Wholesale Murder of Children.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 265, 13 May 1895, Page 2

Wholesale Murder of Children.

SEVERAL BODIES FOUND. (Per Press Association.) Duxedin, May 11. The police found the bodies of two baby girls buried in Mrs Dean's garden at Dunedin. They answer the description of those left in her charge. She has been arrested on a charge of murder. One of the bodies found in the garden of Dean, at Winton, has been identified as that of a child which the -woman Dean had on the i3oth. The police theory is that when the woman got out of the train at Dipton she killed the child and placed the body in a large hat box she was carrying. She then joined the train and proceeded to Lnmsden. Next day she travelled by the Waimea Plains line and caught the express to Dunedin at Gore, Between Milburn and Clarendon she received another child, and getting out at Clarendon is supposed to h&ve disposed of the child and placed the second body in the hat box. Bhe then joined the evening train south, and after stopping at Clinton for the night made her way home. The grandmother of the latter child and the woman who had charge of it for some time, left for Clinton yesterday afternoon and were to drive with Detective McGrath to Winton to identify the body. The woman is believed to have carried on the trade for years. She left Christchurch because the police had interfered in a case in which she had received a child from a young woman and her mother. The child was being badly treated, and the police hearing of it and tracing the mother of the child, insisted on its being taken away. The extent of trade carried on by the Deans can only be ascertained by those who entrusted them with children coming forward and giving information to the police. May 12. The garden at the house occupied by the Deans at "Winton has been further searched by the police, but the only thing of a suspicious nature found was a small skull. It is not certain yet if it is human. The elder infant, whose body was found in the flower pot, was in Mrs Dean.s custody for four or five days before she started for Milburu via Lunasden and Gore, and Avent with her. The doctors who have examined the bodies have found no distinct traces of violence. There are a few marks about the neck of a month-old baby, but these may arise from decay. The grandmother of this child identified its clothes in Dean's house. Mrs Dean is Dean's second wife, and was the widow of a doctor. It is said she gives her age as 48, but she looks older. She is well educated. Dean is somewhat affected by the are rest but the woman was not perturbed. She denied stoutly that she had ever seen the person from whom she was said to have received the child Hornby.