It is an observation made by some foreigners (and I am sorry to say
there's too much truth in it) that though the English are perhaps less
jealous than any nation under the heavens, yet more men murder their
wives amongst us than in any other nation in Europe.
Vincent Davis was a man of no substance and who for several years
together had lived in a very ill correspondence with his wife, often
beating and abusing her, until the neighbours cried out shame. But
instead of amending he addicted himself still more and more to such
villainous acts, conversing also with other women. And at last buying a
knife, he had the impudence to say that that knife should end her, in
which he was as good as his word; for on a sudden quarrel he slabbed her
to the heart. For this murder he was indicted, and also on the Statute
of Stabbing,[53] of both of which on the fullest proof he was found
guilty.
When Davis was first committed, he thought fit to appear very melancholy
and dejected. But when he found there was no hopes of life, he threw off
all decency in his behaviour and, to pass for a man of courage, showed
as much vehemence of temper as a madman would have done, rattling and
raving to everyone that came in, saying it was no crime to kill a wife;
and in all other expressions he made use of, behaved himself more like a
fool or a man who had lost his wits than a man who had lived so long and
creditably in a neighbourhood as he had done, excepting in relation to
his wife. But he was induced, with the hopes of passing for a bold and
daring fellow, to carry on this scene as long as he could, but when the
death warrant arrived, all this intrepidity left him, he trembled and
shook, and never afterwards recovered his spirits to the time of his
death.
The account he gave of the reason of his killing his wife in so
barbarous a manner was this; that a tailor's servant having kept him out
pretty late one night, and he coming home elevated with liquor abused
her, upon which she got a warrant for him and sent him to New Prison.
After this, the prisoner said, he could never endure her; she was poison
to his sight, and the abhorrence he had for her was so great and so
strong that he could not treat her with the civility which is due to
every indifferent person, much less with that regard which Christianity
requires of us towards all who are of the same religion. So that upon
every occasion he was ready to fly out into the greatest passions, which
he vented by throwing everything at her that came in his way, by which
means the knife was darted into her bosom with which she was slain.
Notwithstanding the barbarity which seemed natural to this unhappy man,
the cruelty with which he treated his wife in her last moments, the
spleen and malice with which he always spoke of her, and the little
regret he showed for having imbrued his hands in her blood, he yet had
an unaccountable tenderness for his own person, and employed the last
days of his confinement in writing many letters to his friends,
entreating them to be present at his execution in order to preserve his
body from the hands of the surgeons, which of all things he dreaded. And
in order to avoid being anatomised, he affronted the court at the Old
Bailey, at the time he received sentence of death, intending as he said
to provoke them to hang him in chains, by which means he should escape
the mangling of the surgeon's knives, which to him seemed ten thousand
times worse than death itself. Thus confused he passed the last moments
of his life, and with much ado recollected himself so as to suffer with
some kind of decency, which he did on the 30th of April, at the same
time with the last-mentioned malefactor.