From Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World, a 1908 book—putatively nonfiction—by Clifton R. Wooldridge, “the Incorruptible Sherlock Holmes of America.”

In his agony [Devel] confessed that the only reason he confessed the murder was that he desired to get hanged, and that he preferred hanging to life with his wife. […]

“I desired to be hung,” said Devel, mournfully. “Life is not worth the living, and with my wife it is worse than death. If I had been hanged no other man would marry my wife, and I would save them from my fate. Many times have I planned to kill myself to escape her. That is sin, and I lack the bravery to kill myself, besides. If they will not hang me I must continue to live with my wife.”

Devel states, among other things, that these are the chief grievances against married life in general, and his wife in particular:

• She was slender, and became fat and strong.
• She was beautiful, and became ugly and coarse.
• She was tender, and grew hard.
• She was loving, and grew virulent.
• She grew whiskers on her chin.
• She called him “pig.”
• She wore untidy clothes, and her hair was unkempt.
• She refused to give him beer.
• Her breath smelled of onions and of garlic.
• She threw hot soup upon him.
• She continually upbraided him because there were no children.
• She scolded him in the presence of neighbors.
• She refused to permit him to bring his friends home.
• She came into his store and scolded him.
• She accused him of infidelity.
• She disturbed him when he slept in the garden on Sundays.
• She made him cook his own dinners.
• She spilled his beer when he drank quietly with friends.
• She told tales about him among the neighbors, and injured his business.
• She served his sausages and his soup cold, and sometimes did not have his meals for him when he came home.
• She did not make the beds nor clean the house.
• She took cards out of his skat deck.
• She talked continually, and scolded him for everything or nothing.
• She opened the windows when he closed them, and closed them when he opened them.
• She poured water into his shoes while he slept.
• She cut off his dachshund’s tail.

These things, he said, made him prefer to be hanged to living with her.