The historical source material on bigamy depicts an awful lot of weeping. Sometimes the tears are behind the scenes – the reaction of a deserted first wife or deceived second wife to the revelation of her husband’s crime.
On occasion they are tears of contrition, as the bigamist begs for forgiveness or at least not to be prosecuted. Although one unmoved 18th-century wife suspected her bigamist husband, William Bury, had just “spit on his fingers” to counterfeit tears and prosecuted him anyway.
