A FEMININE FIEND.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 162, 28 October 1876, Page 3

A FEMININE FIEND.

A. peculiar ease of inhumanity to a child was brought before the Hobart Town Folicc Court on the 291h nit. The Mercury relates that a respectable look ing woman, named Mrs Graham, was charged with unlawfully boating a girl named Henrietta Myers. The girl, with three other children younger than herself, are the daughters of Captain Myers, of the whalilig barque Marie Laurie. Their mother died some two years ago, and siiice then they have been under the care of her father’s sister, Mrs Graham, who has been receiving £5 per month for their support. On the 21th Henrietta and her sister Lucy went into a neighbour's house, were they have often been forbidden to go, and on returning Henrietta solemnly declared that she had been in an outhouse. For this deliberate lie, and also for disobeying her command hot to go into the neighbour’s house, Mrs Graham flogged the girl. Taking her into the kitchen, she inado her strip off every particle of clothing; then she went into the garden and obtained a number of switches from a plum tree, arid with these she whipped the girl for a quarter of an hour. Not satisfied with that, she put the girl to bed, and rubbed salt butter on her back, and as the skin was broken in several places, it can easily be imagined how the pain would be increased, The woman’s brutality would, in fact be beyond credence were it not for the conclusive evidence of the girl, arid also the testimony of Dr Hall. He examined the girl the day after the flogging, and found her back from the nape of the neck downwards, reaching oven as far as the back of the thighs, covered with red streaks. The marks were so numerous, he says, that he did not attempt to count them; the skin was perfectly mapped. Besides this, her body was in an emaciated condition, from the want of sufficient nourishment, so that the woman had actually been starving the girl. The magistrates held that the ’chastisement was grossly cxcesssive, mid in fact amounted to terrible cruelty. They therefore sent the woman to gaol Jor throe months without the option of a fine* besides ordering her to pay two, guineas costs.