"It is alleged by his wife that he has given her but $7 in fifteen years for the needs of herself and her children." (Image by Maria Feodorovna.)

The July 19, 1896 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle tells the story of miserly Maurice Flynn, who probably could have been a better husband. An excerpt:

“The miser in Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet seems too miserly to be true, but he is outdone in real life. Newark has a worse than prototype in Maurice Flynn, a rich contractor. It is alleged by his wife that he has given her but $7 in fifteen years for the needs of herself and her children, that when she was ill form overwork and asked for help he told her that she was beggar enough and poor enough to be her own servant, that he made her cook for twenty men on a skimped allowance, that when she asked for more and better food he broke her breastbone with a blackjack, while at other times he tried to hold her on a hot stove and beat her with a poker to curb her strange desire for meals. So she asks for divorce, and as her statements are corroborated she is likely to get it.”