A man named George Price, of Islington, has been charged
with causing the death of his wife Frances under circumstances of the most atrocious cruelty. The poor woman was suffering from an internal abscess, and the doctor informed him that if it burst it would cause cancer, and must be treated with poultices. The man refused to supply the money; the abscess did burst, and did cause cancer, but the husband still refused money to buy medicines, or even food, and the nurse had to expend her own means. Not con- tent with this refusal, Price held up money in sight of his hungry wife to torture her, brought up candles "to light her soul to hell," held a Bible over her head that she might, being unable to move, en- -dare the agony of expecting its fall on her face, threw a prayer- book at her, and finally ate and drank the food supplied for her use by her brother. The facts were proved by nurses, and the .solitary defence seems to be drunkenness. It is a defect in our law, as we have hal occasion to point out before, that it does not provide a separate punishment for torture. This man's offence is neither murder, nor manslaughter, nor assault, but torture ending in death,—perhaps the absolutely worst crime of which a human being can be guilty.
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