Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1888 — CRIME’S STRANGE DISCOVERY. [ARTICLE]

CRIME’S STRANGE DISCOVERY.

Rescue of a Child Coder Remarkable Circumstances—An Inhuman Mother. Many cases are known in which a third party has been mysteriously influenced to do something—often against both reason and interest—which has resulted in the detection of crime. A young woman, living in a good situation with an Oxfordshire farmer, had with her a child, a boy, of 2 4 years old, says the Manchester Times. This incumbrance standing in the way of her being married, she made up her mind to rid herself of it Obtaining a holiday, she left the farm with her boy, giving out that she was about to visit a relative some miles off. Next day she returned and stated that she had left the child to be brought up by her cousin. The statement was naturally believed. On the following afternoon two men were at work harvesting in a field on the next farm to where the mother was employed. One of them was a laborer or tramp, and inquired of his companion the best way to get to the place where he had taken lodgings. The best way was told him, and he was further instructed that when he reached a small coppice he was not to go through but round it; otherwise he might fall down an unprotected old dry well. All the remainder of that day the thought of this well worried the tramp; he felt an intense and unaccountable desire to see it, and so earnestly solicited the man working with him to accompany him to see it that the other agreed to do so. "When they arrived at the coppice and found the well both were afraid to stand on the edge and look down, and lay down to do so. Presently one threw down a stone, when, instead of hearing the sound of its fall, they heard a cry. Another stone was dropped with the same result. Certain that something alive was at the bottom they promptly went to the nearest farmhouse and returned with more men, a lantern, and ropes.

A plucky lad volunteered to go down, and was lowered, the rope round his waist, the lantern tied to his wrist. He found at the bottom, 120 feet from the surface, lying between four perpendicular stakes—on either of which a man might have been impaled—a living, bleeding, and sobbing baby boy, which, when brought to the surface, was at once recognized as the child of the girl at the adjacent farm. The mother, after conviction, when asked how she got the child down the well without killing it instantly, replied that she had not the heart to throw the poor boy down, so procured a long cord, doubled it under the child’s body, and when it reached the bottom let go of one end and drew the cord up by the other. The amount of heart possessed by a mother who could leave her offspring to slowly perish of starvation in preference to slaying it outright must be very small both in quantity and quality. The poor innocent was thirtysix hours without food and in pitchy darkness, and was so cruelly cut, scratched and bruised, that he still bdre the marks weeks afterward, when at trial he was stripped and placed on the table to show them. And had his inhuman mother any heart in her composition she must have felt cut to the very core then, when the poor little fellow put out his arms and cried to go to her. The death sentence was recorded against her, but commuted to penal servitude for life.