A Female Fiend.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 51, 25 August 1894, Page 4

A Female Fiend.

Writes a London correspondent : — That female fiend, EHa Gille.spie, who for eight years past has been in the habit of systematical! v torturinqr the unhappy children who were inmates of the Brentwnod Training School, is to receive a modicum of her deserts. She pleaded guilty and wns senteuced to the longest, term of penal servitude that th* law provides ior such an offence, viz. five years To most people this will se^m an absurdly light nenalty tor ei.-bt years of systematic cruelty. Tim hellish 'woman had convened the school into a veritable inquisition of elaborate torture. For the slightest offences, or for none at all. when she was in the mood for her cruel sport, she would turn the children out of bed in the middle of the night and make them practice " basket drill " for two hours continuously in their nigh' gowns only, in bitterly cold weather. *' Basket drill " consisted in carrying at arms' length above their heads baskets of clothes, the resultant ach ing agony bein? described as terribly severe. Then she would have large supplies of nettles specially collected from the fields, and having wrapped paper round the stems to protect her own vile hands *li* would flog these hapless children on the teDderest part of their naked bodies until as one witness said they looked like " a map* of festers." Kneeling on pieces of iron ior lengthened periods, or on hot-water p pcs, was another inquisitorial penance inflicted. Besides these there were the cruellest floggings and canines on both hands, feot, and body. The record was a sickening one Mr Justice Day in passing sentence, commented with extreme vigour on the utter want of discipline or perversion of it that must have prevailed in "an unhappy institution*' where such " hideous cruelty " could have been tole.r a'ed, as be asserted it must hoy»» been. A perfect storm of public indignation has been excited, »nd the Government promptly announced their intention to have a full and searching public inquiry. I earnestly hope that all who may be proved to have been cognisant of these horrors may be mercilessly punished.