The answer depends on what's in that table column and how it is intended to be used. In most cases escaping the data before inserting it into html is the right thing to do.
There might be situations where the purpose of a table is to store fragments of html which an administrator can update in order to display certain data on the site. Usually this would be called a CMS. If that is what you are building, then you would not want to escape it before including it in html. In such a situation being able to insert a script would be a feature, not a bug.
Of course in such a setting you have to be careful what gets put into that table. It should be equally impossible for an outsider to put data into that table as to put a static html file on the server.
Even when an authorized administrator enters data into the table, sanitizing it would be a good idea in order to catch syntax errors as well as unbalanced tags.
What I described here is of course just the exception to the rule that all non-constant strings should be escaped before being included in html.
Skipping the escaping just because you "know" those strings from the database can never contain html tags would be laziness that will come back and bite you later. If in doubt use escaping.