Their quarrels frequently rose to such a height as to alarm the neighbourhood, the man being of a cruel, and the woman of an obstinate temper, and it seemed rather a wonder that the murder had not ensued before than that it happened when it did, they seldom falling out and fighting without drawing blood, or having some grievous accident or other happening therefrom.  Once he burnt her arms with a red-hot iron, and but a week before her death he ran a great pair of scissors into her skull, which covered her with blood, and made him and all who saw her think he had murdered her then.  But after bleeding prodigiously she came a little to herself, and on the application of proper remedies recovered.  Brinsden, in the meanwhile fled, and was hardly prevailed with to return, upon repeated assurances that she was in no danger, promising himself that if she escaped with life then, he would never suffer himself to be so far transported with passion as to do her an injury again.

The fatal occasion of that quarrel which produced the immediate death of the woman, warm with liquor, and in the midst of passion, and which soon after brought on a shameful and ignominious end to the man himself, happened by Mrs. Brinsden’s drinking cheerfully with some company at home, and after their going away, demanding of her husband what she should have for supper?  He answered, bread and cheese; to which the deceased replied that she thought bread and cheese once a day was enough, and as she had eaten it for dinner, she would not eat it for supper.  Brinsden said, she should have no better than the rest of his family, who were like to be contented with the same, except his eldest daughter for whom he had provided a pie, and towards whom on all occasions he showed a peculiar affection, occasioned as he said, from the care she took of his other children and of his affairs, though malicious and ill-natured people gave out that it sprang from a much worse and, indeed, the basest of reasons.

On the discourse I have mentioned between him and his wife, Mrs. Brinsden in a violent passion declared she would go to the general shop and sup with her friends, who were gone from her but a little before.  He, therefore, having got between her and the door, having the knife in his hand with which he cut the bread and cheese, and she still persisting with great violence in endeavouring to go out, he threw her down with one hand and stabbed her with the other.  This is the account of this bloody action as it was sworn against him at his trial by his own daughter, though he persisted in it that what she called throwing down was only gently laying her on the bed after she received the blow, which as he averred happened only by chance, and her own pressing against him as the knife was in his hand.  However that was, he sent for basilicon and sugar to dress the wound, in hopes she might at least recover so far as to declare there was no malice between them, but those endeavours were in vain, for she never spoke after.