The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1883-06-07
\ MERCIFUL MURDERESS,
a Starving Mother IIurls Her children
Into the River.

To the father and mother who last
evening tucked their little ones into bed
and kissed them fond good night there
is no story Of the last twenty-four hours
which sc terribly appeals as that Of wild
owed Margaret Graham and her father.
less babies.
Where Fourteenth street runs down to
the East River early yesterday morning
the men sweating at work in the dock
saw a gaunt, wolf. eyed woman with her
small wien creature six months old in
her arms and wee hungry girl Gf Two
years staggeringly clutching her skirt.
There were famine and despair in the
poor wrctch's hunted stare and the
children we're too weak to cry.
These three woefui examples Of the
human kind wandered aimlessly up and
down the dock for an hour. There was
not enough of life in the woman to let
her weep. The children's wrctchedncss,
eloquent beyond expression in its silence,
was observed by the toughest stevedore
on the wharf. These rude workiugmen
have babies of their own. and they could
not keep their eyes Of the appalling
spectacle Of misery and want.
All at once the famished mother
clasped her feeble little girl round her
waist and, tottering 10 the brink of the
wharf, hurled both her starving young
into the river as it whirled BY. She
stood for moment on the edge of the
stream. The children were TOO weak
and spent to struggle or to cry. Their
little helpless heads dotted the brown
tide for M instant, then they sank out
of sight. The men who looked on stood
spellbound.
With narrowing shrek Of profound
despair as her children vanished in the
ruthless food the mother toppled into
the stream and joined her drowning
young.
For an instant nobody moved. The
scene was too sudden and too terrible.
There was only one shrek to express its
horror. Then came silence and the
swift disappearance Of three human
beings. Instantly q man leapcd over.
board with rope and seized the mother.
A waterman in boat clutched the fam.
ished babies as they drifted past him,
aud before the desperate effort had been
accomplished mother and children were
restored to the dock and the cruel pinch
of living.
After rude but kindly laboriug the
men on the dock restored the mother to
consciousness. Meantime the children,
half drowned and wholly exhausted, lay
blinking at the sun and wondering what
this new anguish in their little lives
pOrtended.
The ambulance arrived in due time.
The three sodden and feeble creatures
wero carried to Bellevue. There the
surgeons piled them with stimulants and
at last got the mother, gasping OH her
cot, to confess the motive Of her crime.
She had barely breath enough to tell
the shameful story. For days neither
she nor her babies had eaten a morsel.
Homeless and hungry, the weary feet of
the woman and the dragging little limbs
of the child had all night long beat the
dead march on the tlagstones. Their
vague wanderngs had brought them un-
consciously to the edge Of the river.
The rushing flood fascinated the poor
wretch, to whom it seemed infinitely
more hocpitablc tha, the barren streets.
The child at hei skirts drowsed feebly.
She blindly felt that oblivion and abso-
lutte release confronted them. So, starv-
ing, houseless and abandoned, stung by
n rude instinct of justice, she hurled
with last desperate effort into the river
tho WV hSiPtCoo CiChtuISS Ou "uUIu BIG
had inflicted the bitter injury of bring
ing them into existence.
Fed and warmed back to life, the poor
wretch, who is only thirty years old,
was reminded that she had committed
an infraction of the penal code. They
told Ter that she might be tried for at.
tempted murder and suicide and be sent
to State prison and torn from her miser-
able children.
It is no less pathetic than the rest of
this true story that the wild.eyed mother
thus threatened hugged her whimpering
babes to her breast, and, denying her
first confession, vowed that her feet had
slipped and that she had fallen into the
river.
This wretched trinity remains at
Bellevue Hospital. When they are
strong enough to be parted the bodies
will be sent to the official refuge of their
kind, and the wan woman who bure
them, whose heart bled for them and
who tried to spare them the woe of liv-
ing, will be sent to the Penitentiary as
fundamentally Y World, 1Ldy 20.