A HORRIBLE STORY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2134, 13 March 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

A HORRIBLE STORY.

A man named Francois Paul has been condemned at the Assize court, Finisterre, to perpetual imprisonment for haviug incited his young wife to commit suicide, and with her helped to drown their three young children. His defence was that he was uuable to support them or to witness their death by hunger The circumstances under which they died were as follows :— Last November, finding themselves in absolute penury, Paul, and at his instigation his wife, took their children to the seashore, and holding two by the hands advanced to meet an inconing tide. The youngest child was in the wife's arms. The first shock cf the waves made her swoon, and she and the babe in her hands and a child that held on to her were at once drowned. Francois Paul then seized the sur\ iving boy, who clung to him by the shouldeis, and threw him out as far as he could fling him. He then knelt down on the shingle to be immersed himself, but, getting f lightened, rose anxl rushed back from the advancing tide. Some fishermen found him beneath a cliff in a prostrate condition, and he said he was waiting for the four bodies to be washed up to him. He said he had At first meant to perish with them, but finally resolved to survive them, in order to bury them in consecrated ground.