The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-07-18 00:00:00

EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF CHILD
STEALING. .

- -
The Par:s correspondent of the Express gives the following
particulars of a remarkable child stealing ease :
A woman was tried at the Paris Assize Court on
Tuesday in last week for stealing a child under very
extraordinary circumstances. This is a crime of not
frequent occurrence. The last case of the kind oc-
curred seven years ago, when a judge's little boy was
stolen from the Tuileries gardens by a girl, who thought
she could persuade her lover to marry her if she could
make him believe she had a child of his. The
motive in the present case was to a certain extent
analogous; but then, as now, an indulgent jury, prine
to pardon feminine vagaries, pionounced a verdict
of acquittal. The prissier placed at the bar was
a welblooking married woman, twenty-four years old,
named Marie Emingeard, who, before her arrest, lived
with her husband, a man of thirty-four, at Vasa, in
the department of the Corrhze. The spouses carried
on the business of rush-bottomed ehairmakers, and
were in very good circumstances for their station in
life. They were married in 1864, and, though they
had frequent quarrels, never ceased to live together
except during some months in 1860, when the wife had
a situation in Paris. They had no child, and the wife
fancied that in consequence of this was the reason why
she and her husband did not get on well together. Im-
pressed with this idea she one day said to him that
while she was in service in Paris she had been confined
of a little girl ; that she had been afraid to tell
him lest he might fancy that lie was not the father, and
that she had left the child with an aunt in Paris.
The husband, so far from being angry, said he would
like to have the child brought home at once, and sent
his wife hi Paris, with plenty of money in her pocket,
to fetch it. Her idea was to go to the Founding
Hospital, and ask to adopt a child; but when she
found she rould not do this without showing her
"papers," would have led to the inquiry and discovery,
she resolved to steal one. She compounded with her
conscience by theory that if she took away the child of
a very poor person, with the thorough determination
to bring it up well, she would in the main be doing a good
action. The day after she arrived in Paris she saw three
. children at play on the Boulevard de la Gore, near the
Orleans Railway Station. The eldest (in charge of the
, two) was ahoy of nine, the second a boy of three and
a half, and the third, who she thought would suit her
purpose, a little girl twenty months old. She made
friends with the children, treated them at a cake shop,
and then, to draw them further away from thsir
home, went to a restaurant where they had coffee and
"a ha'porth of soda water." Afterwards going still
further off, she bought a frock for the little girl.
Finally, she gave the two boys the slip, and took the
child to her lodgings, where she slept with it. 'the
next morning she Waa en her way to the Orleans Rail-
way Station with the stolen child in her arms, when,
by an almost miraculous coincidence, the child's
eldest sister, fourteen years old, who was going to a
shop where she worked, recognised the infant, and with
great firmness told the woman that, unless she llreught
her home immediately, she would call the police and
have her arrested. 'I he woman Emingeard offered the
girl a bribe of a watch and 40 francs to let her go,
lint the girl refused to part with her prisoner. The
parents, who had been in the greatest distress at
' the loss of their infant, were Germans' named
Beslinger, living on the Boulevard de rllOpitaL
' They detained the woman Emin,,'eard, and is com-
missary of police committed her for trial.
The public prosecutor and the presiding judge pressed
fit a conviction, and urged upon the jury that a poor
couple had as great an affeethn for their offspring as a
rich one. But the prisoner's counsel, without pleading
. insanity, succeeded in inoculating the jury with his
, theory that the woman's mind was so far biased by
I hysteria and fancies that she was not criminally re-
sponsible for the act she had committed ; and a ver-
dict cif "Not guilty" was returned.