ABSTRACT
One of La Tour Laundry's cautionary tales…is of a husband who fetched his wife back from her parents’ house, where she had fled after a marital quarrel. While lodged overnight, the lady was attacked by a “great number of young people wild and infect with lechery” who “ravished her villainously,” causing her to die of shame and sorrow. The husband cut her body into twelve pieces, each of which he sent with a letter to certain of her friends that they might be made ashamed of her running away from her husband and also be moved to take vengeance on her ravishers. The friends at once assembled with all their retainers and descended upon the town where the rape had occurred and slew all its inhabitants. 1
