Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1892-12-31 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

THE FAMINE IN RUSSIA.  TERRIBLE STORIES OF CRIME AND DISTRESS. Distress in Russia, in spite of the fact that the kimine is over, is extreme and widespread, and Count Tolstoi's description of the ravages of hunger is as pessimistic now as it was a twelvemonth ago. The following instance, writes a Daily Telegeapt correspondent, is but a spe2imen of what is met with in districts as large as Prussia. A woman named Tsesslak was put in the dock to stand her trial for murder. She is an old feeble woman of over 70, shrivelled with age and sufferirg. The charge against her was that she had killed her grandson, a toy of 13, and the story of the motives and perpetration of the crime drew tears from many of the audience. The poor woman had absolutely nothing to eat but grass, but she endured her own sufferings stoically, without murmur and without a thought of resorting to crime in order to obtain the wherewithal to still her hunger; but the maddening sight of the poor boy's tortures she could not endure. One day, in the madness of despair, she took the wretched child to the churchyard, and brought him to a tree which cast a deep shadow on the grave of his father and mother. Here she told him to climb up the tree and take out the little birds from a nest which he would find there. Meanwhile she wound a long shawl round his neck and tied both ends to a branch of the tree. When the child had climbed up high enough the wretched woman caught him by the feet and pulled him from the bough on which he was seated. The boy hung in the air. His hands, however, being free, he made a desperate struggle for ihe life which was worse than death. At last life was extinct,and the murderess,having prayed for the repose of his soul, kneeling on the grave of his parents, sorrowfully left the churchyard. The body was soon discovered, and the woman shortly afterwards arrested. Asked by the judge what she had to urae in extenuation of her crime, she sobbed aloud' and said, "It's better for him to be at rest once for all than to suffer all his life in want and misery. Ah, if you only saw how he suffered and cried I I loved my poor dear Stanny too dearly to be able to look at his misery without relieving it. May God have mercy on him and me! " She was then condemned to the hardest kind of penal servitude in the mines of Siberia for 10 years. Not many of the prisoners who are escorted to Siberia return to their homes again; but that few of the few who do have an enviable let in store for them is evident from the following story: A little girl of HI years appeared before the Governor of Yarosslav with a peti•ion in her hand, which she presented to that official. As soon as he had read it he asked her some questions, in the presence of many- other petitioners and elicited the following details Her father had been an official, but for some offence or suspicion of offence was sent to Siberia. When his time there was served, he was told to get back to European Russia as best he could. His wife being ill, he had to drive her in a wheeltarrow from Siberia all the way, his little girl trudging along by his side for months, begging alms on the road, When they arrived in Yarosslav they could go no further, for his wife, who was p tralvsed,could no longer support the jolting of the wheelbarrow. The father as a last resource sent hie, child with a petition to the Governor, who said that lie would place her in a child's asylum on the first vacancy that occurred,but could do nothing for the moment. Among the petitioners, who were struck with the child's beauty and modesty, a subscription was opened, and the inhabitants ol the town, bearing of the case, have resolved to help the little girl oat of hr difficultios.