FRENZY OF A DRUNKEN MOTHER. She Takes Her Infant Down Cellar and Kills it on a Wood Block.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 111, 18 July 1885, Page 5

FRENZY OF A DRUNKEN MOTHER. She Takes Her Infant Down Cellar and Kills it on a Wood Block.

While Mrs Lucy Gilchrist, of 423, Highstreet, Newark, was crazed with liquor yesterday, she took her six-months-old baby into the cellar and hacked its head to pieces with a small axe. She had been drinking for ten days. Just before noon a woman living on the floor above her rooms heard her coaxing her children to go into the cellar. Not long afterward two children, a boy of 5 years, and his sister, 11 years old, rushed up stairs screaming. The girl, Rosie, could only say between her screams of fright : •• Oh, the baby ! the baby !" Several men who were passing were called into the house. When they eta cended the stairs they saw the infant lying on a wood block, the delirious mother, unconscious of their presence, still chopping at its head with an axe. One of the men rushed for ward and seized her arms. She laughed hysterically and muttered unintelligible words. While on the way to the police station she muttered something about killing the baby to save Ireland, but to the sergeant at the desk she answered all questions calmly. She said her name was Lucy Gilchrist, and that she had four children, Mamie, aged 14, employed at Clarks thread factory ; Rosamund aged 11 ; Bobbio, aged 5 ; and Joaie, the baby, which she had just murdered. She is a large and finely-formed woman, with traces of former beauty. Her husband is sober and industrious. He was very indulgent to his wife, and waa in the habit of giving her the whole of his wages. She had been sober for about six months before her present spree.