In April 1858, a young ship steward signed his name in the register at Liverpool Parish Church, marrying a woman called Sarah Ekenhead. He lived with her for three weeks. Then he left.

Nine years later, now completely blind, he married again — a seventeen-year-old girl named Josephine Escofet, at St Philip's Church in Birmingham. He told her he was a bachelor. He told her he had money and property. Neither was true.

He beat her. He sold her clothes. She left him at least thirteen times, and every time she came back, he did it again. When she finally discovered his first wife was still alive in Liverpool, she went there herself, got the marriage certificate, and brought the charge.

His name was Edward Charles Morris, and by the time he stood trial at the Warwickshire Summer Assizes in 1870 — blind, pockmarked, defending himself from the dock — he'd been in custody eight times, attempted to take his own life on at least three occasions, and blamed every woman in his life for his own misery.

The jury took a few moments. After two years of hard labour, he walked out of Birmingham Borough Prison and vanished. I can't find him anywhere. This is his story, told through the records he left behind.