The Sun. — 1842-11-08 (London, England)

HORRIBLE JNFANTICIDES. SIX INFANTS INIURDBRED BY THEIR  INIOTIIER.  We have this week the painful duty of recording a case of long continued and inhuman depravity almost unparalleled In the annals of crime. It appears that a woman named Frances Bennett, residing at Ruardean-hill, in the Forest of Dean, being very ill, and probably fearing to die with the undivulged guilt of murder upon her conscience, communicated to the Reverend Henry Formby, -curate of Ruardean, that about twelve months since she became the mother of a child by a man named Thomas Yapp, with whom she has been cohabiting for about eight or ten years, which child, after it had lived a few days, she destroyed by poisoning it, after which she and Yapp buried it beneath the pavement of the brewhouse. The wretched woman further added that she had been the mother of five other children by the same man, all of whom she had murdered at their birth, and with Yapp's assistance had buried their bodies at separate spots beneath the floor of the brewhouse, and near a barn adjoining her cottage. These horrid confessions seemed, from their unexampled atrocity, to be more like the ravings of delirium than truth ; but upon information being given to the police, and a search being made in the spots indicatedby the unnatural woman, the skeletons of her six murdered offspring were all found, and stamped truth upon a tale much too horrid else for belief. Upon this Yapp was taken into custody, and a policeman, we believe, remained to take charge of the woman, who repeated her confession to her sister and afterwards to the policeman, Fowler. The facts were intimated to J. Cook, Esq., and a warrant was issued for summoning a jury to hold an inquest. By this time, however, the woman, Frances Bennett, had recovered in a measure the hardihood of her character; and on the inquest, which was held on Tuesday last she positively denied that she had ever given birth to aphtiuoyresnsbicasshtinieidelddh: en, except to two which she bore to her late policeman thataans dt that lab: eoi above oea myrd e orn were re stated,v to .never ri v ehmeenai otdgel ; and she strongly eerra:t oy,mhcaenorm, Coroner,ll ' ortnby a nTdh elatt deposeder g gentleman aboveema was)an d he eexamined furtherby sister,tmh the Rev. i(titiesdclothstairtetsheanwd'omcoannfehssaidonssubtoseqhuimen,tlbyutmasade they were 21wthdeeirnre made to him in his spiritual capacity, he must decline to divulge them. After, without effect, endeavouring to prevail upon .Mr. Formby to state all that the woman had told him, and after unavailing remonstrances against the withholding of evidence, the Coroner left the point as it stood, and passed on to the examination of the sister of Frances Bennett, whose evidence was to the effect that on Saturday last, October 29, she was with her sister, who had been in a weak state of health for some time, and had been confined to her bed for about a week ; that before Mr. Formby called, her sister made an alarm, and exclaimed that she would have her dead children dug up and buried in the churchyard. She said that immediately after the infants were borii she held them under water till they were dead, and that then she and Yopp buried them. She added that the last of the six children was not served in this way, but lived for two days; and that it was weakly, and she gave it some arsenic and it died ; that Yapp was very sorry when he found this child was dead, and said he would not have lost it for fifty pounds ; and that they both together buried the child in the brewhouse. At this stage of the proceedings it was thought advisable to adjourn the inquiry, in order to afford opportunity fbr further and more deliberate inquiry into the circumstances of this mysterious and very extraordinary case, and the inquest was accordingly adjourned till Wednesday the 9th instant.  During the performance of the musical mass, on Sunday, 30th ult., in the Church of the Madeleine, Paris, the congregation, which was unusually crowded was suddenly disturbed by the arrest of two young and well-dressed men, who, while pretending to be seriously attentive to the service, were detected by the police on duty in the act of plcking the pocket of a gentleman of a valuable gold snuff-box.