A CHILD MURDERESS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1045, 7 March 1882, Page 4

A CHILD MURDERESS.

A sentence of death passed upon a girl of 14- for murder is fortunately almost unique in criminal annals, says an English exchange, and in that sense, it is a source of satisfaction to learn that Margaret Messenger, who was condemned at the last Cumberland assizes, has been respited. The girl was iu the service of Mr and Mrs. Ballister, a farmer and his wife, living in the neighbourhood of Carlisle, and acted as nurse to their three children, one of whom, a boy was drowned on the 27th J une last. On the 2nd July the parents went to Carlisle market, leaving the baby and the second daughter, aged live years, to the prisoner's care. Whilst at work about 10 in the morning a hired boy named Haffen was startled by hearing a baby’s scream, and on going into an adjoining field he found the eldest child with the nurse, who told him that a tall man had taken the infant away. Later on she .was seen bringing the dead body of the child towards the house, aud on being questioned told various discrepant stories of what had taken place. Further investigation proved that Messenger had laid the infant face downwards iu a boggy place, placed a stone upon its heao, and so suffocated it. She even confessed later on that she had herself killed the baby alone and unaided. At the time of committing the crime she was only 13, and had but just attained her fourteenth year when brought to trial. Between seven and fourteen an infant is prima facie deemed incapable ofcrime; but if the Court and jury have good reason for believing that he or she is able to discriminate between right and wrong, conviction and punishment may follow upon the indictuientj This they did in the case of Margaret Messenger, and sentence of death was passed upon her iu the usual form, since it is no louger lawful for it to be merely recorded ; but it was obvious from the first that effect would be given to the strong recommendation to mercy on account of the prisoner’s youth, which accompanied the verdict of the jury. The juvenile murderess has been respited, and au inquiry is to be instituted into her state of mind. What makes the case more horrible is that she has confessed to Dr. Orange, medical superintendent of the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, that she had murdered another child of the same family—the little boy who was drowned iu the well a short time before —having purposely thrown him iu. “The idea occurred to her,” to quote her own words, “as she was chopping sticks in the yard, and she took him to the well and drowned him.”

Truth and love are two of the most powerful things in the world ; and when they both go together they cannot easily be withstood.

A Chinaman named Od Tick is about to start a laundry in Detroit. This will leave no reasonable excuse for anyone to fail to appear in a clean iwnrt on Sundays.