Shocking Wife Murder


          In an August 28, 1869 issue, The Illustrated Police News (IPN) published an article titled “Shocking Wife Murder in Manchester.” On a Sunday evening, a man named Walter Shandley went to the pub with his wife, Ann Shandley, and a friend. After a few drinks in, "Shandley" (which is what the husband is referred to by the reporter) asked the deceased (which is what the wife is referred to in the article) to go home. He then asked for money, but to both requests, Ann Shandley provided him with unsatisfactory answers. The article stated that "Shandley then struck her back-handed." After she was struck on the head, Ann Shandley cried out "I'm done" then fell to the floor dead. She was found without external bleeding, but later on discovered that her thin skull was fractured and there was blood over her brain extending to the bone. The husband ran away from the scene immediately afterward. He soon went to the police to admit his murder of his wife.
          This is portrayed to be an accident, the husband did not seem to have purposely murdered Ann Shandley. However, it is important to evaluate something crucial to this case, the reason for the violence. Other than having had alcohol, the husband committed the act responding to Ann Shandley's breaking of her role as the wife. When she said that it is "not time enough yet" at the pub and that she would not give him money, she was the one in charge of time and money. She was the owner and the one to make the decisions. That obviously was not the acceptable image of a wife for the society during the Victorian era.
        In Phillip Mallett's article "Women, Marriage and the Law in Victorian Society," the writer points out that there was this reality during the Victorian era. The social reality that "a married woman's property, children, and body belonged to her husband." The idea that a woman and everything of hers will become the property of the man once they become married is absolutely dehumanizing. Women were not the owners of anything, in fact, they were not even independent individuals.
        This absurd reality is reflected in this case in the article. Walter Shandley killed his wife with one violent hit on the head. Although the article points to the fact that Ann Shandley has a skull that is "only about one-sixth of an inch in thickness," the reader may infer that the tragedy was not caused just because of her thin skull. The husband was so mad, he struck her to death. For that moment before the incident, Ann Shandley had power over their time and money, and so she lost her life for being more than just his property.


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