Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1858-12-27

A SAD STORY OF CRIME AND PAUPERIsM
The story Of Ellen Finn, the Irish girl who
was convicted Of manslaughter in the murder
OF her own child, i'll the Court Of Common
Pleas, in this city, on Tuesday, is calculated to
invoke philanthropic pity for its victims, and
Indignation at some Of the institutions of So
clety, rather than congratulations upon the
character of ourselves and neighbors, or the
just severity Of the criminal law Her home
has been for several years in Chicopee, where
without friends she led quasi yagrant life
About year ago she was sent to the house of
correction for five months for some petty
crime, and on coming out In the spring, the
selectmen of Cmcopee, finding that she was
about to become mother and public charge,
sent her of to New York. There in public
hospital she was delivered of babe, and at
the end OF two weeks took it in her arms and
trudged back to Chicopee. Thence she went to
Northampton, both child and herself feeble.
and the former showing small signs Of vitality.
Sheltered there for night by some compass
slonate person, she started the next day to re-
turn to Chlcopee, and on the way, as she saws
and as might not unreasOnably have happened
the infant died, and she left the body in the
woods by the roadside Thence she went to
Westtield, and, growing more febe, applied to
the selectmen for relief and they, after exam
ination, sent her to the State aims house at
Monson.
While recovering her health here the body of
the child was discovered, and upon its neck
finger prints, indicating that in the extremity
OF her suffering and despair, perhaps to relieve
by one means what she could not by another.
the mother had anticipated the progress of ex-
posure and starvation and disease, and sent
her child out of the world, that had given it
80 cruel welcome. Ignorant weak, and
wicked, as could but be, the mother contradict
ed herself IN explanations of the death of her
child, and these, with the finger prints of
strangulaton have procured her conviction of
wlltul murder, if anything, but called man
slaughter by the officers Of the law, because
they toresaw no jury could be brought up to
the point of cOnvictng her OF wiful murder.
She now goes TO prison for such terms as in a
Judicial view the demands Of legal Vengeance
and the protection of society require But
does not society need to be protected from it
self rather than this poor ignorant creature.
whom it banded about from town to town. to
save few dollars of charity, and tempted if
not drove to a crime that it now expends a
dozen times as much to punish Should not
the vengeance of the law fall rather upon
those who tempted her to final ruin for the
qualification Of their passion, and who with
the expenditure that has convicted her of
child MURDER could probably have been
brought to justice And mother and child if
properly cared for in their emergency, instead
OF driven of to suffering and crime could
surely have been of better service to them
selves and to the world, than is now possible.
VIII the distribution of punishment in the
next world be made after the pattern set in
TINS case, by the world we live in !-,Sprinq-
field Republican,