Lockwood said that there had been two years of such abuse, but never as severe as this episode. For his part, Rylatt admitted just to some of the nasty behaviour, but not all. What came out at the trial was yet another story of his violence, and this had happened on the wedding day of his niece. The couple had come home and found her waiting up for him. He pushed her off a stool and hit her. From that point she had been afraid to live with him and lived in abject terror. It took the explosion of emotions that led to the neighbours coming into the house to make something actually happen to help the wife.

At the trial, Dr Reid said that Sarah was badly bruised and in a state of severe shock when he came to her; the crowd gathered to rightly vilify the culprit. A Mrs Lounds said that Rylatt was ‘a cruel monster’ and his step-daughter, Jenny Clark, testified that he was ‘a complete animal.’ The good builder Lockwood, summed it up well: ‘I had to step in that night to stop the man thrashing his wife to her death …’