The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-12-08
HESTER VAUGHN AND INFANTICIDE-

A very remarkable meeting, called by the
Workingmen's association, was held in the
Cooper Institute, New York city on the first of
this month. Its purpose was to consider what
might be done by friends of humanity and
Justice in that city to save from the gallows
Young English woman, named Hester Vaughn,
convicted Of infanticide by criminal court in
Philadelphia.
The facts Of this case present a not uncom-
mon, though profoundly horrible, tragedy.
All its incidents, and all its circumstances, are
sadly and terribly suggestive. Hester Vaughn
came to Pennsylvania in 1866, at the age of
twenty, presumptively the wife of man
who, it turned out, was really the husband
of another woman, and by whom she was de-
serted after a short period of cohabitation.
To support herself she went into service as
dairywoman, and while thus engaged suffered
what she alleges to have been rape. But
her refusal to give the name of the ravisher,
for the reason, as she says, that he IS hus-
band and father and great domestic misery
would result from the revelation, is well calcu-
lated to throw suspicion on her veracity in
this particular. It is not less likely that she
was ensnared into an Illicit love, and refuses
to expose her paramour as much out of ten
derness for him as for his family. However
that NAV be, the fruit of this connection was
the birth of a child in Philadelphia, where
she went to hide her shame, working hard,
and living miserably in a room renting for
three dollars month. Three days she ira
vailed in solitary agony, while the tumult and
murmur of great city, telling of strange
sea of Joy, of desire, of hope, and
of madness too, that was surging outside,
beat against her squalid and lonesome lodg-
inG She Was found, accidentally, in a state
of unconscfousness, with NO nvlng snns
about her, for the child was dead, bearing
| upon its body certain marks that induced the
charge of infanticide against the mother.
| Then followed hasty trial, weak defense,
unqualified conviction and prompt sentence;
| and felon's grave opened to welcome the
wretched young woman to its hospitahties.
dark and clammy, indeed, but not colder for
her. il would seem, than the million hearts in
the living world around her. Throughout the
civ of brotherly love" there was no senti-
ment. brotherly, sisterly or human, to cause a
petition to go up from thence to the executive
seat for the pardon of Hester Vaughn, or even
for the least mitigation of her punishment.
But let no one infer that Philadelphians are
callous as to their philanthropic fame This As
amply indicated by petition signed by
twenty thousand men and women, praying
Governor Geary to extend executive mercy tc
one Alfred Alexander, colored, who, IN
supposed transport of jealousy, stabbed tC
death woman with whom he had been CO
habiting, although the wife of another man.
Thus stood the case of Hester Vaughn wher
the Working-women's Association of New
York took it in hand. What steps they haC
already taken in her behalf before calling tbs
meeting in the Cooper Institute, are indicated
in the subjoined passages of the reported pro
ceedings:
Miss Anthony, read the memorial prepares
| for presentation to Gov. Gesry. and some accom-
| pspypg resolutions The gist of the latter was
that woman should be tried BY her peers; that
bad and demoralizing as the gallows was whe
] men were to be executed upon 1t, It was sn