She Poisons Her Mother and Daughter.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 210, 9 July 1887, Page 5

She Poisons Her Mother and Daughter.

The Liverpool correspondent dfrthe -""New York Herald" writes:— TliO'public hangman this morning executed ihis .namesake, Mis Berry. She is the sixth woman thathas beon hanged here during the last fifty years. What Mrs Druse was to the United States Mrs Berry was to "England. There was a great similarity in their love for finery in .their deatli garments, in the heartless character of the murders they committed, in their mania for writing farewell letters* and in the scaffold scenes. Mrs Berry was convicted ,o.i poisoning, y/ith sulphuric acid, her eleven-year-old daughter for the purpose of obtaining LlO .insurance money. She was also charged by a coroner's jury with poisoning, with •fciftcturo of atrophia, her own mother, so that she could secure about L2OO of insurance money. The daughter was brought by 'her mother from school in perfoct health to .jrpend her last Christinas holidays at lxojne. In the midst of some juvenile festivities the poison was administered to the chjUl, and she died on the first day of the happy New Year. .Said one of the prinOj^l witnesses at the trial, " Never can J forgot the piteous tone in which i heard .flic child, who was bright, beautiful and iuc^iosting, exclaim as she sat on her mother** ,lap : ' Oh, mamma ! how can jou give mdibat horrible drink ?' " No one doubts that Mrs Berry was guilty, although ccc died protesting her innocence : nd the "Uvjl woids she '-aid were to a-k Heaven to forgive the doctor "wlmswoie my life avi.y." During her last, days on earth she h<x) ionic curious interviews with her solicitor <On the table in her cell were a Bible, a ptsytr-book, Longfellow's poems, and a large number of lettcis. In speaking .about her child she said : "Do you know that beautiful poem of I Longfellow, ' Eefignation ?' That poem expresses my ftelings as regards poor Edith." Then ftb-e took up the book and began : There is no flock, howoycr watched and tended, But ono dead lamb is tfcsre ! She then read the whole poem with an eloquence which, wHih its surroundings, the solicitor said was truly awful, She called his special attention to the line : '• Til ore is no deatli ! What seems so is transition;" and said she should like to have that placed on the gravestone of poor Edith, her daughter. The -solicitor introduced the nue.-tion of the presentation of a petition for her reprieve, but "-aid she, " I am quite resigned. I have little to live for ; thc-e whom I Imed be-t have aheady gone. I look upon death now as a live-minutes' journey by train, and when I get out of the train at the other station the lir-t one to meet me on the platform will be my daughter Edith." Suggestions of insanity were ma^w it the trial, but weie killed by the fact mat Mis Beiry made rapid demands for the insurance money upon daughter and mother. The execution was at the gaol at Walton, a noithern suburb of this city. An immense crowd ua-> assembled outside, attracted by morbid curiosity to hear the prison bell toll and to sec the black flag unfurled to the bleak March wind from the prison turrets. The occasion was remarkable because the present Home Secretary - he who defended Lady Colin Campbell -leversing the order of his predeces^ois, admitted ropoitcis and put in operation a new method of execution. The drop was from t-lio Urs el pavement of the yard into an eight-foot bucked pit, causing instant dislocation of the neck. We were admitted at liftcen minute 5 ; before 8 o'clock in the morning, and placed within a few yaids of what is generally called the scaffold, but -which, except for the hanging rope, looked simply like a large wellhouse erected on the giound.and lacked the usual hideousne«s of the structure. At the la-st stroke of the hour the woman and a small procession emeiged from the prison into the yard. Here her nerve broke ; she went into hysterics and fell fainting into the arms of two female wardens who were on each side of her. They supported her in the biief walk to the concealed, noiseless and padded drop, where she temporarily revived long enough to declare in weak tones, " I am innocent," and to give an ejaculatory pi ayer for forgiveness for the doctor. I had scarcely had time to study her awful, spectral face before &ho disappeared from view. There was no prolongation of mental agony after she was pinioned ; no meaningless reading of the death warrant ; no flowery address to Heaven from the parson. Only a short sentence from the service for the dying was read, and the murderess was dead. Berry, the hangman, stated thatdeath was instantaneous. An inquest was immediately held, and then followed the intemient in what is called the murderers' graveyard, within the prison inclosure, for neither relatives nor surgeon can in England claim the remains of executed convicts. Close to Mrs Berry's body lie in the same kind of graves the remains of Catheine Flannigan and Margaret Higgins, who three years ago were executed in Liverpool for poisoning Higgins husband to obtain insurance money from the same benefitsociety as that in which Mrs Berry's mother and daughter were insured.