"LIVING DEATH" FEARED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19127, 23 September 1936, Page 9

"LIVING DEATH" FEARED

MOTHER KILLS CHILD

GUILTY BUT INSANE

LONDON", Julv 20.

A mother who had tho haunting fear that she and her child might become victims of creeping paralysis, from which her own mother died, was found guilty but insane at the Old Bailey yesterday on a charge of the murder of her Si-years-old daughter.

She was Gwenyfh Enid Dryland, 36, wife of an engineer, of Sugden road. Long Ditfon, Surrey. There was a further Charge of attempted suicide. She was ordered to be detained during the King's pleasure. It- was stated that when her husband returned home from work on the night, of June. 24 the door was locked. Entering through a window, lie found the gas in the oven turned on, his wife lying on the kitchen floor unconscious, and the child dead in the perambulator.

Extracts from a letter left by .Mrs. Dryland to her husband were read by the clerk of the court. They stated :

"Little Love—l cannot go on. . . . 1 I cannot leave Molly behind, for how am II to know .'lie won't, go through tho 'same. Your splendid life shall not be ! ruined by an always invalided wife and the haunting fear that—if 1 left her—- | Molly might be the same. | "Yon have been the most wonderful I sweetheart and husband this life could '. have. I thank you for every minute of it. ... I leave everything to yon."

i Another note read: "Gas on at 2.30. j Don't go in until you have outside help, 1 1 implore you. 'Phone for the police." Alan George Dryland, the husband, ■ said no man could have a liner wife, and she was the finest mother possible.

) His wife had been excessively careful I about the child, asking him to change ; his clothes before touching the little girl, in case he should have picked up a I germ.

Her father, now about 80, was a. distinguished authority on agricultural matters. He was compelled to give up his vocation to attend to his wife who had creeping paralysis. Mr. Norman Birkett, K.C., addressing the jury, said : "From whatever angle you may view the poignant facts of this ease, I think we shall agree that this is one of life's tragedies." The defence was simply that at the time Mrs. Dryland killed her child, she was insane within the strictest, definition that the law could give. It would not be abusing language to describe creeping paralysis as a living death.

Dr. Percy Vernon Davies stated that Mrs. Dry/land's fear of creeping paralysis was a delusion.

Mr. Justice Humphreys, before delivering sentence, said he thought the phrase "Guilty but insane" unfortunate. It suggested that a person was guilty of murder, but it did not mean that. It was an acquittal.