The Blandford and Wimbourne Telegram. — 1879-06-27 (Blandford, Dorset, England)

EXETER.  CONFESSION OF THE MURDERESS.  On Thursday Captain Bent, the chief constable, gave evidence of a confession which Tooke made to him on Friday last, the 13th instant. The 'prisoner sent for him to come to her in the cell. She said, "I suppose some one will be hanged for this murder." He then cautioned her what she might say would be used against her. Sh& said she wished to make a statement to Captain Bent alone. He suggested there should be a witness to the interview if she persisted in making any statement. Tooke, however, would have no witness, saying, "If you bring anyone I won't open my mouth.' She added, "I want to tell you that I murdered that child, and no one else had anything to with it." Captain Bent said, Do you really mean to make that revelation after the caution I have given you The prisoner said, " 1 do; I mean to tell you all. Ido not blame the mother. It was the lady who was with her when they brought me the child (Mrs. Tonkin, of Camborne, Miss Hoskings' sister,) that put it into my head." The prisoner then entered into a minutely circumstantial account of how she committed the murder and cut up and disposed the body. She stated that she smothered the child with the pillows as it lay in the cradle asleep, and that she put the body in a trunk in her bedroom. The murder was 'committed on Monday. the 12th of May. She allowed the body to remain in the box until the Friday, and in the afternoon, when her four children were away at school, she took it out cold and stiff, and undressed it. "I couldn't bear to feel him," she said, "so I wrapped him up in an old brown apron and took him into the coal cupboard." Using one of her children's dinner knives, which she spoke of as "Billy's knife," she cut off the head and limbs, using also the chopper and box found by the police. he added :—" 1 couldn't bear to look at the little fellow, so I turned my head away and hacked at the body across the head and arms. The marks on the face must have been done then. I began to feel faint, and thought I was going mad. I then put the trunk and the pieces together, and placed them in a small empty box which helped to form my dressing table.' In this box the mutilated corpse remained until late in the evening. After the prisoner's children were in bed, she took out the body, made a parcel of it and carried it out of the house. She first went down by the river-side near the quay, but was afraid to throw the remains in there*, for fear of being observed. She then returned, carried her burden through a thickly populated quarter to the Bonhay-road, where she threw it into the mill stream, and then returned home by a circuitous route, arriving there, as she said in court, hours after the people were in bed. It was early on the following morning that the trunk was discovered, and on the Sunday the head an 1 limbs were found. Tooke, when ypoken to by the police several days afterwards, refused to recognize the likeness of the child, and down to the date of her apprehension she persisted in stating that the child was taken fromherlodging on thel2th May by a strange woman. The prisoner's confession made at first verbally, was reduced to writing by the Chief Constable, and she signed it, saying it was perfectly true. A day or two afterwards, however, she wrote to Captain Bent a letter from the prison, retracting her statement, and saying that she gave the child to a woman whom she met in the Cathedral-yard, and who promi-ed to take it to the workhouse for hen—The prisoner, in answer to the formal charge, said," I am not guilty. She was committed to the Assizes on the capital charge.