THE GREED OF GOLD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20656, 30 August 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE GREED OF GOLD.

INHUMAN DAUGHTERS. Again anrl again it. is proved that avarice is ono of Iho most, marked characteristics of certain 1' rcncli peasants. A case of this kind, in which three women tortured their aged father in order to make him divide his possessions among them, recently occupied the attention of a jury in the. Ilaute-Loire Department.

It was in February that these unscrupulous daughters —Maria, Alphonsine, and Melanie Verdicr —waylaid their father near his house, and forcibly took him lo his homo. There they barricaded themselves in (he kitchen with him, and attempted to make him sign an act of settlement. The old man refused to be coerced.

To what length the old man's daughters went will never be known, but neighbours heard cries, and the gendarmes were called in. They found M- Verdier lying on a bed in the kitchen. lie was dead, hut his daughters were si ill trying to revive him by passing heated bricks under the sheets. The eldest daughter, Maria, was not arrested, but, the other two wcro taken lo prison at, Puy en-Velay. The doctor who made, the posl-mortem examination attributed the death of M. Verdier lo partial strangulation. At their trial the two sisters, Alphonsine and Melanie, showed no signs of remorse, but they spoke with considerable emotion of the prison fare. Never, they declared, had they been able to cat so well. Melanie declared that she preferred prison life to the life of a working peasant, and for a time her wishes are to be realised. She has been sentenced to a year's imprisonment.