The Warwickshire Herald. — 1888-03-22 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

DRIVEN TO MURDER.  At the Central Criminal Court on Tuesday Emma Elizabeth Aston, was tried on the charge of wilfully murdering her two illegitimate children, Bettie and Frank.—The prisoner, according to the opening statement of Mr. :Mead. went with her two children to lodge at the house of ftirs. Jones, at Upton Park, Essex, in the summer of last year. She represented herself to be Mrs. Styles, and said that her husband was a commercial traveller, and would not be much there. In peint of fact the so-called husband never came to the place. About once a week letters with remittances used to come to her, but about Christmas these remittances became less frequent and of smaller amount, and there was no doubt that by the end of January and the beginning of February she was in great pecuniary ditticalties. She was in arrears with her rent, and was in debt to local tradesmen, and to a doctor, for the children had been ill, and she had complained ef being worn out with anxiety and trouble. After nursing her children night and day (for she had great affection for them, and was a most devoted mother) she was ill herself of neuralgia. No money had come to her for three weeks but on the 18th February :stetter came with Li. She expressed herself to her landlady as bitterly disappointed and deceived, besides being hurt at the tone of the letter. Fp te bedtime,however, she seemed perfectly rational, but next morning she was found in the kitchen in tears, when she told her landlady that she had killed her children, and they were found in bed upstairs quite dead. She said she first tried to cut the youngest one's throat, but the knife was too blunt, and then she suffocated one with her hand, and the other with a pillow. She further stated for the first time that she was not married, and that the remittances had come from the father of her children. She said some impulse which she could not resist caused her to make away with them, and she had an impulse also to commit suicide, but at the last moment a voice in the air said to her " Don't ! Don't ! " She was greatly excited at the time, and for some time afterwards, and it would be for the jury to say whether, when the unfortunate woman cemmitted the deed she was responsible for lise actions, though the medical evidence was that she ms perfeesly sane now. During the time Mr. Me.,d was speaking the prisoner, who at first maintained a calm demeanour, grew greatly affected at the recital of the painful story, and at last burst into tears and sobbed violently. After the evidence of Mrs. Jones, the landlady, and her daughter, as to the circumstances of the crime, Police constable Taylor, who took the prisoner into custody, said that she told him that she had beim forewoman for 14 years in the establishment of Messrs. Evans, whoh sale mantle makers. City, where a man named James Morris was foreman. He was the fattier of her children, and had been in the hahit of sending her money, but had latterly not dene much for her, besides which he had been unkind. She gave him Morris's three last letters to prove this, and he (witness) had made inquiries, and found her statements correct. Morris left his employment a day or two after the murders were committed. and all efforts to trace him had failed. -Dr. Anderson, residing at Plaistow, and who was called to the place at the time, said that from the appearance of the prisoner when he first saw her, and from the conversations he had with her, he was of opinion that she was in such a state of mind at the time as not to be responsible for her actions. --- Dr. Dash, divisional police surgeon, concurred in this opinion of the last witness.—Dr. Gilbert, surgeon, of Holloway gaol, where the prisoner had been confined, said the prisoner had been perfectly sane since she had come under his care.—The jury found that the prisoner did the act, but that she was insane at the time, and she was ordered to be confined during her Majesty's pleasure.  The Salvation Army disturbances at (longleton, which led to police-omit proceedings a few days since, e;tlminated on Monday night in a serious and disgraceful beene. The principal streets were thronged with people as the "Army" made its nightly perambulation, and in the end the processiuniete were attacked and a general fight ensued. The colours of the "Army were captured, and several of its officers were roughly handled, in addition to which injuries were received by a number of other persons. The town remained in great disorder for some time. and further disturbances are auticipated.