[Byrne, Ellen]:

$650 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE TRIAL OF MRS. ELLEN BYRNE, FOR THE MURDER OF MR. AUGUSTINE BYRNE, HER HUSBAND; AT THE COMMISSION COURT, DUBLIN, ON THE 15th AND 16th AUGUST, ... An exceedingly scarce account of an extraordinary murder case in 1840s Dublin. Ellen Byrne, a woman of apparent amazing intemperance, lived with the corpse of her husband for a period of two to four days before the body was discovered in a state of rapidly advancing decomposition. Upon its discovery, she argued that she was not aware, presumably on account of her alcoholic stupor, that her husband had died. This explanation was so inconceivable to the authorities that Byrne was put on trial for the murder of her husband by suffocation or strangulation. Owing to the state of the body, however, no evidence that she committed the crime other than her inability to report the death could be produced, and she was found not guilty. OCLC records a single copy at the National Library of Ireland, and we otherwise locate only one additional copy, bound in a Sammelband at the Royal College of Physicians in London

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