THE CRIME OF LOUISE MASSET

New Zealand Mail, 15 February 1900, Page 13

THE CRIME OF LOUISE MASSET

THE STORY OF A POOH CHILD.

Louise Massefc has been convicted and sentenced to death. The story says the London “Daily News” is_that of the duel murder of a boy by his own mother, who was perfectly sane, .and influenced by motives of the basest self-interest. The only remarkable features cf the case are the "clihin of. evidence by which the prisoner’s guilt was brought home to her, anyLthe extraordinary self-possession with which she told her own story—a demonstrably false, one—in the witness-box. i The poor child was three years old. The mother is thirty-six. She was unmarried, and supported herself by giving French lessons in London. She hved with a married sister at Stoke (Newington, and the boy was for obvious reasons kept out of the way. From the time when he was three weeks old he was put ou.t to board in Tottenham with a family who became fond of him an n treated him kindly. His mother paid regularly for his maintenance, and visited him every Wednesday. Miss Masset was half French, half English. Ihe father of the child, she said, was french. So far, it will be seen, there is nothing to suggest a motive for foul whatever may be thought of uw Masset s general morality, she was v i. • a PPeavanc6 an affectionate mother. ut in September, 1898, slie made the acquaintance of a youth named Lucas, In w ¥ i . e beginning of the end. ucas, by his own account, made love Z ler ’ v ' ll6n she told him that she Was a mother he did not mind. the child leaves its nurse. P n T ke ICth ox October, however, the L, sone ,‘' wrote to Miss Gentle, in whose a •/Li? l ® l ' s ?n Manfred was living, and f r, his father wished him to go .o France. On the 25tli of October the bam nCl ' ca ll ed the house iii TottenMW £ aw Ue f: ' oy ’ alld arranged that , Ben.Je should hand him over to A y c | usr ter to one the next day wbrnu Tv 1010 ” 5 ® 011 Stamford Hill, from Brhlcro tae start for London aereEl \ •„? n T tle same day the prisoner R”• i , vit l Bucas that she would go to meft hL ° l \ F “ da -V, that she ivould day k ? /fhen , he arrived on SaturtovetW tI T- fc fcliey v,oulcl stay there sister cu 0, , w , to ca b herself his she win ri, 1 - 6 la T told the Gentles that to Die mu’. , fco , cross from Newhaven Ppo, and that she would be at

home again, on Saturday or Sunday. On Friday, the 27th, tffo day on which she had told Lucas that she would go to Brighton, the prisoner left home at half-past twelve with a brown Glad- ■ stone bag. She went to Stamford Hill, as arranged, and Miss Gentle handed over the boy to her. He was wearing • a blue frock with white braid anc] a blue coat with gold buttons. He cried at parting, with Miss Gentle. THE BLACK SHAWL AND THE - ' BRICK. r: ■

Hie prisoner took the child in an omnibus to London Bridge Station, where she arrived soon after half-past one, and said that she was waiting for somebody. Soar, after then the boy was seen to be crying, and the attendant at the waiting-room asked what was the matter. The prisoner said he must be hungry, and asked the way to the refreshment room. She took him towards it. The hoy was never seen again alive. At half-past six Ins dead body was found in. the ladies’ lavatory, not at London Bridge, but at Dalston Junction. He had nothing on but a black shawl. The cause of death was suffocation, but he had been knocked on the head with something hard. Near his head! there was a “clinker” brick. There were such bricks in the prisoner’s garden, and she might have put one, though it could not be proved that she did put one, in her Gladstone bag. The body was still warm when it was found. The same evening the prisoner travelled to Brighton, as the prosecution said, by the train leaving London Bridge at 7.22 and took two rooms at a hotel.

“I AM HUNTED FOR MURDER.” She met Lucas the next afternoon. In the waiting-room at Brighton there was found a parcel, which contained a blue frock and a cloth coat much torn, but identified by Miss Gentle as Manfred Masset’s. The, prisoner returned from Brighten on Monday, the 30tli. bought, as she said, an evening paper, in which she read about the discovery of the body, went to the house of her brother-in-law, Mr Svmes, at Croydon, and said “I am hunted for murder, but I have not done it-.” There seems to have been r.o truth in the former statement. She told Mr Svmes that at London Bridge two women had offered to take charge of the boy at a house in Chelsea, and that she had given him to them with twelve pounds. To this

statement she adhered. Lucas, who was called at the trial, confirmed her assertion that there had been no talk of marriage, and that he had not objected to the child. He denied that there was anything between them beyond ordinary flirtation. He was a Frenchman, she talked French, and he liked her •society. The prisoner, who, under the new Act, gave evidence on her own behalf, amplified and explained her story of the two women. She first met them on the 4th of October at Tottenham Green.- They seemed to be quite respectable ;they told her that they had a little school in King’s road, and they offered to take in Manfred, who was with her. After discussing terms, she consented, as she was not satisfied with the education at Miss Ger.tle’s. She accordingly met them by appointment at London Bridge, when and where they received the child from her hands. WHERE WAS THE MOTIVE? - The prisoner’s story was on the face of it wildly improbable, and even if it had been likely, it explained nothing. What conceivable motive, except, indeed, the twelve pounds, had the two ladies of Chelsea for murdering tlie child? And who else except the prisoner could have murdered him? And is true that if Lucas can be believed, there was no motive for the murder at all. But the circumstances were not such as would induce a man to tell everything, and he would have been more or less than human if he had not tried to save the prisoner’s life, to say nothing of her reputation. The women of Chelsea had, of course, disappeared from the scene. On the supposition that they were murderesses, that was not strange. But they were not like the prisoner, traced to Brighton, nor was there a particle of evidence except the prisoner’s statement that they ever existed. The prisoner swore that she went to Brighton by the four o’clock train from London Bridge, and if that were tiue, she could not have committed the murder.

THE MISSING LINK. But here again there was no coroboration, even from the people at the Brighton Hotel, and the prisoner was quite clever enough to see the importance of the hour. She accounted for the lies she told the Gentles about taking the child to France by saying that they would have beeu broken-hearted if they had known he was being taken from them to be boarded out elsewhere. She failed to give any satisfactory explanation of her remarkable language to- Mr Symes on the 30th of October, when she falsely said that she was being “hunted for murder,” nor did she explain how she knew that the child described in the newspaper was her own. At the same time, it must be admitted that the story is an odd one. The prisoner had always been good to the child. The murder was a most cruel and savage cue. The risk of detection was enormous, and, indeed, the prisoner made no attempt at escape. The motive is difficult even to conjecture, and a very strong motive is re-

quired fer so atrocious a deed. Probably the solution lies in some unknwn part of the prisoner’s life, which may or may not have been connected with the boy’s father. There was some evidence that she corresponded with him, and he may have stopped the supplies. This, however, is mere conjecture. If the prisoner had told a credible story in the witness-box, the result might have been different. It might have been different if her mouth had been closed. The cross-examination of a woman on trial for her life is not a pleasant thing, but it undoubtedly assists the ends cf yustlee.