ATTACK ON WIFE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXI, Issue 10922, 23 September 1932, Page 4

ATTACK ON WIFE

MAN WITH ‘VILE TEMPER’ GETS

THREE YEARS

“I must make it quite clear to the people of this city and this great Midland area that judges take a serious view of the use of the knife or razor upon anyone, particularly upon a woman.” This observation was made by Mr Justice McCardie at Birmingham Assizes, in sentencing Harry Humphreys, 02, to three years’ penal servitude for wounding his wife, Charlotte Agnes Humphreys, in Irv-ing-street, Birmingham. It was stated for the prosecution that Mrs Humphreys, who was a hard-working woman and kept a grocery business, had been keeping the home together because Humphreys had been unemployed for seven years, and their life together had been very unhappy. On many previous occasions he had threatened to kill his wife. On June 2, Humphreys, who had been drinking, and his wife quarreled in the shop in Irving-street, and he remarked; “I will swing for you.” He opened the till drawer, and, finding it empty, slammed it to again. His wife sat on a chair and began to read a newspapei. Some time Afterwards Humphreys hit his wife across the back of the neck, when he had a razor in his hand. Wound Three Inches Long. Among the wounds which a doctor found was one three inches long and a quarter of an inch deep on the top of Mrs Humphreys’s head. There was another three inches long over the left eye and going down to the bone. A third wound four inches long, was on the left, side of the neck behind the left ear, and a fourth wound was near it.

Chief-insp. Richardson told the Court that Humphreys had the reputation of being a good workman, but he had a vile temper. During the war he served with the Devonshire Regiment and afterwards in the Royal Air Force. After it had been pleaded for the defence that the attack happened during what must have been a brainstorm, the judge passed sentence as stated.