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The second letter, written to Mary-Jane’s sister, takes on a more emotional but still self-centred tone. Here, Atkinson dwells on what he believed should have been — a marriage that, in his mind, was prevented by meddling and misfortune. His words shift between regret, romantic delusion, and religious pleading.

 

Thoughts:

 

• He presents the murder almost as destiny: “She told me in winter she thought something would hapen us quear in the end.”

• The focus is still on himself and his feelings, not Mary-Jane’s suffering or loss.

• He positions himself and Mary-Jane as bound together even in death — a tragic romantic myth of his own making.

• His constant use of scripture provides a cloak of inevitability and absolution, as though higher powers dictated his actions.

• This letter shows obsession masquerading as love, revealing the dangerous blend of possessiveness and religiosity that coloured his thinking.

📜 Letter II – September 1858

To the sister of Mary-Jane Skaife

 

Dear Friend,

 

I take the opportunity to write these few lines to find you all well. You will be in very much trouble abought your sister and me and our souls eternal, as I ham as much as you, to think that evil one had got so much old of us [or as]. The more I think of it the worse it is.

 

She told me in winter she thought something would hapen us quear in the end, as all I wanted was for to get married. We should be happy then. She thought the same, we should have been. But she felt poorly the time I thought it would have been, and after that she was as willing as me, till her mother began to be so quear with her.

 

As she told me you said something abought me as well, since my father and your mother fell ought more so [here it is illegible]. I thought a good deal abought it, as I told her I thought she wanted some one else, as she slighted me so much.

 

We was all right that Sunday night before you come and your mother. As I had no such a thought in my head to do as I have done, it was same as if it had to be, nor never had when we was contented togeather, as we always was before your mother was so with her.

 

As it is a very dreadful parting I think I had better don thousands of ways than doing as I have. As I can forgive you all, as the Lord says we should forgive one another, as she had little time to repent in.

 

The Lord can save to the uttermost. I hope she as fallan asleep in Jesus, as I have been the worst of all. The Lord says he can forgive the vilest of the vile if they will repent to him with humble contrite hearts, as I am praying to him for my sins, for they are many.

 

I little thought this would have to be the case with us, as we little know what we are born to. Though our sins be as scarlet, he can make them white as snow, as crimson as wool. That is one of the worst that I have been, as he knows all our sins.

 

We shall have to appear before him at the last day, you as well as me. I hope you will have got her likeness from my parents. My wish his for us all to be in heaven.

 

Read Luke 21st ch. Isaiah 55th ch.

 

J. A.