THE New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1895. THE DEAN CASE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LVII, Issue 2581, 6 August 1895, Page 2

THE New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.)

TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1895. THE DEAN CASE.

With which are incorporated the Wellington Independent}-established 1840, and the New Zealander,

Ip capital punishment cari ever be justified, to the universal satisfaction, it must be in this! dreadful and most horrifying case. Of the guilt of the murderers there, can jbe no ! doubt. Every link in'*a remarkably; strong chain of evidence is complete. The only feelings tho perusal dr the evidence produce arc . of astonishment, at .the systematic praparatioh of the tragedy, and of horror at theabSoluto absence of all ' moral sense , shown in the perpetration. In ' all -the records of crime there is no more gruesome story than;the storyof the railway journey which has brought this terrible' woman to the scaffold. On the last of April last she -brought home to her house, “The Larches,” near Winton, a child of about a year, Dorothy Edith Carter., The//grandmother', whoso daughter had got‘.into trouble, had read an advertisement of/Mrs ’ Dean’s.had/mado arrangements with 106' ' woman for the s adoption of her grandchild, had brought the infant , to the ; Bluff, and handed ■ it ~ovor.;, Sirs Dean,,/procured a bottle of laudanum froth a chemist nt-tho Bluff,' and took the child home. On the Second of May sha'started'forLumsden on the Kingston-Invercargill line, taking tho child with her, and in her luggage was an empty tin box. She broke the journey at an intermediate 1 statidn (Dipton), staying there all day." She Juid’thOChild with her,, stayed at a hotel with it, giving out that she had jgst arrived’ by steamer;, at, the Bluff, and that tho/ohjld had been too sick to travel without a rest. In the evening she went on by the evening train to tumsden, and arrived, .there without tho child,] and with ! the tin box, which she got a boy to carry; for . her to tho hotel.- The next mornjng. May 3rd, she took tho train across tho.Waieiea Plains to: GorO, -and on to Milton /in /Otago..; There; she took}.‘a,.return;ticket to Milburn,;a small station further on, and there met a Mrs Hornsby; This 'wasanother grandmother whoso "'daughter' had got into trouble.: She was waiting for Mrs Dean at Milburn, and there the two women met on the platform. It was also another case of an advertisement of Mrs Dean's 'in' a Dunedin paper, followed by an arrangement for the adoption of the baby and the payment of/810. Tho only difference was that .the; arrangement in this case was for cash, whereas ,-in! ;tho; case i; of the poor little waif Dorothy Gaiter the payment "of' the'- A!IO was' to -be made in '" June. Tho meeting of the two wpraeh bn the platform was observed by the guard of the . train, Thera being no time to, complete the necessary arrangements, (the-,, train, only stopping if or, two minutes,' the women got into the train again ahd went'on ‘to the next~station, Clarendon, a flag station...On the f road, one woman handed over the' bady, Eva Hornsby, tho stipulated sum, less 10s for expenses, and sundry clothes, and the ether; handed over a receipt duly stamped. At Clarendon Mrs Dean left the train cn the side opposite to the platform and was left’ in tho t darkness to wait for < the’even-' ing.express from Dunedin to Invercargill, duo in about half ah hour or an hour at the ' flag , station., , When she got in she had no child, only'a bundle of "some' kind.. She stopped at Clinton that night, went on next morning (May 4th) to Ma-

taura, a few miles farther on upon the Invercargill line, and stayed there till tho evening train came up, bound for Invercargill. There she breakfasted, admired some flowers in the garden of the'hotel/and bogged some plants, which the gardener gave her by direction of the landlady. .In the evening she went on to Invercargill, caught the Winton train, and arrived at Thu Larches with her luggage, including the tin box -before rnentioned. One of her women servants met her at the Winton station, and carried the box : found it very heavy. The two carried it by turns, and found it irksome. The maid, by direction of the mistress, deposited it among some reeds out of sight from the track, and so they got home. The explanation given to the maid, who was surprised a little at the increased weigiit of tho box, was that the landlady of the hotel at Mataura had given her some bulbs which she was bringing home to plant. The mistress explained at the same time, in answer to a question of the maid’s about little Dorothy Edith Carter, who had started, on the 2nd with the mistress for Lumsden, that she had given her to a lady, Tho mdid recognised in tho luggage the clothing ■worn by the ; child Dorothy Edith when she had been taken away on the 2nd towards Lumsden. She also noticed other clothing in i some quantity, which she had never seen before, evidently belonging to a smaller child. The box was brought in on Sunday, and tho next tho maid saw of it was. on Wednesday,- when it was lying open near the door with a little earth -in it. She saw it on her .return from a neighbour’s. It was getting dark at the, time, and Mrs 'Dean was putting earth round the flowers from Mataura. . which she had planted all together in the front garden. On the next day. May 9th, the detectives arrived with Mrs Hornsby, the grandmother of Eva Hornsby, handed over in the train on the 3rd between Milburn and Clarendon, Confronted with MrsHornsby, Mrs Dean denied all knowledge of that person, and insisted that she had received na child from her. Subsequently she - admitted the fact, and declared that she had passed the child on to another woman at Milton, for whom she was acting as agent. She was there and then arrested for the murder of tho child Eva Hornsby, and taken away. On the following Saturday (the 11th) the police found the bodies of the children Edith Dorothy Carter and Eva Hornsby in the front garden under the flowers planted by Mrs Dean. The first was recognised by tho maid who had seen the child on its arrival from tho Bluff ou Apr!) 30th, and attended to it- on May 2nd and on May 3rd before its departure for Lumsden. The second was recognised by its grandmother Mrs Hornsby and by a Mrs Bennett in whose care it had been at Port Chalmers for the week previous to its transfer to Mrs Dean. There was an autopsy of the bodies; and a chemical analysis of the intestines by Professor Black of Dunedin. The analysis revealed the presence in the body of the Carter child of sufficient, opium to pause death ; the medical testimony in the other case was that all the appearances wore consonant with death by asphyxia, and there were- marks on the head such as might he caused by some one holding the back of the skull with one hand, while placing a handkerchief over fhe "little face with the other.

E very point in the above story stands proved by witnesses speaking of their owri observation and thoir own experience, and absolutely - uushaken in the smallest degree by crossexamination. There :is L another; story which the evidence discloses. This was the evidence objected., to by the defence ; the evidence the admission of which was made ; the ground for an application for leave to appeal. It is this. On the Monday after the two bodies were found in the front garden, the skeleton ! of a; child; three feet long, was found by tho constables, buried some twenty inches beneath the surface, in tho same garden, about 40 feet away from the place where the others were: discovered. It was not identified. Tho rest of the evidence objected to was the story :of the disappearance of four children received •at various times. That they had all come there was testified by two servants at “ The Larches ”; how they came there was deposed, in two, cases by : their mothers who gave them to Mrs Dean, and in one by , a letterj found ■ in, the woman’s room. In each case the circumstances surrounding their, disappearance were similar. In two cases the two servants 'and the husband,were: sent out of the house by its mistress, one servant and the husband going to a neighbour’s to help —a different one each time and the. other servant sentinto the.bush'to give'the other children an airing. In another case, one servant was away pn leave for three weeks, the husband was away at a neighbour’s, and the other servant was sent font, with the children. In the fourth it was the same, except that one servant had taken to learn dressmaking, and was away about that. In each of the four the same story was told by the mistress when the people returned, viz., that a lady had taken away the child. In only one case was a name mentioned, and the story was amply disproved at the 1 trial by the person named. It was also proved that for eight years Mrs Dean was in the habit of taking in children, and that at one time the, number amounted to eleven. At the time Mrs ) Dean started on that terrible railway journey five children were left in, the establishment, two of five years, two of six, and one of two weeks. It was proved also that the place was not registered under the Infant Life Protection Act of 1893, that the police wore always trying to get information from lier, that after giving, some .about, the adoption of her charges by other people, she refused to answer all questions, and that once she was finedja penny, soon after the passing of the Act of 1893, for being unregistered. Tho! evidence establishes a systematic scheme of baby-farming, with murder for one of fits leading features. A more awful revelation has uot been’ made in "our time". "Whatever may have boon the fate of tho other hapless waifs who got into the clutches of this dreadful woman, there is no doubt tjiat three of them fell victims to her murdprous instincts. Never was the death iperialty more fully deserved. And never, J wo' fear, was its infliction more necessary,* > f