During the examination of this witness Peace seemed somewhat excited, and kept muttering to himself.
Jane Wadmore said, in 1876 she was living in Britannia-road, Darnall. She knew both Mrs. Dyson and Mr. and Mrs. Sykes.
On the 1st of July in that year she was talking with them, when the prisoner came up. Mrs. Dyson said to him, “Why do you annoy my husband in the way you do?” Peace replied, “I will annoy you. I will blow your brains out and your husband’s too before I have done with you.” Peace then went in the direction of Mrs. Dyson’s back door, and subsequently went into his own house.
In answer to Mr. Lockwood, witness said she remembered going to Mansfield with Mrs. Dyson. Peace did not accompany them, but he followed them. On their arriving at Mansfield, she and Mrs. Dyson went to a house for some refreshments. Peace followed them right into the room, and called for a bottle of something to drink. She did not leave Mrs. Dyson alone with Peace on the occasion. Mrs. Dyson returned home with her. Peace did not ride in the same compartment, nor did he treat them to anything to drink. She did not accompany Mrs. Dyson to a fair, but she remembered that there was a fair in Whitweek of 1876.
Police-constable Robinson, of the Metropolitan Police Force, related the well-known circumstances under which he captured the prisoner when committing a burglary at Blackheath on the 10th of October, 1878, and described how he was fired at by Peace three times, and was wounded by the third shot.
Charles Brown, sergeant in the Metropolitan Police, who went to the assistance of the last witness, produced the revolver taken from the prisoner on the occasion.
James Woodward, a gunmaker, of Manchester, examined the revolver produced, and said it contained seven barrels. He believed it was of Belgian manufacture. The bullet produced found in Mr. Dyson’s head would fit the barrels.
In reply to Mr. Lockwood, witness said the revolver was of a common description.
This was the evidence for the prosecution.
Mr. Campbell Foster then summed up the evidence. He said, if it was true that Mrs. Dyson was on terms of intimacy with the prisoner, was that any justification for his shooting her husband? He characterised strongly the attempts made to discredit the evidence of Mrs. Dyson, and to prejudice the jury against her; and he showed what a conclusive case this was against the prisoner, even excluding the testimony of the murdered man’s widow. But taking Mrs. Dyson’s evidence, as reasonable men must take it, the case against the prisoner was irresistible.