Richard Addington

On 29th May thirty eight year old Richard Addington, a Northampton shoemaker, and his wife attended a village festival where he indulged in an all day drinking session and had to be helped home in a drunken state. The next morning they quarreled about his conduct and to escape his temper, Margaret Addington went out into the garden. A neighbor heard Addington shout at his wife to come inside and when she refused, he stormed into the garden and dragged her back into the house where he cut her throat with a shoe knife. The neighbor, who had witnessed the incident from his own garden, summoned the police and Addington was arrested. His defense maintained he was insane, as a result of being kicked in the head by a horse twenty years earlier, but he was still found guilty and hanged by William Calcraft at Northampton on the 31st July 1871.