The Sun. — 1868-02-05 (London, England)

MURDER AND SUICIDE.  An inquest has bedn held at Leicester on the bodies of Zinnia Stone Crofts, aged 34, and Amy, her -daughter. The mother of the child for many years past had led a loose and immoral life. About seven years ago she Was at some open-air movement, when a young man named Charles Crofts, of respectable: position, a clerk in a solicitor's office in the town, fell in love with and married her. They lived together but a little time, as her husband, on _finding that she Was leading a profligate life, abandoned her, went to America, and has not since beenn, heard of. About two-and-a-half years ago she was taken to by a man named Preston living at Grantham, with whom she seems to have stayed up to within the past six months, and by whom she had the deceased child, who had attained the age of 1 year and 7 months. Since her return to Leicester she had againindulged in dissolute habits, had frequently been seen in a state of intoxication, and had often been heard to say that she would destroy the child and herself too. On Wednesday her sister happened to go into the house of her parents in Sandia,cre-street, and was nursing the child in question, when deceased snatched it out of her arms, and said, " Give me my child, and I'll do for it and myself." She then took out of her pocket a. bottle containing a dark fluid and endeavoured to swallow its contents, but both it and the child were wrested from her. She, however, took another bottle from her pocket and was about to drink the contents, when it was also taken from her, and also a caster from her 'locket, which were all found to contain laudanum. On Saturday morning she returned home about one o'clock, and seemed very strange. She had several glasses of ale during the day, and about six o'clock in the evening, while her mother was feeding the child, she snatched it out of her lap and ran out with it ; but as it was supposed she was going to a neighbour's no further notice was taken of the act. A few minutes afterwards she was seen by a man named Joseph Rudkin passing down the street towards the canal. Fearing that something was wrong, he watched and followed her for some &Stance. After looking about in various directions, she turned her back towards the Abbey and ran towards the canal side. Rudkin followed her, and shouted, " What are you going to do ?" but she rushed onward, and before he could get near to her hurled the child, which she had in her arms, into the water. She then threw her bonnet and child's hood aside, and rushed into the water herself. Rudkin then went to his own premises and procured a drag, and was using it, endeavouring to reach the deceased, when, with  the excitement, he let it slip through his hands into the w,ter. Assistance having arrived, he went to his yard. loosened a boat, and pushed it towards the floating bodies.  He soon succeeded in rescuinr the child, which was -still alive, and which was taken into his house and properly attended to, but expired soon- In a few minutes he secured his drag, and with it brought out the deceased woman, whose body had floated some distance down the stream, and mustlave been in the water from twenty to thirty minutes. Life was quite extinct. Rndkin also stated that about a week since he was the- means of preventing the deceased committing D. similar act, when she said, " If I had got into the water no one would have known anything about it."  The jury returned a verdict that the deceased woman committed both acts while in an unsound state of mind, brought about by her intemperate and profligate habits,