Smyrna times., 1879-06-11
SMYRNA, DEL, WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE II, 1879.
Children Who Want to Murder,


The truth is indeed often stranger than
fiction. The novelist who should tell how
a little mulatto girl Of eight years, born in
the West Indies and adopted by the New
York family in whose service her father
had once been, tried to kill her benefactors
in order to get their property, would be
deemed guilty of the widest extravagance,
yet such is the strange record of case that
has just come to light in the metropolis.
The family of Mile. de Wailly, teacher in
the normal school, once owned great estates
in the West Indies, and when misfortunes
overlook them they still retained in their
employ young mulatto, who had been a
most faithful slave. But at last he wanted
to return to his old home where he mar.
| ried, and died after the birth of little girl
| named Dora. The de Waillys decided to
| adopt the child and have found her very
| amlable little girl. Several years afterward
they heard again from Dora's mother who
| lmportuned them to adopt another child,
which she described as a most attractive
girl. The de Waillys refused for while,
out at last yielded. When they went to
greet the newcomer, however, they found
her very different sort Of person, both in
| appearance and character, from what they
had been told to expect Eugene was a
puny and somewhat deformed GIRL bright
but sullen, and cursed with most un.
fortunate mania for destroying everything
that she admired. But the de Waillys
were good-natured and long.suffering, and
| they still kept the little vixen in their
family, despite her passion for tearing table
covers cutting the carpets, smashing the
vases and otherwise running everything
pretty which she could lay her hands on.
A few weeks ago the members of the
family began to suffer at night from strange
sensations of the head and a peculiar
choking In the throat, which was once so
serious in Mile. de Waillys case that she
had to stay out of school several days. At
last one night she awoke to find Eugene
coiled over her, with her fingers squeezing
her windpipe and diligently engaged in
blowing into her month. Upon being dis.
covered and questioned the imp finally
confessed that she was trying to kill Mile.
de Wailly, and that it had long been her
intention to murder the whole family, as
we'll as her sister Dora, in order that she
might come in possession of their property.
She says that her mother instructed her to
carry out this novel scheme of murder and
robbery, and the only regret she manifests
IS that she did not use carving knife in.
stead OF trying to suck her victims breath.
The would. be murderess is to be taken
, to an orphan asylum, but there is a sugges
, ton, which is much more rational, that
she should be sent to hospital for insane
children, near Syracuse. A girl with SC
horrible a mania is no subject for an orphan
asylum, or any other place where she is
likely to find possibly victims so readily
Her case is one which invites rather the
; close study of experts in morbid psychology
! 1t deserves to be ranked with that of Jesse
: Pomeroy, the Massachusetts boy who de-
veloped a passion for torturing smaller boys
and girls, which he eventually carried t.
} the length of numbering some of them
7 Such children are obviously not sane, anC
yet their murderous attempts are only ex
t aggerations of an apparently Unborn love o
9 cruelty which one not infraquently en-
Y counters in children and which grows will
Y their years. The moral Of the New Yorl
case-not to import and adopt deformet
and vicious Creole girls--is one that mos
people don't stand in need of, but the dis
covery of such mania for killing in
child of eight years is calculated to startl
# one. The believers in total depravity ar
1t certainly not to be criticised if they fin,
d fresh support of their theories in sue
II cases as the Creole girl and the Bosto
a boy.-Phila. Times.