FIEND IN PETTICOATS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 442, 19 November 1908, Page 4

FIEND IN PETTICOATS.

Parades Corpse of Child for Begging Purposes.

There are few tricks to which dishonest beggars have not resorted, but that employed by a woman who carried a corpse in her arms while begging alms at Grenell (a suburb of Paris), one day last month, beats anything yet known in the line of horrors. She Was standing at a street cornei dressed in rags, and held up a little girl with a ghastly pale face to excite the pity of passers-by. It is no unusual thing to see women, even in the boulevards, carrying children about in this way, but what attracted attention particularly in this case was the deathlike pallor of the child, which had its eyes closed and seemed asleep. First a few persons stopped to look at it more closely, and soon a crowd gathered. The mother continued her appeal. ‘'Have pity on my child, have pity on a poor mother,” with the usual accent of artificial tenderness. A policeman approached her, looked at the child and invited her to step into a chemist’s shop. The appearance of a policeman frightened her, and she tried to get away, but he held her, and brought her to a pharmacy. The rags in' which the child was wrapped were removed, and the poor creature was found stiff and cold. “ Your child has been dead already several hours,” exclaimed the chemist indignantly. You must have known that the child was dead, and jet you continued to carry it about like that; you were begging with a corpse in your arms.” The woman did not answer. She was taken to the police station, where she stated that she had left her husband four years ago and took with her a sum of on which she lived for some time. When this was .‘•pent she took to begging, and used to sleep with the child under the bridges over the Seine at night. Her child had fallen ill a year ago, and, intend of milk, she used 1o give it water from the Stine to drink. She said that" a relative had offered to lake care of the child, but would not let her see it as often as she wanted, so that she refused. The police, however, learned that she refused to give up the child because she depended on it as her chief resource in begging. She has been kept in custody, and the little corpse was sent to the morgue.