A HORRIBLE STORY OF FRENCH CRIME. Fiendish anti Fatal Cruelty to a Child.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 212, 23 July 1887, Page 3

A HORRIBLE STORY OF FRENCH CRIME. Fiendish anti Fatal Cruelty to a Child.

A REVOi/rixo.case otf eln'ld martyrdom has •been just "tried at the Nancy Assizes. A .grandfather, an uncle, and an aunt of the ■juvenile martyr were in the dock on the chai'ge of having perpetrated a slow and torturing murder. Their family name was 'Norroy. The elder Norroy went last July to Paiis, where lie had a son, the wife of 'whom hud lately died, leaving a little giil, -Marie Josephine, aged four. She wad fetched back to Brieily, where the grandfather, uncle, and aunt lived, and an itnesses who deposed to her martyrdom said she nvas a fresh-faced, laughing and at tractive child when she arrived at Brierly. The grandfather said she was an encumbrance, and .she must be got rid of, as they could not afford to bring her up. His son Marcel, and lii-* daughter Josephine, being of the same mind, they set about killing the child by slow degrees. A neighbour, one Cochard, saw Marcel beat the child because she was not able to thrash out sheaves of wheat m ith a heavy bat. When she cried, and said she could not hold it, lie tied her hands to it, and stood over with a rod, with which he struck her when her strength failed. Last October a woman named Telt7, who lived next door, was. awoke at live in the morning by the plaintive ciies of Marie. Going to a window and looking in, she saw old Noriy with a bunch of rods flogging the child, who, when he let her go, lan to the aunt, Josephine, to imploie protection, but instead of obtaining it she received a violent kick in the abdomen and was then picked up by the aunt who held her between her knees for the grandfather to Hog her afresh. Then he took Marie by the hair, and lifting her up, dashed her on the ground and pommelled her, crying a.s he did so, " Take that, take that ! and let your friends now go if they like and make another report to the Mayor !" Another day he took her to the pigsty and rolled her in the filth there, and then, throwing a bucket of cold water on her, flogged her with nettles. Another day the uncle threw her into a rut, at the bottom of a hil l down which a cart driven by the grandfather was coming, but a passer-by saved her from being crushed to death. Last winter she used to be taken from before the fire and placed under the pump. She was half-starved, she was beaten with a burning brand, and the doctor counted sixty-two burns on her body. She was confined in a kind of press under the stairs of the garret. Two neighbours who caught a glimpse of her in lhi« phase of her -wretchedness said that her face no longer had a human appearance. On the -Ist November her torturers decided to be done with her. Josephine released her from tho cupboard, put her to bed and then w ent with the rest, of the family to a village itte. Marcel came back at midnight, and the neighbours were aroused by the terrible shrieks of little Marie. They went and insisted on the police commissary at Langrff sending a doctor and the gendarmes to look to the child, who they found had been suffocated with a pillow. After she Avas murdered the uncle stuffed a bun do\\n her throat to be able to t-ay that she had choked herself in eating it. The thrte monsters tried to shift the blame to each other. A verdict of guilty, but with extenuating circumstances, was found. Old Norry and Marcel were sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude, and Josephine to twelve.