Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News TUESDAY, JULY 19 1898. A MODERN HORROR.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2133, 19 July 1898, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News TUESDAY, JULY 19 1898. A MODERN HORROR.

We took up listlessly the other (lay a report of the evidence iu Mrs Camilla Nicholl’e trial at the London Centra Criminal Court, for the maualaughtei of her servant, Jane Popejoy. by illtreatment and starvation. It was we presumed, another of those eordtu tragedies that, from time to time, startle society and provide a'nine day; wonder; but as we read on we became absorbed in the story. As a km,, drawn record of horror the tab wrung by counsel from the numerou witnesses, some of them reluctant others only too pantingly eager to poui what they knew into the ears of judg. and jury, transcends anything we have read for many a long day iu th. criminal annals of our own or auy other country. We would not wouud our readers’ feelings- especially those of the fair sex by relating, the story of poor Jane P ipejoy’s unhappy fate, and the retribution that eveutu ally overtook her cruel inistress, did we not believe that such a roci f al may act as.n warning to women like Mr Nicholls, though God forbid then should be many such, and also serv. as a protection to young servant girls of weak wills whose lines in life have cist them far away from their natura; protectors. A feature iu London life which seldom fails to impress -the colonial is the number of mean streets that branch out from the great fashion able squar ps - Such squares, as Grosvenor, Eaton or St. James. In a street of this description, until recently' lived Mrs Camilla Nicholls. Ostensibly a widow it came out in evidence that she had in reality boeu deserted by her hu‘b tnd some eighteen years before, and it was only due to the kindness of a few friends that her necessities, which were pressing, as she had been left penniless with a half imbecile d lighter, were re’ 6ved. That was one version of her condition. From, a other we gather she must have had wiiiuent friends. In addition to the mother and daughter, an old woman resided in the house. Who this woman was for long had been a mystery. The neighbours only, knew that old anrl feeble as she was she had clungpassionatelyto the abandoned wife refusing to leave her and serving her hand and foot in return for her victuals and an occasional cast off dress of her mistress’s. The old woman’s infirm ities increasing Mrs Nicholls was compelled to hire a domestic, and as a result Jano Popejoy was engaged. Jane was a fine healthy girl when she entered upon her new sphere of employment, probably with a light heart, for Mrs Nicholls although bearing evident traces of the sorrows that must have.been hers, yet pieseuted to the world none of those features we are iccustoraed to associate with the possession of the devilish disposition she subsequently betrayed. At au early period of her servitude the mistress seems to have established a strange sort of mastery over her viclim. The refined terrorism she graduallysetup wasdoubt.less achieved by slow degrees. We can even imagine Bhe treated the girl with kindness at first and wou her confidence. Overt acts of harshness were probably kopt in the background, or sparingly exhibited until the mastery was firmly established, when the domineering character of the venomous little woman began to betray itself. Medical jurisprudence has repeatedly shown that when people are associated as iu the case of husband and wife, mistress and maid, the affinity set up breeds a species of hypnotic power in the stronger ■ yer the weaker. Such a power Mrs N cholls seems to have assumed over the fine he; 1 hy girl whounsuspeciinglyentered lier service; otherwise thqgirlmight easily have run away. The evidence adduced during the five days trial was sickening, Mrs Nicholls was passionately attached to her half-witted daughter and lavished every attention a doting mother’s ffrctidn could devise on her. And she was a proud woman hardened by p riods of p werty.aud sorrow. Grief ■ d ruined her moral natur , and to J ue who rapidly degenerated under r fiendish tloaunent into a soulless rutlge, she became adamant. Per11ps the conttast Jane presented when she entered service to her own !

miserable offspring hardened Mrs I Niohoils’ heart. The real truth about j this strauge woman’s position in the | world is a sealed book. She was one >f those ex mplrs of genteel poverty md mysterious affluence iba h are only o be found in London where a man may live for years without speaking o hie next door neighbour. One fact, however, stands out with glaring ghastliness iu the pages of this sordid history, Jane was literally starved and beaten to death. As we said the evidence was sickening. Sometimes the ravenous girl, with the larder locked rg.inst her, devoured food picked up in the street. She had been beaten for being hungry, generally with a stick, once with a kamm°r. She had been seon by neighours and message bo3 r n with scratches on her face, with i broken nose and black eyes, and bruises on her legs and arms, all occasioned by the violence of the pale faced little woman who sat motionless for five long days in the do :k at the Central Court. Almost the ast words of the dying girl when she was removed from the scene of her infamous bondage were*‘o, mistress,’ and ‘ stick.’ The case against the prisoner Was proved up to the hilt, and s clety avenged with a merciless hand the sorrows of the household slave wlwn the judge sentenced her uoßtr< ss t > seven years hard labour; Sten ver iieamtsuch a Nemesis would erteke her arid was removed from fiomihe ock in a swoon. R 1 itself c uld scarcely find a parallel to that women's awakening and deith will probably cut short the rigour of her sentence. An intensely dramatic incident occurred while tho old servant was in th 6 witness-box. She was a woman of 84 and betrayed stran. e anxiety about the prisoner’s fate. And well she might f *r in that old woman’s breast had lain 1 oke l up for nearly a .ife time a secret known to few, and certainly not io Mrs Nicholls. For die first time tho prisouer learnt that the despised old drudge was her own. mother,- and that she, the daughter, was a .‘child o' shame.’ In the tragedies of Aescby u we are moved by delineations of strong men’s vain but heroic struggles against the ■!e;r. es of offended Gods, but so teri > e a story as Mrs N choll.’ has selumn been conceived by even the most sombre geuius. Proclaimed a child of shame in a c .urfc crowded with men and women who would not raise a finger to save her from the gallows; ioserten by her husband, left in absolute want with a passionately loved idiot child, a constructive murderess, i convicted felon, condemned fc> pass what will probably be the romaind< r of her days hidden away from the world which holds the one cieature she T/ves on earth all the more passionately because of its deformatie3 ; he one p tiful being whose ■•■ dull eyes brighten ;d at her coming ; and who will now pine away bereft of that--mother’s love. We talk about, the liorroiß of a future world , for such creatures as Mrs Nicholls : but surely this woman has had a hell made for her on earth by the combined of a m v ci eis fate aud her own tigerish iustiucts. Surely the G >od God who in his great scheme of human.tv, allowed a woman so dowered with inherited evil to be born into His fair world will hot judge her by the standard men and wom m have set up to judge each other