CHILD-MURDER WITH IMPUNITY IN THE COUNTY OF DORSET.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 725, 26 March 1853, Page 4

CHILD-MURDER WITH IMPUNITY IN THE COUNTY OF DORSET.

(From the “ Times.

The retention of the public has for some time past been so completely occupied with election business that we have most unwillingly been compelled to postpone all comment upon other subjectsof well-nigh equal importance. At the present time the judges are proceeding on the various circuits. Criminal cases have been brought before them at one and other of the assize towns, and m some of these the jurors have evinced so profound a determination not to convict, whatever might be the nature of the evidence, that the course oi justice has been seriously impeded, and, except order be taken in the matter, consequences ol the most serious kind throughout the country must be the inevitable result. When we n.jrefuUy watch the tendencies and developements

of crime, it is impossible not to see that this or that particular offence becomes a fashion for a while—sometimes only in a particular district, sometimes the taint has a wider range and infects the whole country. It would seem as though the energies of the criminal population became roused to action in one particular direction by the success of one great offender, or by the notoriety of the proceedings in one great criminal case. Burke and his companions set the fashion of body snatching ; the Frimley gang set the fashion of burglary ; a potboy set the fashion of shooting at the Queen ; in a neighbouring country Madame Laffarge set the fashion of poisoning husbands. Then, again, to take the narrower case of district crime. In the county of Essex, and in some of the large towns of the manufacturing districts, it became the fashion for mothers to poison their children for the sake of the sum they might receive for the funeral expenses from a burial club. To such a degree did this custom prevail, and so notorious did the fact become, that when the name of a child was inscribed upon the muster-roll of any of these associations the gossips of the neighbourhood used to speak of its proximate death as a matter of course. The impunity conceded to a particular crime of this sort, whether that impunity has been the result of a well devised system of concealment, or of a negligent administration of the law, of course fosters and encourages the commission of the offence. Tnis brings us to the particular case to which we would direct attention at the moment The county of Dorset has for some time past obtained an evil notoriety in consequence of the practice of child murder, which has obtained to a lamentable extentamong the younger female population of the county. Many cases of this distressing kind have been brought before the assize courts for the district. We grieve to add that the juries empannelled to try the cases have evinced so criminal a spirit, not of mercy to the prisoners, but of cruelty to the wretched children who in consequence of their apathy will shortly become the objects of the same crime, that a series of tragedies of the same kind may be confidently expected between the present and the next Assizes. Thus stand the facts of one particular case which was tried on Thursday last before Mr. Baron Martin at Dorchester :—• Louisa Walborn was indicted for the murder of her male child at Bridport on the sth of May last. It appeared from the evidence of one Mary Ann Sheppick, at whose house the prisoner was lodging when the offence charged was committed, that on the day named she was delivered of a healthy male child about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. A midwife was called in, who effected the delivery with perfect success, and quitted the house about an hour afterwards. The child was placed in the same bed with the prisoner, and the lodging-house keeper and her daughter retired into an adjoining room. They had been there about an hour when they heard the child scream twice. They called in to ask what was amiss, and the prisoner replied that the child was in a kind of fit, and it might be better again. The younger of the two women went in to fetch the child. The little creature’s lips were black, and its mouth all burnt, when it was brought out. Thereupon, said Mary Ann Sheppick, “I took the child to the prisoner, and asked her what she had done to the child. She said, ‘ Nothing.’ No other person could have gone into the prisoner’s room.” Elizabeth Furzey, the daughter of the last witnesses, deposed, among other things, “ I went into the room, and found the prisoner had turned round in the bed, the child being between her and the wall. I took the child tip, and saw that its mouth was black.” This witness immediately fetched the midwife and the doctor, Between 10 and 11 o’clock the next morning the child died.

Now, before coming to the medical evidence, which clearly proved that the black stains on the child’s mouth were the effects of oil of vitriol, and that it died in consequence of the administration of that poison, it is necessary to explain the position of the prisoner’s room and of the bed on which she lay. A private road runs under the window. There is a window at the head of the room, which any person might easily reach from the bed. When the prisoner first went to lodge at Mrs. Furzey’s house she brought with her tw r o boxes—a large and a smaller one. Immediately after her delivery she asked for the small box, which was given to her. The policeman, who was sent for immediately upon the discovery of the crime, searched her apartment, but could find nothing which threw light upon the manner of its commission. The next day, it seems to have occurred to him that it would be as well to search the road we have described. A few inches from the wall, under this window, he found a cork, and opposite the cork a bottle, with some liquid in it. The hedge was very much burnt just above where the bottle was found. A person might have thrown the bottle from the window of he room in which the prisoner, Louisa Walborn, was lying. This bring us to the medical evidence. Dr. Allen, tlie gentleman who was called in, slated that the symptoms he discovered on (he child could not have been the results of natural causes. The marks on the child’s lips were precisely such as would have been caused by oil of vitriol. The tongue was much swollen, and on it were distinct traces of the oil. All the other appearances which the body presented on examination after death corresponded with these marks. “ lam of opinion,” said Dr. Allen, “ that death was caused by oil of vitriol having been administered. I received a bottle from Brooker (the policeman). I examined the contents, which tvere concentrated oil of vitriol, the same as I found on the child’s tongue.” Such was the evidence for the prosecution, and we confess we are unable to discover any loophole of escape from the Inevitable conclusion that Louisa Walborn did, in point of fact, administer poison to her child. When we look at the defence, we find that the prisoner’s counsel did indeed urge the few suggestions that could he thrown out in so desperate a case with sufficient precision, but to what do they amount ? The prisoner had no motive for killing the child. There was no poverty —no fear of shame—for this was the third and not the first illegitimate child that had been born to her. There was no proof of her having purchased poison. It was not probable that immediately after delivery she could have raised herself up to reach the window. The bottle that was discovered by the policeman might have been flung there by anybody. This was all the counsel for the defence could urge—he was bound to say something —and so the case was left in the hands of the judge. Baron Martin very properly pointed out to the jury that here was murder, of nothing at all. It was not possible to admit the hypothesis that the prisoner had administered the poison by mistake as a remedial measure, and had either mistaken the remedy or administered t.n over-dose. The jury, as we may guess by the result, would have been well pleased enough to reduce the offence to manslaughter in the slipshod way usual with juries on such occasions. But the straightforward charge of the presiding judge cut away this ground of escape from beneath their feet. Baron Martin seems to have felt that the time had come when it was necessary to impose a check upon the further commission of so deplorable an offence, and, as far as his office permitted, to have asked the jury to discharge their duty. But, No ! The sight of the present misery was more potential with them than the dire probabilities of secret slaughter which might arise from their neglect of duty. In the teeth of the evidence, and in defiance of the consequences, they brought in a verdict of “ Not Guilty” in the prisoner’s favour, We are informed by our reporter that when the verdict was bruited about outside the court, some young women who were waiting to know the result were heard to say, “ I’llgetridof my young next time,” and “ We need not care what we do now.” We can scarcely congratulate the jurors on the result of their labours.

Thus impunity has been conceded—at least in the county of Dorset—to a crime well nigh the most dreadful la the dismal catalogue of crimes.

Whether we consider the helplessness of the vietims, or the horrible fact of the wholesale extinc- j tion of life, or the demoralizing effect upon the \ offenders themselves, we shall have equal reason to be dissatisfied with this Dorchester jury, They have set a premium on promiscuous concubinage . they have inoculated a district with the habits of crime; they have rendered human life of slight account in the eyes of an ignorant population. There is little doubt that a plentiful crop of childmurder will be the natural consequence of this verdict during the ensuing autumn.