On the charge being read to him he pleaded “Not Guilty,” but he spoke in so low a tone that he could scarcely be heard.
Mr. Campbell Foster, Q.C., and Mr. Hugh Shield prosecuted on behalf of the Treasury; and Mr. Lockwood and the Hon. Stuart Wartley (instructed by Messrs. Clegg and Sons, Sheffield), defended the prisoner.
Mr. Campbell Foster, Q.C., in opening the case for the prosecution, said he could not disguise from himself, nor from the jury, that the case, from the great public comment which had been made upon it in the various newspapers, must come before them under circumstances calculated somewhat perchance to bias their minds, but before entering upon it he would beg and implore them to put from their minds anything they might have read about the case, and be guided entirely by the sworn testimony which would be given by the witnesses as to the guilt or innocence of the prisoner.
It would be shown, he said, that, previous to July, 1876, the man, into whose death they had to inquire, lived at Darnall, a village about three miles to the east of Sheffield, and now one of the outskirts of the town.
He and his wife lived in a row of cottage houses, and next door, or next door but one, lived the prisoner and a person who, so far as they knew, was his wife.
From being so near neighbours the Dysons got to know the prisoner. He was in the habit of framing pictures, and was employed by them to frame two or three small prints and pictures which they had in the house.
This led to an acquaintance between the prisoner and the Dysons, but at last Mr. Dyson seemed not to like the persistent familiarity with which the prisoner was in the habit of treating them, walking into the house whenever he thought proper, at meal times, and generally obtruding himself upon them.
This annoyed both Mr. Dyson and his wife, and, as a consequence, shortly before the 1st July, 1876, Mr. Dyson wrote on the back of one of his address cards—
“Charles Peace is requested not to interfere with my family.”
The card was thrown over the wall into Peace’s garden, and the sending of it seemed to have created a bad feeling in the mind of Peace against Dyson, for it would be shown that on the 1st of July, meeting Mr. Dyson, he suddenly commenced an assault upon him, attempting to trip him up and throw him down.