ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY JOB

Private Albert Cross of the 'Glosters' Regiment, appeared in court, charged with her murder.

This case involves a soldier returning to the front, who shot his wife at the station on October 15, 1917, as the early morning train to London was due in at Temple Meads' busy platform five, waiting passengers and their friends were startled by the loud crack of a rifle. Then, with horror, they saw the body of a young woman lying slumped at the foot of a soldier.

The infantryman was immediately apprehended by the Military Police and blurted out: 'I have shot my wife - she is in a certain condition by another man.'

The 27-year-old pregnant woman, Bessie Cross, died of abdominal injuries and shock within minutes of being admitted to the General Hospital. A few hours later her 32-year-old husband, Private Albert Cross of the 'Glosters' Regiment, appeared in court, charged with her murder. He pleaded not guilty. It's hard for us, nearly 100 years on, to imagine what life was like in those far-off Edwardian days.

One year into the Great War, casualty lists were appearing daily in the local press, peppered with smiling studio portraits of the latest dead or wounded soldiers. But the public image of their menfolk's noble sacrifice disguised a grim reality. Thanks to conscription, the enormous loss of young men's lives and women's war work, normal family life, for many people, lay in shreds.

There was a new type of woman, liberated from moral constraints by the war's unexpected bonus of well-paid jobs, which has formerly been done by men.

The men in the trenches resented the way that women had taken their jobs, while the older generation, brought up under strict Victorian morality, were shocked by their 'free and easy' behaviour. Albert Cross, the one-time painter from Baptist Mills, became a symbol for the suffering of our brave lads facing the horrors of war.

Poor old Bessie was cast in many eyes as a loose, promiscuous, 'new woman'.

The courtroom drama was acted out while the horrors of Passchendaele were unfolding, but the public were far too deeply involved with the morality of the 'Albert and Bessie' case to be overly concerned about the death and suffering of the 'brave lads' just 250 miles away.

Albert denied the charges and by the time he reappeared in court to be committed to Bristol Assizes a week later, the case had attracted so much attention that crowds of disappointed spectactors had to be turned away.

The prosecution outlined their case against him. After 10 days' leave Albert had been about to catch the London train en route to France. Bessie - just like other service wives and sweethearts on the platform that morning - had gone to say farewell.

The couple had been through a great deal.

Two months previously, as Albert set off to the front yet again, he had received a venomous letter from a married man called James King, boasting of an affair with Bessie who, he said, was now carrying his child. Albert and Bessie had then exchanged piteous letters.

She begged his forgiveness and he finally accepted her pleas. Friends agreed that, during his leave, the couple seemed reconciled. Illegitimacy rates had soared during this period but the marriage looked set to survive a not unusual war-time lapse.

But there was no denying the witnesses who had seen Albert finger the trigger of his rifle before pointing it at Bessie. The private stayed silent throughout the committal proceedings. His defending solicitor, Mr Watson, told the court he would not put his client in the witness box.

He went on to say that it was up to the prosecution to make their case against the soldier, not for Albert to defend himself. He also signalled that the trial would be based on a tidal wave of sympathy for a 'war hero cheated by his cheating wife'. As Mr Watson continued with his defence he seemed near to tears.

He said that in all his years as a criminal lawyer, he had never been so touched by a case.

One of the soldier's letters to Bessie, he said, 'deserves to be preserved in gold. I have never in my life heard such a noble act of forgiveness as Albert Cross displayed.' Albert might have showed no emotion as he was committed to Bristol Assizes but he was one of the few people in the city to remain unmoved.

The evidence against him was damning - but the emotional tidal wave in his favour was overwhelming.

The jury found him not guilty of murder.

Why? Purely because Bessie had been pregnant with another man's child. While Albert was bravely fighting for his country, said the moralists, his wife had been living as someone else's mistress. The war had turned the old, established Victorian values upside down and, in uncertain and changing times, the citizens of Bristol were touchier about morality than they had ever been before. The city's young women, with husbands and boyfriends boyfriends away at the Front and newly-liberated by well-paid war work, were relishing their new found freedom - both

The bulk of the damage happened to my left knee (deja vu...). Right after the accident the lumps in my knee were so frighteningly unnatural that I thought (while in shock) there was a good chance I'd need surgery. The doctor, who spoke English (yay!), poked and prodded and pushed and pulled and determined that nothing was broken. Indeed, I could (gingerly) walk on it as long as I kept the leg stiff. The next day, after icing and elevation, the swelling and pain had gone down. Today, two days after the accident, it's almost hard to tell that there is anything wrong. Unless you see me walk. I can sit and bend the leg to 90 degrees alright, but I still have to walk with a stiff leg, and very very slowly. :(

I tried to take a pic in the doctor's office, but my camera battery chose that moment to give up the ghost.