SHOCKING CRUELTY TO A BROTHER.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 207, 6 February 1875, Page 3

SHOCKING CRUELTY TO A BROTHER.

(From the Continental Herald.)

News comes from the canton of Tessin of a savage act on the part of the chaplain of Meride, in the district of Mendrisio. The brother of the chaplain had given, it is supposed, some signs of mental aberration, which led the latter, so he states, to presume that his brother had some designs upon his life. Under this pretext he was shut up in a miserable room with but a small opening in it, strongly guarded by bars of iron, through which his meals were handed. One day latterly, the sister of the victim, who was in the habit of taking his meals to the window, observed that the last ration had not been withdrawn, and she suspected that he was dead. In entering the den, which had not been open for a long time, Gaetano Roncati, such was his name, was found at the foot of a bed of rotten straw, in contact with the bare earth in a dying state. His beard was long and untended, his body was covered with bristles rather than hair, and his thin locks spread over his shoulders like those of a zingaro. The place looked more like a stable than anything else ; its state is not fit for description, but some idea may be formed of it from the fact that for ten years this miserable being had been locked up in the den with no other company than the spiders which had woven their webs from roof to floor. The cure was called to give the last consolations of religion to the poor creature, but when he arrived this victim of a brother's barbarity had been released from his sufferings. "When these faots became known there was a cry of indignation raised throughout the district at the savagery of an

act happily without frequent parallel; and no slight amount of dissatisfaction has been expressed that the local authorities have been slow in their action to punish the author of the cruel deed. It is stated that the somewhat too liberal tendencies of Roncati in opinion and in matters of expenditure did not suit the avaricious character of the chaplain his brother, and in this may be found the motive for the incarceration of the victim. It is not yet known whether the police authorities have taken action in the affair, It is difficult to conceive that such an event can be passed by unchallenged."