The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 1895. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8619, 9 August 1895, Page 2

The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 1895. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS.

Tub caae of the woman Minnie Dean, now lying under sentence of death at Invercargili, throws a lurid and baleful light upon the wholesale system of child-murder that ia going on in the colony and elsewhere. It is generally the practice of aavage nations to destroy any malformed or weakly children, but infanticide amongst civilised races is supposed to be held in proper abhorence ; but if we are to believe the revelations of the criminal courts and the public press, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion but that there is more child-murder going on at present among the civilised European population of Australasia than there erer was among the aboriginal inhabitants. The case of the woman Dean who is to pay the penalty of her crime by the forfeiture of her life on Monday morning, is one of the worst that has been before the Supreme Court of this colony, and shows that she was engaged in a wholesale system of child murder. She had carried the business on so long that she thought the law was not likely to reach her, if she carefully covered up her tracks as cunningly as Bhe had hitherto done ; but though Justice is blind, murder wlii out, and the woman Dean at last Ml into the iands of the police, who had suspected her for some time of something o£ the kind, and were keeping

an eye upon her residence, which was nothing else than a baby farming establishment where the illegitimate offnpring of unfortunate parents were taken in and done for. The rapidity with which the victims of other people's sins came and disappeared at the Dean baby farm I could not; but excite suspicion, and the result was that Mrs Dean was arrested on a charge of murdering a child named Dorothy Edith Carter, aged one year. The evidence proved that Mrs Dean brought the child to her place, "The Larches," near Winton, on April 30th last, having taken delivery of it at the Bluff from its grandmother who brought it there. Mrs Dean bought some laudanum from a chemist at the Bluff, before starting with the child by train for "Wintou She broke her journey at Dipton, saying that the child was in need of a rest after travelling by steamer and train, and went on in the evening to Lumsden, where Bhe arrived without the child, having with her a til box, which she employed a boy to carry to the hotel for her. She left Lumsden next morning, and went by train to Milton, from where she doubled back to Milburn, where she met another • grandmother who was anxious to hide the shame of her grand-daughter. Mrs Dean adopted the child for the consideration of a £10 note. Mrs Dean left the train at Clarendon on the off-side, and was left there in the dark to await the arrival of the express to Invercargill. When she boarded it Bhe had no child in her arms, but a bundle of unknown contents. She got off the train at Clinton, where she remained for the night, and next morning went on to Mataura, where she breakfasted and admired the flower 3in the garden so much that she induced the landlady of the hotel to give her some roots and cuttings to take home, as she was very fond of gardening. When she got off the train that night at Winton she was met by a servant girl in her employ, to whom she entrusted the before-mentioned tin box, which the girl said was very heavy, so heavy that Mrs Dean had to take it in turns with her to carry it to " The Larches." Her mistress explained to her that the weight was owing to the box containing a lot of roots she had got from the landlady of the hotel at Mataura, and which she (Mrs Dean) was going to plant next day. It was, therefore, l6f t in aome rushes near the house for the night, Mrs Dean telling the girl that she had left the child Carter with a kind lady who had adopted it. When the girl saw the box again it was lying open near the house with a little earth in it, Mrs Dean being close by putting earth round the plants she had brought from Mataura, which she had put in her own garden. The police visited " The Larches " a few days after, bringing the grandmother of the child received by Mrs Dean at Milburn. The latter Btoutly denied ever having seen Mrs Hornsby before, or ever having taken charge of the infant Eva Hornaby. Later on she owned up to the receipt of the child at Milburn, and said she had given it to a woman at Milton for whom she was acting as agent. The police, however, did not place any reliance in this statement, and placed her under arrest on a charge of child murder. In their search for the bodies of her victims they were so Buccessful that they unearthed those of the infants Carter and Hornsby from under the flowers which Mrs Dean had procured at Mataura for her garden, and subsequent analysis proved that Edith Carter had been poisoned by opium. The body of Eva Hornsby bore marks which pointed to asphyxia as the cause of death, the child having in fact been smothered by having its nose and mouth tightly comprensed. All this waa proved to the hilt by the Crown Prosecutor,and the jury had no difficulty in arriving at a verdict that Minnie Dean was guilty of wilful murder. A law point cropped up owing to the Judge admitting eviden** offche finding of the skeleton of a third cnl^ >B Mrs Dean's garden, but the Supreme C^t Judges held that there were no grounu" £or »o appeal and dismissed the application. Although the woman was convicted of having murdered the infants Carter and Hornsby, there was proof enough to have shown that during the eight or nine years she ran her baby farm that a considerable number of " little innocents " which were entrusted to her charge mysteriously disappeared and were no more seen. That the woman was a cold blooded murderess of the worst type there cannot be a doubt, as it was proved that for a few pounds she was ready to accept the charge of a helpless, innoceut child, and to get rid of its care by foul means as soon as she could get the required privacy to commit murder. The Executive has decided that the law Bhall be carried out and that the ogress Bhall pay the penalty of her crime with her life, and none will plead for a mitigation of the sentence, as there was not a single redeeming incident in the whole of the evidence, or tho slightest reason why the clemency of the Crown should be invoked on her behalf. We do not approve o£ the death penalty, and would like to see it abolished in civilised countries j but so long as it remains in the Statute Book we do not expect to see it enforced against a more cold-blooded murderer than the unhappy woman Minnie Dean, who is to die a. shameful death at Invercargill on Monday morning in expiation of her many dio^dt'ul crimes. It is to be hoped that her execution will have its proper effect upon others of her class who are still at large in the colony, for it is certain the crimes of child murder and procuring abortion are increasingly prevalent, and waqifc stamping out speedily.