IN A MAD MOMENT

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 216, 5 September 1908, Page 4

IN A MAD MOMENT

(By- Oorge 15. Sims.) i lu the winter of 181)0 1 was visiting Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, where I was the guest of a personal friend who was one of the medical staff. As it is a wise and humane principle: at Broadmoor that the inmates who I have not licen considered sane at their J/iaL, and have thereffore not been convicted as criminals, should be treated as patients, those of them who are not in a physical sense dangerous are allowed to converse with privileged visitors.

After spending an interesting, and somewhat uncanny afternoon with a number of men and women who had one time or other horrified the world with their dreadful deeds, 1 went back to the officers' quarters to dine with my friend. it was late that evening when*! quitted Broadmoor to drive across the picturesque heath to the nearest railway station, and my friend accompanied me. A MISTAKEN .PROPHECY. On the ivay we discussed the case of Mrs. Pearcey, a young woman of fouv-and-twenty, who had just been tried at the Old Bailey, found guilty of an extraordinary murder, and sentenced ta death.

I had been that evening invited |o attend the female patients' ball a'. Broadmoor. The ball takes place, or used to take place, in February. •' I think," said my friend to' the dojtor, "that when you come again in February you will liuit Mrs. I'earc-y here." Having followed the ease—which was known both as the Kentish Town murder and the. Hampstead Tragedy—closely, and having been placed in possession, of a great deal of private information by certain persons professionally co.i eerned in the trial, 1 had very little doubt that my friend was justified ; n his anticipation. But long before the evening came when the female patients at Broadmoor were to dance the pleasant hours away, Mary Eleanor Wheeler, known throughout the trial at Mrs. Pearcey, a fraillooking, prepossessing girl of four-nnd-twenty, with strange, haunting eyes and a curious mouth, had met with a violent death at the hands of the law, and her body lay beneath the stone flags at Murderers' Walk. STAINED WITH BLOOD. The Home Secretary, fortified by e\flert advtae on the subject of Mrs. Pearcey's mental condition, had determined that she was sane enough to pay the penalty of her crime.

On' the evening of October 24th, 18SJ0, a policeman, walking along Hamilton Terrace, St. John's Wood, came upon a derelict perambulator. The perambulator was stained wiili blood, and lying at the bottom of it was a piece of butter-scotch.

The constable at once came to the conclusion that the perambulator had recently been occupied by a child, and that the body had been dropped over the low wall of one of the adjacent gardens.

Communicating with his superiors, assistance came, and every garden in Hamilton Terrace was entered. My father was then living at So. 48, and our front garden was thoroughly searched by the police. I was in the house at the time, and that was the first I heard of the terrible crime which later on was known as the Hampstead Tragedy. At the time that the police were searching Hamilton Terrace in vain for the body of the child, a clerk, returning from tlio City to his home near the Swiss Cottage, and passing' through Crosslield Road, where several new houses were being built, was horrified to see the body of a woman lying against a heap of loose stones.

CONNECTING THE LINKS. | When the body was examined it was; found that the woman's throat had been cut in such a terrible manner that the head was nearly severed from the bod;. The unfortunate woman's skull had also been beaten in. The news of the discovery of the woman's body spread through London like Wildfire. The police, examining the brokendown perambulator, were convinced that it had been used to convey the body of the murdered woman. The excited public talked of another .lack the Ripper crime, and women shuddered at the idea that the Whiteehape] monster had, invaded the West. The police theoiy was that the woman had been murdered bv a man in a house close by, and the body wheeled to the spot where il was found. It. did not occur to anyone that *| woman would wheel a body weighing nine stone through the streets in a perambulator. \s it was. the perambulator bad broken down with the weight. That wis how the woman's bodv came to be found near the Nwis, Collage. The intention bad evidently been to wheel t. to Hanipsleiid and sink it in one of the ponds. ■ It wa- to llampstiiiid Unit the body was taken by the police, and it h\y in the llanips'tead mortuary awaiting identification.

-IT'S PHOKUK!*' Aiming the persons who read in the morning papers of the discovery of the body was a Miss Clara Hogg, who knew that the previous afternoon her sistev-in-law, Mrs. Phoebe Hogg, the wife of Frank Hogg, a furniture remover, had left her home in the Prince of Wales' lload, Kentish Town, taking her little cighteen-months-old girl with her, and had not returned. _ She at once hurried round to a friend of the family—a young woman of fourand twenty, who lived in Priory Street. "Oil, Mrs. Pearcey," she exclaimed, "Phoebe hasn't been home all night, and there's a woman's body found, and I'm afraid it's Phoebe! It's in the Hampstcad mortuary. 1 must go and; sec it. Do come with me?" Mrs. -Pearcey consented to accompany her friend on "the gruesome errand, and the two young women were shown into the mortuary. Clara Hogg recognised the clothing. A little later on she recognised the features, and exclaimed: "Oh, it's Phoebe! It's Phoebe!"

AROUSING SUSPICION. Mrs. Pearcey gazed for a minute, and then turned her head. '■lt isn't Phoebe!" she said. "Come away—come away!" At that time there was in the mortuarv a high police ollicial. He had closeI}- 1 }- observed the women as the' identification was made, and he told me afterwards that there was a look in Mrs. Pearccv's face as she turned away from the corpse which at once aroused his suspicion. Orders were given that the women should be followed. ''he order was obeyed, and within a short time the police were making personal investigations at the residence of Mrs. Phoebe Hogg. . There her husband was examined, and on being searched-for he was under suspicion-the latchkey of the house occupied bv Mrs. Pearcey m Priory Street was found ill his pocket.

IN A FIT OF FlillY. The police then, accompanied by .Mrs. IVarcev, went to Priory .Street and searched the rooms she occupied oil the .Mound lloor. The condition of the kitchen left no doubt ill their minds that it had been the scene of a terrible t'u.lit for life-a light which had ended fatally for one of the women engaged The woman who had been killed in the kitchen was lying at the llampstead inortuarv. The woman who was suspected of killing her was at once arrested. Talking to a female searcher at the police-station the prisoner said: " Mrs. Hogg called on me in the attirnoon, we had a few words, and then—bin 'perhaps I'd belter not sav any

young woman of (our-and-twenly was On the morning of her aiJvst she was heanl singing in lb.kitchen a, -he began to clear it up a While the police were searching hj" ~,„„„ ,hc whislled. lmt she had killed the young wile ot Frank Hogg, and she had killed tar ] n \, y She had killed the woman m a moment "f epileptic fury: she had killed the child beeau-e she did not now what else to do with it. IN Till'. TWU.IOUT. _

S|,e bad then put the body of the woman inl" the perambulator which Ur II.."" l«a«l I''" <" ll,u liUU ' lli,U v-hen -l."*~Ti!i<l called in the afternoon t> ■•'tike tea'' with her friend. mien the body was packed into the perambulator, and Mrs. 1 carcey «■ . frnttins! on l.evl.:itnn.l jacket_tn«l. I ronTdoor. She t..MWn. to tn k;; ™ /;; a* there was a perainlmlatoi in Hi. hall. It was then dusk. A few minutes later Mrs. Pearcey started on her terrible journev through the busy slree'f of Kentish Towu on her way lo Hampstcad,

The probability is (that the child, whose body was found a day or two later on a piece of waste ground calle 1 t'oekahoop Field, was not put in the, perambulator with its mother. There, were no stains upon its clothing. The expert theory at (he time of the trial was that the disposal, of tie: child hail been the object of a second journey. At leu o'clock at night on the day that his wife and child had been killed at Priory Street, Frank Hogg let him «>lf inlo .Mrs. Pearcey's house with his latchkey, and finding she was not there left a 'note on the little table in l.ae parlour for her. WHAT WAS THE MOTIVE?

Then he went home, and was surprised to find his wife had not returnei. lie concluded she had gone to Chorley Wood to see a relative who was ill, but as she had not left word that she intended to stay there lie passed an anxious night. The next morning he went to L'hor! -y Wood and found his wife had not been lUhere. On his return the mystery of •the poor woman's absence was speedily solved for him. The police who searched his lipase told him where the body of his wife was lying. • The motive of Mrs. Pearcey in committing this cruel crime was never made perfectly plain.

It did not leave the way clear for her to marry Hogg, for Mary Eleanor "Wheeler claimed all through and to the end to be a married woman; and Hogg, who knew she had no right to rail herself .Mrs. IVarcev, always understood from her that she had been m irried when she was sixteen and tint her 'husband was alive. Jealousy was suggested by the 1',05..--ciilionj but .Mrs. Hogg was'quite ic,n ,••• ant of the true state of affairs, she and her husoaml stayed during the Christmas week at .Mrs. Pearcey's house, an 1 when she was ill Mrs. Peartey nursed her. The fact that he was a married man in no way curtailed the opportunities that the pair had of meeting. To argue that the murder was premeditated is to ignore one of the most clearly-defined facts of the cast—the i woman's passionate affection for her victim's husband.

The last thing she was likely to premeditate was a deed that would certainly for a tinie keep Hogg from thinking of anything else but the fate of his wife and child. AFTER A QUARREL. 1 The murder, one of the most extraordinary in the annals of modern crime, was in all probability the result of a sudden fit of insane fury. The two women quarrelled, and the younger 'woman struck the elder—Mi's. Hogg was thirty-one—with the first weapon that came to her hand—the kitchen poker. The violence of tho attack was maniacal. Mrs. Hogg was killed by a ram of furious blows. " ' "The hacking at the victim with a knife that followed was as maniacal as it was unnecessary.. The crime was complete before the knife was used. Mrs. Hogg came to Priory Street that afternoon in consequence of a note th it had been sent by -Mrs. Pearcey. It was a written message, given to a boy to deliver.

If the murder was premeditated, then Mrs. Pearcey must also have count.jd upon her victim bringing with her the perambulator in which her body was to be wheeled away. INSANITY'S VICTIM.

The whole theory of a premeditated murder by a sane person breaks down at that point. For if Mrs. .Pearcey did not include the perambulator in her premeuitation, then she was planning a, murder in which she must have the victim's body in one of her rooms at Priory Street. And Prank Hogg, her intended victim's husband, wouhl probably make one of his customary calls upon Mrs. Pearcey. The whole conduct of this unhappy girl, whose short life had been a miserable, a passionate, and, Ironi the moral point of view, an evil one, points to the conclusion that she was a victim of epileptic insanity. But 1 inn dealing with the human tragedy from the human point of view; and it is from that point of view th.it Mary Eleanor Wheeler, alias Pearcey, is here to be regarded. .Throughout the trial she exhibited a gentle composure which made her a pathetic figure even when the most gruesome details of her crime were being given in the crowded court. After he condemnation she had but one anxiety, an anxiety which at last amounted to despair. THE POWEK OF LOVE. She wanted Frank Hogg to visit her. She wanted to see him and to bid him good-bye. In taking a final adieu of her mother, she endeavoured to comfort and console her. She said quite calmly: "1 am innocent! Think that, and be brave! 1 don't mind dying at all!" Hut where the man whose wife and child she had killed was concerned, she was always a weak, hysterical woman.

She implored him to come and see her. She obtained an order for him to do so. lie returned it without a word. Then she gave way to a paroxysm ol grief. To her solicitor, Mr. Freke Palmer, who did all that was humanly possible to save her from the gallows, she wrote: ••1 am very grateful for all that has been done. I should much rather die now than be in prison all my life." This was written on the morning if the 22nd. That afternoon she added a postscript to the letter, probably the lust lines she ever wrote.

The postscript is dated, " 3.30 p.m., December 22nd. 'DO." , . At eight o'clock on the morning ot December 23rd she was led out to die. Here are the last written words of Mary Eleanor Wheeler, who signs herself simply "M. E." " Sly last request of you is for you 'to see Mr. Hogg and tell him that 1 received his returned order. 1 know nis handwriting. Will you tell him 1 forgive him, as i hope to be forgiven. But he might have made death easier to U "|N THE SHADOW OK DEATH. Tt». tortured woman's heart did not falter :u its steadfastness even in the shadow of the gallows. When the dread moment arrived she gentlv (old the wardresses who came to her side that she did not need thenhelp to the scall'ohl. "Don't come with me, she said; r can walk alone!'' But the tearful women said they would not leave her. She kissed them and thev kissed her, and then the sad procession started. She did not break down. 'She was the calmest person on . the scene of the last tragedy. She left behind her two written doeu- ,' incuts. One was a request to her solici- , tor to insert in a Spanish paper, published in Madrid, these words: ! -11. E.C. P. Ijas.t wish ot M. h. \\. Have not betrayed.''

HUSBAND AXD LOVER. . This mysterious message from ilii' scaffold' lias been thought to refer to the crime. The idea is erroneous. It hail reference to her niarrhigc, and was addressed to the man who. when she was a jsirl of sixteen, made her his wile and afterwards separated from lier. The other doeunieiil was a letter addressed lo a sister of Frank Hogg, m vvhieli she completely exonerated lain from all blame, in connection with her crime. . A guilty life, the measure of tin- evil that she knew anil wrought written m letters of blood for all the world to read With all our horror of the evil tint this unhappy woman did, it may be permitted us to think of her as one who was not wholly sane, who might, but for the circumstances that led lip to n.-r awful deed, have expiated her crime as a patient within the walls of J.roadinoor. instead of as a condemned criminal within the. walls of Negate.