CRUELTY TO A CHILD.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2322, 23 February 1892, Page 4

CRUELTY TO A CHILD.

A Paris correspondent reports an atrocious case of cruelty in the SaintMartin Quarter of Paris. A little girl of nine, named Adolphine Borlet, on reaching her school, was noticed to be in a weak condition, and evidently was suffering intense pain. She was examined by the mistress, who found that her body was covered with sores and wounds. For some reason or other both her father and mother had conceived an intense hatred for her, and the former satisfied his rancour every morning by dragging the child up and holding her, head downwards, in a bucket of water until she was nearly asphyxiated, prior to sending her to school without any breakfast. She was made to sleep on the bare floor, with no covering, in a garret over the apartment occupied by her parents. The mother’s mode of torture was to make a small poker red-hot, and apply it to the tips of Adolphine’s fingers, stifling her cries by tying an apron round her head. On finding that the sores on the poor child’s hands wore noticed by the neighbours, the woman hit upon a still more painful process of torture. She heated a pair of tongs, and with them pulled out fragments of flesh from the child’s legs and body. On hearing this terrible story, the schoolmistress took Adolphine to the Commissary of Police who sent her to the St. Louis Hospital. When her mother went to fetch her from school she was arrested, and the husband shortly afterwards. On Borlet and his wife being taken to the Central Prison, the police had great difficulty in protecting them from an infuriated mob, which threatened to “ lynch ” them.