The Lophams Project
Edward FISHER (1777 - 1819)
The Ipswich Journal,z
NORWICH, August 18 [1819]. At our Assizes Edward Fisher was indicted for maliciously stabbing William Harrison, in the belly, on the 8th of July. - Harrison the prosecutor, stated, that about nine o'clock in the evening, as he was going home from Bressingham, the prisoner came up, to him, and struck him below the navel, saying something about his wife, which prosecutor could not distinctly hear. He then said to the prisoner, “I’ll have you taken up," and stood looking at him, upon which Fisher turned away and went down Fen-street. Prosecutor then walked to Mr. Brande's, and was afterwards removed to the public house: the wound is not yet healed: he kept his bed three or four weeks; never had any quarrel with prisoner; knows the prisoner's wife, but was not intimate with her, and had not seen her for two or three weeks, or longer. Mr. Burt, a surgeon at Diss, went to the prosecutor about ten o'clock in the evening, and found him bleeding on a table, in exceeding great pain; he thought he was dying; the wound was near two inches in length into the cavity of the body, and near 20 inches of the bowels protruded through the wound. John Branch, the constable, stated, that upon his apprehending the prisoner, he said he did not care; he wished he had done it before, for Harrison had caused dispute between him and his wife than any may lie knew; witness produced the clasp knife with which the wound was inflicted, smeared with blood. The prisoner, in his defence, said, that on the previous evening the prosecutor stood in front of his house, laughing, hallooing, and behaving in a menacing manner. The prosecutor being recalled, denied this statement. His Lordship then summed up the evidence, and the Jury turned a verdict of Guilty. In pronouncing the sentence of' the awful sentence of the law, the learned Judge remarked, that the prisoner had, upon one of the most wholesome statutes that ever was enacted for the protection of his Majesty's subjects, been found guilty of a most heinous offence, without having received a shadow of provocation that could induce him to commit it. He had insinuated that it was from jealousy, but there was not a tittle of evidence to support such an imputation; it must therefore have been in order to satiate some unruly passion. The horrid offence had been perpetrated upon an individual who was not in a situation to defend himself: 'The Courts never overlooked cases like the present, but always visited them with capital punishment; and he earnestly recommended the prisoner to prepare for the fate which awaited him, by prayer. During the whole trial the prisoner manifested the strongest feelings of agitation.
