Litchfield enquirer., 1871-05-04
LITCHFIELD.

The Superior Court was engaged most of last week in the trial of Joel W. Perkins for the murder of an infant child of which he and his eldest daughter were the pa- rents. We have neither the space nor the desire if we had room, to give in detail the revolting evidence in this most revolting case. There are facts, also, outside the evidence proved before. the court, which snouId also De stated in connection with the facts brought out on the trial, to give anything like complete notion of the re- markable career of this monster.
 Perkins was born in Watertown, and seems always to have resided in Litch6eld county. He was bound out when seven years of age to MT. French, in Water town, by whom he was sent to District and Sunday schools, and had, apparently, a fair start in life From Watertown he re. moved to Harwinton, thence to Burrville. He married frst.cousin named Johnston, while in Harwinton, by whom he had a large family of six daughters and two sons which have grown up. He has always lived in extreme poverty, and although man of much ingenuity and reasonably industri- ous, seems never to have been able to supply his family even with the coarsest necessaries of life, and to have lived in a succession of novels in Winchester, Tor. rington, Cornwall and Cornwall Bridge, usually of not more than one or two rooms, into which his large family was huddled. He brought up his family in the grossest ignorance, his oldest daughter having been put to school but two summers. and none of them could read or write. They were kept from forming aequaintances by the extreme poverty which denied them decent clothing, and by the express orders of their father. Once only does there seem to have been any attempt on the part of town authorities to interfere. When at I Burrville the selectmen of Torrington wanted to indenture his children into de. cent families. He refused, and when they threatened to enforce the law requiring him to send his children to school, he moved away from the place and seems never to have been interfered with by any officers of the law till his arrest few months since. We are 10th to accept the general belief that he systematically denied his children all educational and moral training with view, from the first, to the horrible crimes which could only have been made possible by that ignorance. It would seem more probable that this extraordinary course was adopted as a precausion after his crimes had commenced, rather than as a preliminary step to them.
 No sooner had the eldest daughter ar- rived at about the age of thirteen, than Perkins commenced the practice of incest with her. As each of his six daughters ar- rived at that age. they were successively compelled to pass through that horrible ordeal, and, at the time of his arrest, two of his daughters were encie,ate. Then came out the further development that that his eldest daughter had borne him four child ren, that he had attended her himself at their birth, and that he had murdered all of them but the first as soon as they were born. He also murdered child he had by his second daughter, since deceased. His wife. woman of weak mind, was so terrified by his threatsand by his chokings and beatings, that she never informed against him, although she told Cornwall lneighbor of his criminal conduct, about six
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