“A TERROR TO YORKSHIRE.”

New Zealand Mail, 29 January 1902, Page 17

“A TERROR TO YORKSHIRE.”

A strange defect in the nature of a Yorkshire lad named Charles Henry Meggit has possessed him of a terrible mama for destroying animals. In April last, after killing a horse and a sheep, he was discovered in a field creeping on his hands and knees by a hedgeside towards a second horse, the knife with which he had killed the other beasts held between his teeth.

For this slaughter of innocent animals he was sentenced to a short term of imprisonment. This he served, but within three weeks of his release he made his way to a field where a horse belonging to Mr George Gooderidge, of East Cowick, was grazing. The hoy first severed the animal’s jugular vein and then ripped the horse open. Meggitt, who wha described as a terror to Yorkshire farmers, was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude at the Leeds Assir-'s by Mr Justice Ridley, who said th-* lie was determined to put a stop to tue prisoner’s practices.

A suggestion had been made that the lad was of low mental development, but 1 Mr Justice Ridley said that if the prisoner required to be taken care of during his term that would be seen to by others.