The Express.
London, England, 1865-08-01 00:00:00

BBITAWNIA.

THIS Erving°, THIRD CLANTib F gST CUB& Mama
Cranford, Drummond, Bliprood, and Parry; Madames Tarno
Xenon, an i Scott.—W,lll.l SHALL I DINS? Mr. J. Rap
nada—And 'MK FIRJ3RZW DIAMORD. M 1 8L Caw.

HIGH WATCH AT LONDO34IIIIDGZ.
TO DAY WAWA& 8R 6es.....Aftensoon, Bb. 381 s.
TO4lOllOll Manila OR 140.....Afismak 95. 51m.

LONDON. TUESDAY. AUGUST 1.

Tsar least conceivable, and yet most common of
crimes, the growing frequency of which baffles
coroners and appals philanthropists, which in some
districts seems to be growing into a ghastly fashion,
and which we know to be everywhere more com-
mon than we can prove it—the murder of infanta
—has been illustrated at the present Devonshire
Assizes by a case which may well terrify those
who boast of our civilization. Two women, one
the mother of the child, had at last circuit been
put on their trial for the crime, but the jury was
usable to agree on a verdict against either, and
was discharged, the prisoners being still detained
in custody. In the interval tho mother, a young
woman of the name of HARRIS, made a confession
to the officials of the gaol, and in order to secure a
conviction against the other she was allowed
to turn Quer:es evidence, and was put
into the witness-box. There the story
which she told was this. She was a domes-
tic servant, and had for seven years (being now
only 23 years of age) had illicit intercourse with
one man, to whom in that space of time she bore
two children. One is now alive, and is six years
old, the other was born on the 16th of last Sep-
tember, in the house of Mrs. Gliesos, to which the
mother had gone for her confinement. On the
12th of December she went to service with a Mrs.
WANSLY at Torquay, and then took the child,
which hitherto she had kept with her at Mrs.
GIBSON'S, to the house of a married couple of the
name of WINSOR It does not seem clear whether
this was with the intention that it should be made
away with ; but it certainly appears as if some
such idea had been in HARRIS'S mind, for when she
parted with the child she acknowledges she said to
Mrs. WI:4R', "There has been one child picked up
"in the country." If it was a hint, it was not
lost. Mrs. WINSOR replied that "she wondered
" she hadn't got herself into it once before,"
and added that she had " put away " one child
born at her house. The mother had, she said,
promised her 31. for doing it, but the price had
not been paid. HARRIS asked her how she did it,
and she answered that it was by putting her finger
below the jugular vein. Continuing her hideous
catalogue, she instanced a three weeks old baby
she had disposed of for one ELIZABETH SuARLAND,
and another for her own sister, who's husband
was at sea at the time, but who had received a
five-pound note from the child's father, but
meanly gave her only 21. out of it, putting her off
with a promise to make her a handsome present
when the husband came back from sea. Thus encou-
raged, HARRIS left her baby in this den of blood,
with the promise from its mistress that she "would
" do whatever lay in her power for the child."
But the price had not been yet fixed. A fortnight
afterwards, therefore, Mrs. Wunion brought the
infant, the unconscious subject of this diabolical
bargain, to Mrs. Wsirszy's kitchen, and while the
mother dandled it in her arms the chaffering for
the rate at which it was to be slaughtered went
on. Five pounds was asked, but this was beyond
the mother's means, and the bargain was broken
off. On sth February HARRIS went to the
WINSOR'S cottage, and the proposal was renewed,
but not decided on. The 9th February was
Haams's " Sunday out," and she again went to
Mrs. WINSOR'S cottage. The husband was out;
the baby was playing with a girl in the house.
Mrs. WINSOR sent her out with a basket to
make some purchases. Then she turned to
HARRIS, and explained that she had not yet
killed the child, for she was determined it should
only be done in her presence, so that both might be
in equal danger if it were discovered. HARRIS
answered that she would never tell if it was never
found out ; and asked how it was to be done.
Mrs. Witasoit replied, "Put it between the bed-
"ticks." Then she took the child and carried it
into another room. In ten minutes she returned,
and bade the mother go in and look, for it would
8008 be dead. She looked, and saw nothing—only
a bed made. Then Willson, the husband, came
in, and asked " Where is the boy ? " but his wife
readily answered that the aunt bad taken it away.
The husband soon left on a message, and then Mrs.
WINSOR asked her accomplice if she had not heard
the child cry. She answered that she had not,
but Mrs. WINSOR said it did cry, and she had
trembled lest her husband should hear it. rho
girl now returned, but was again despatched on an
errand, and the two women went to see their
work. The child was dead enough. It was put
in a box, and the mother left. Four or five days
after Mrs. WINSOR brought it in a basket to Mr.
WANSEY'S, and insisted on HARRIS giving her
some money, but all she got was only one-and-
sixpence. She carried the corpse away and dropped
it near Torquay, but suspicion lighted on her, and
the women were both apprehended. The evidence
against them was too imperfect to satisfy the first
jury, but, fortified by HARRIS'S confession, it led
the second jury to convict WINSOI. Haunts,
having been QUEEN'S evidence, has not been tried.

- . -
Incredible as such • tale would seem, there is
no ground for not believing it. It is too circum-
stantial not to have failed in cross eximitiation if
it had been false ; it inculpates the relater too
horribly to have been an invention for the purpose
of saving her own life. It is incredible because
we are unwilling to believe that such things are
compatible with human nature. But the answer
is that the nature which could conceive them could
do them. A callousness to every human sentiment
appears in the narrative as much as in the deeds.

callowness a this whitkis post hi"
The And cit
of su
ooessea his
infant murder, the invitatio, 41,}4, m
entrust another victim to t epeptor,
gaining time after timsjor Aliiiieke of
the visits to the cottage where the innocent child
was being meantime fed, the presence of the
mother when her offspring was deliberately taken
from her feet to be slaughtered, her aid in con-
cealing and disposing of the corpse, are features
in the tale of such unimaginable barbarity that
they cannot but be true.
Well, what can we dot what can society do !
It can hang, as doubtless it most justly will, this
wholesale murderess ; it can banish from its
thoughts and presence the mother who worse
than Lady MACBSTH, gave money to another, and
bade her to take, the babe and murder it,
" while smiling in her face." And this is
all that society or the law can do. But
thoegh the nation is powerless, surely men
and women can do something more. Surely three
unhappy girls whose madness and misery
make the trade of Mrs. %mines ; surely those
erring wives whose flaws must, at any price,
be kept from their husband's knowledge ; surely
even the murderesses of their own or another's
offspring, must be within reach of some hnman in-
fluence. Can we think of a " Sunday out " spent
in such a business, without thinking that there
must be means by which Christian charity could
reach the hearts in which such ill fancies are loft
to breed I It is clear that this terrible and grow-
ing sin—too doubtful generally for law to act as
much of • deterrent power—must be reached,
if at all, by individual ministrations. And this
must work, not after, but before such deeds are
done, by care to keep poor women from the way
of falling ; by care to teach them that even so
great • sin is yet not absolutely unpardonable, and
need not be put away from sight by one so much
greater as murder ; and by the fostering, in all
chases, of that sense of the sacredness of life,
which shall prevent the motives of poverty, or of
inconvenience, even where that of shame is absent,
from suggesting that it were good if the poor in-
fant that has brought trouble with it were huddled
anyhow out of the world.