following morning, Davies met the maniac on the top of Bidston, and after a few words of salutation, the latter inquired whether he (Davies) had seen anything of the police. Being replied to in the negative, he asked to be taken to the old woman who had, on the previous day, supplied him with the bread and milk. Davies at once induced him to accompany him to his house, where the old woman again served him with a quantity of food. He was afterwards persuaded to retire to rest, and he slept soundly until 11 o’clock.
