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Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 8903, 20 September 1889, Page 5

An American Arsenic Poisoner.— Americ.ua papers give accounts of the execution at Philadelphia, of a woman named Alary Jane Wbiteliug, for poisoning her husband and two children, by means of arsenic. The motive for the shocking deed appears to have been to obtain the money for which the murdered persons were insured. The husband died in March, 1888, and the doctor who attended him gave a certificate of death from inflammation. At the end of April the daughter, Bertha, nine years old, died from supposed gastric fever, and a month later the son, a child of three, also died. Suspicion being excited, the bodies were exhumed by order of the Coroner, and arsenic was found, and upon Mrs Whiteling being taxed with the crime, she admitted having murdered the two children, but alleged that her husband poisoned himself. The amount of insuratico money red bed by the murderer was £BO. '1 ho" pri-oner walked unsteadily to the gallows. This was the first execution of a woman in Philadelphia.