A SAMPLE RECIDIVISTE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1149, 8 March 1884, Page 3

A SAMPLE RECIDIVISTE.

A crime has just been brought to light in New Caledonia which furnishes a ghastly illustration of the class of malefactors sent out to that island by the French Government, The perpetrator of it, as we learn from the Neo Caledonier of January 23rd, was what we should call a ticket-of-leave holder—a woman named Roger, She and ner husband had received a grant of land on the banks of the river Foa, and one day in August last, while the head of the household was out at work, she took her little daughter, who was only two years old, into a neighboring wood, and, it is believed, seized the child by one of her legs and shattered her skull by dashing it either against a stone or the trunk of a tree, Some months elapsed before the corpse was discovered, and the skull, from which the flesh had disappeared, was found to be fractured in front and still to exhibit a red stain on the spot where the poor little creature’s lifeblood had oozed out. It was ascertained at the trial that this was the third crime of the kind that the murderess had committed—the first having been perpetrated in 1869, and the second in 1875. For the latter she was sentenced to imprisonment for life with hard labor, but obtained her liberation on being sent out to New Caledonia. No other motive was assigned for the unnatural atrocities than that she disliked the expense and trouble entailed upon her by having a child to look after.