The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1895.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 191, 13 August 1895, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1895.

■For tiu sanss that lacks aosistancs, For the wrans that needs resistance, , I'or the future in tb.9 distance. • -And the eood that vie can (to.

By the execution of Minnie Dean lat Invercargill yesterday, New Zealand obtains the unenviable distinction of adding a name to the ghastly list of. destroyers of infant life who in these colonies during the last few years have paid the penalty of their misdeeds on the scaffold. The horrors connected with the child-murders perpetrated in Sydney by the Makins, and in Melbourne by Frances Knorr, are still fresh in the public mind, and probably helped to intensify the indignation that was felt when Mrs Dean's misdeeds were brought to light. Fortunately for the ends of justice, whatever the state of popular feeling may be, the accused in British communities has the advantage of a fair and impartial trial, where the evidence is thoroughly sifted and due weight given to every circumstance that tells in the prisoner's favour. The trial of Mrs Dean, which lasted three days and ahalf, was a most exhaustive one, and probably there were lew persons who followed the proceedings that*did not fully concur in the verdict of guilty found by the jury. The Appeal Court sustained the decision of Mr Justice Williams that evidence as to the finding of other infants on Dean's premises was properly admitted in the case on which she was convicted, and the Executive, after careful consideration, decided that the execution must take place. The - unhappy woman appears to have preserved, in a great degree to the last the intrepid demeanour that characterised her when before the Court.

The revelations during the trial all tended to show that for years Mrs Dean had made a practice of adopting children for the sake. of the premium offered with them, and that one after another the unfortunate little vic-tims-had disappeared.. ; The- child Dorothy Edith Carter, for whose murder Minnie Dean was condemned to death, was apparently but one. of a mournful procession of children who were deprived of life by a cold-blooded women destitute of the common instincts of humanity. According to theevidenceofMargaret Cameron, a girl who iived some years with Mrs Dean, the procedure of the latter was a somewhat singular one. Some of the children were kept for two or three years, but when Cameron was absent from the house, one after another were missing. The excuse made by Mrs Dean in each case was that the child had been adopted by some person residing at a distance, and for some time no suspicion of foul play seems to have been aroused. Bui. like many other criminals, Mrs Dean seems to have been emboldened by success, and to have despatched some otjthe children more recently entrusted to her almost as soon as they came into her hands. The iact that children adopted under such circumstances are in. many cases the offspring of shame, helps to prevent a close inquiry into proceedings of women of the Dean sisterhood.

If Mrs Dean had confined her nefarious mission to illegitimate children she might possibly still have been carrying on her murderous game unmolested; but she returned from her travels with a child belonging to a Mrs Hornsby, who had foolishly entrusted it to her and paid a premium of £10. In a lew days this child also disappeared, and when the mother called to make inquiries, Mrs Dean boldly denied that the child had ever been in her possession. But this unblushing assurance failed to serve her. The police were speedily on her track, the bodies^of the children Carter and Hornsby were discovered, and one astounding_tevelation after another was made, till the fatal chain of evidence was complete.

In the case of the murder of Dorothy Edith Carter, a child of n months old, the evidence was entirely circumstantial, but so overwhelming that no reasonable doubt could remain of the prisoner's guilt. The child had only been at Winton a few days, and the premium had not been paid, but Mrs Dean appears to have been so sure ot the money, and so confident that no awkward inquiry would be made by the mother, that she determined to get rid of the baby with the utmost expedition. She took the child with her on a railway journey professedly for the purpose ot leaving it with a lady who had promised to adopt it. Her movements can be traced a certain distance, when she appears to have destroyed the child by a dose of laudanum, and to have placed its remains in a large tin box which she carried with her.

There is a natural reluctance in a civilised community to inflict the death penalty upon a woman, and we doubt not that if in the case of Minnie Dean there had been any mitigating circumstances, the sentence would have been

commoted to imprisonment for life, But we look over the voluminous evidence in vain for anything that would give the crime of childmurder a lighter colouring. The prisoner's counsel, Mr Hanlon, made an able defence, but he did not attempt to dispute the main facts disclosed by witnesses fer the Crown, and his plea that the child Dorothy Edith Carter might have been' poisoned by an overdose of laudanum accidentally administered, showed the straits to' which he was reduced in having to search for arguments that might tell with thejury.

It is unfortunate for those who abject to the infliction of capital pun* ishment upon women under any circumstances, that, far more women than men are guilty" of infanticide. It would never do, from mere sentiment, to.admit the/doctrine that women can destroy life without suffering the death penalty,- which experience has? shown to ■be the most effectual deterrent of murder." It .is.nb amelioration to the sorrows of the'relatives of aTchild that has been done to death that it received its despatch at the hands of' a murderer in petticoats, and if the capital sentence is justifiable at all, every moral consideration requires that it should be inflicted upon offenders irrespective of sex. l ■ ' ■ ;■■'■••