BRIDE SLAYER FREED.

Western Star, 2 August 1938, Page 2

BRIDE SLAYER FREED.

Unrecognised by most of the people he met in the street, Joseph Davidson, 46-year-old former miner, went home to his native town of Bedlington, Northumberland, to forget and to find work. Less than nine years ago Davidson, a man with a fjne war record, stood in the, dock at Newcastle Assizes and heard the death, sentence pronounced upon him for the murder of Georgina, his bride of a month, by cutting her throat. - ■ Later he was reprieved and sentence commuted to life imprisonment. When Davidson left Maidstone gaol, a free man, he was met by his two brbthers and returuned to Bedlington. In keeping with Davidson’s wishes, relatives made no special preparations to welcome him back. He is making his home with .*iis brother George. “Joseph is in splendid health and overjoyed to be free again,” George Davidson said. “He wants to sa.y that, from the bottom of his heart, he thanks the British Legion and all the other people for their wonderful efforts during the last four years to secure liia release. He hopes to get work, but most of all, he wants to forget the past if people will only let him alone.* Davidson’s wife was found dead in August, 1929, in their hut home at Bedlington, and he himself was badly wounded. At the trial he pleaded that he cut her throat “in practical selfdefence.” ~