Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1877 — Shocking Tragedy in England. [ARTICLE]

Shocking Tragedy in England.

A remarkable case of cold-blooded and premeditated wife-murder is exciting the English public almost to a point of lynching the perpetrators. In 1873 Louis Adolphus Edmund Staunton, then a youth of 24, and earning £1 a week, formed the acquaintance of Miss Harriet Richardson, ten years his senior, the daughter of Mrs. Butterfield, and niece of Lord Rivers. The lady had £1,400 in her own right, and a reversionary interest in £2,000 more. She had never been strong in her intellect, and just before her marriage to Staunton her friends made an unsuccessful effort to secure her confinement in an asylum. From the time of the wedding her mother saw her but once before her death. She was completely isolated from her family, who knew nothing of her until they heard of the birth and death of a child. After death she was found to be terribly emaciated, and an autopsy demonstrated that she bail been slowly starved ty death. Her husband, lpef brother,

and a woman who had been living in the same house were promptly arrested, and during their preliminary examination before the magistrates it was found necessary to guard them carefully to protect them against the multitude, who boldly threatened them with execution without any sanction of law. The magistrates found them guilty of the capital offense and bound them over for trial. There seems to be no doubt that Staunton deliberately married and murdered a harmless idiot, whose only fault wsb the possession of a little money, after which the brute lusted.