George Price, who murdered his wife in 1738, had an analogous motive: he wished to release himself from one tie in order to enter into another. He was in service in Kent, his wife lived in lodgings in Highgate, and their family increased far more rapidly than he liked. Having for some time paid his addresses to a widow in Kent, he at length resolved to remove the only obstacle to a second and more profitable marriage. With this infernal object in view he went to Highgate, and told his wife that he had secured a place for her at Putney, to which he would himself drive her in a chaise. She was warned by some of his fellow-servants against trusting herself alone with him, but “she said she had no fear of him, as he had treated her with unusual kindness.” They drove off towards Hounslow. On the way she begged him to stop while she bought some snuff, but he refused, laughingly declaring she would never want to use snuff again. When they reached Hounslow Heath it was nearly ten o’clock at night. The time and place being suitable, he suddenly threw his whip-lash round his wife’s throat and drew it tight. As the cord was not quite in the right place he coolly altered it, and disregarding her entreaties, he again tightened the rope; then finding she was not quite dead, pulled it with such violence that it broke, but not till the murder was accomplished. Having stripped the body, he disfigured it, as he hoped, beyond recognition, then left it under a gibbet on which some malefactors were hanging in chains, and returned to London with his wife’s clothes, part of which he dropped about the street, and part he gave back to her landlady, to whom they belonged. Being seen about, so many inquiries were made for his wife that he feared detection, and fled to Portsmouth.