A Book of Remarkable CriminalsIrving, H. B. (Henry Brodribb)
History
A Book of Remarkable Criminals
Irving, H. B. (Henry Brodribb)
Criminals -- Biography
The Dysons tried to shake off the unwelcome acquaintance, but that was
easier said than done. By this time Peace had set his heart on making
Mrs. Dyson leave her husband. He kept trying to persuade her to go to
Manchester with him, where he would take a cigar or picture shop, to
which Mrs. Dyson, in fine clothes and jewelry, should lend the charm of
her comely presence. He offered her a sealskin jacket, yards of silk,
a gold watch. She should, he said, live in Manchester like a lady, to
which Mrs. Dyson replied coldly that she had always lived like one and
should continue to do so quite independently of him. But Peace would
listen to no refusal, however decided its tone. Dyson threw over
the card into Peace's garden. This only served to aggravate his
determination to possess himself of the wife. He would listen at
keyholes, leer in at the window, and follow Mrs. Dyson wherever she
went. When she was photographed at the fair, she found that Peace had
stood behind her chair and by that means got himself included in the
picture. At times he had threatened her with a revolver. On one occasion
when he was more insulting than usual, Mrs. Dyson forgot her fear of him
and gave him a thrashing. Peace threatened "to make her so that neither
man nor woman should look at her, and then he would have her all to
himself." It was with some purpose of this kind, Mrs. Dyson suggested,
that Peace stole a photograph of herself out of a locket, intending to
make some improper use of it. At last, in desperation, the Dysons moved
to Banner Cross. From the day of their arrival there until the murder,
Mrs. Dyson never saw Peace. She denied altogether having been in his
company the night before the murder. The letters were "bare forgeries,"
written by Peace or members of his family to get her into their power.
Against the advice of all her friends Mrs. Dyson had come back from
America to give evidence against Peace. To the detective who saw her at
Cleveland she said, "I will go back if I have to walk on my head all the
way"; and though she little knew what she would have to go through in
giving her evidence, she would do it again under the circumstances. "My
opinion is," she said, "that Peace is a perfect demon--not a man. I am
told that since he has been sentenced to death he has become a changed
character. That I don't believe. The place to which the wicked go is not
bad enough for him. I think its occupants, bad as they might be, are too
good to be where he is. No matter where he goes, I am satisfied that
there will be hell. Not even a Shakespeare could adequately paint such a
man as he has been. My lifelong regret will be that I ever knew him."
With these few earnest words Mrs. Dyson quitted the shores of England,
hardly clearing up the mystery of her actual relations with Peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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