"Attempt to Murder a Sweetheart at Surbiton"

On Saturday, the 19th of January in 1867, The Illustrated Police News published an article titled, “Attempt to Murder a Sweetheart at Surbiton”. The article is displayed as one of the three cover stories on the front page. There is an illustration of the article that is showcased before the reader has had the chance to read the article, foreshadowing that the following article will be an intense one. The illustration depicts a graphic image of a man swinging a straight razor at a woman that is on the ground with her throat cut open. While the assault is occurring, there is another man attempting to stop the man from further harming the woman on the ground, while another woman has come to her aid.

The article, a long paragraph that does not fill an entire column, tells about an army private named, Kane, who returned home on a visit to see a woman that he planned to marry. However, when another soldier in Kane’s regiment, William Russell, revealed to him that he was in a relationship with the same woman that Kane planned to marry, whose full name was exposed as Agnes Adams, Kane became very angry and jealous. After staying the night with Adams’ brother-in-law, the next morning on a Wednesday, Kane barged into the room where Adams was sleeping along with her sister and cut Adams’ throat several times. Kane was taken in by officers on a Thursday and doctors were unsure what would happen to Adams due to her cuts being too severe. Russell later claimed that on January 8th, Kane had told him of his plan to “cut the girl’s throat, and then do for him” and that he never mislead Kane about the truth. Though, because Russell gave his evidence in a “very peculiar manner,” authorities remanded him.

The text was written in a way that portrays the event as if it were a tragic love triangle. The Illustrated Police News sensationalizes the violent story by naming Agnes Adams as Kane’s “sweetheart” as it is stated in the text that he was going to marry her, but there is no further details about their relationship, nor does it explain Adams’ perspective of the situation. All that the reader knows about Agnes Adams, is that both Kane and William Russell intended to marry her and that she wrote letters to Russell unbeknownst to Kane. The article is meant to be solely about the “sweetheart” and how she is the victim in the event, yet Adams is disgraced and later written out the narrative as the doctors were not even able to help her in the end. Adams is characterized as a woman who drove a hostile man to violence due to her infidelities. The publication treats her attempted murder as if it were less than an act of passionate, envious rage.

Both the article and the illustration depict media portrayals that twist stories and sensationalize them in order to gain the general public’s attention and satisfaction. In order to make a story more interesting, words and narratives can be transformed. For stories that make the news, it offers the chance for the reader to see who it is about, and whose voice or narrative is being told. For instances such like this, it makes me wonder as a reader why they are protecting Kane and why is his side of the story more important than Agnes Adams’?