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TRAGEDY IN THE SMITH HOME
Skeleton Revealed in Police Court Case
Husband Hard Working and Industrious: Wife a Habitual Drunkard
[Welland Telegraph, 24 June 1910]
A new phase of the case in which Thomas Smith struck Albert Hubner developed in police court on Wednesday.
Smith’s wife drinks. On Smith’s own admission she has been a habitual drinker for fifteen years, and has kept his family poor through drink during all that time. The night of the assault when Smith returned from work, he found her drinking and carousing in his own home with Hubner.
The case came before the magistrate on Wednesday night. Harry Macoomb on behalf of his client pled guilty.
Hubner, the man with the broken nose, didn’t appear to prosecute.
Mrs. Smith was in the court and she got quite a surprise when J. Macoomb began to put in his case, as he revealed some facts regarding her manner of living that were astonishing.
Mr. Macoomb said the Steel Plant people claim Smith is a sober, industrious, hard-working and energetic man and receives $25 per week. He said Smith had kept his family but always in poverty because of the drinking of his wife, who each week received his wages and drank up most of it.
“That is right,” said Mr. Smith. A look of surprise shot across the countenance of Mrs. Smith.
Mr. Macoomb continued saying that Mrs. Smith had been a heavy drinker for about nineteen years, and had almost driven Mr. Smith to desperation. All this time he himself has never drank and has always tried to keep his children from following in the footsteps of their mother.
Then on Saturday night when he returned, tired from a hard day’s work, and found this man in his house with his wife drinking up his wages and his wife when he reproached her said: “You, yourself spent seven dollars over the bar, and there is the man who told me,” pointing to Hubner, is it any wonder Smith struck him; the wonder is that he didn’t kill him. That very night she had a bottle of whiskey in her basket and was drunk. Am I not right, Mr. Smith?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Mr. Macoomb went on to say that the family of the Smiths were being gotten into bad ways by living with the mother. That they were being stunted of their growth and development by the poverty caused by the mother’s drinking and that she was continually neglecting them. Mr. Smith wants them taken away from his wife as their home had also been ruined because of the intimacy of other men with his wife.
At this juncture Mrs. Smith hurried from the room taking her daughter with her and sobbing terribly.
Several Steel plant men testified that they had seen Mrs. Smith dead drunk on frequent occasions and that she had used bad language to her children.
His Worship will likely have the children placed in charge of the Children’s Aid Society.
On the charge of assault, the magistrate allowed Smith to go and Chief Jones accompanied Smith home in order that there would be no trouble stirred up by Smith’s wife.
The Smith’s live on Burgar Street.
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