Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1913 — MOTHER KILLS SICK CHILD [ARTICLE]

MOTHER KILLS SICK CHILD

After Tending Invalid Daughter for Thirteen Years London Woman Strangles Offspring.

London.—A mother’s agonizing ordeal in tending an invalid daughter for 'thirteen years was revealed at the Clerk jnwell police court Looking pale and weak, the mother, Mrs. Edith Wood, aged forty-five, wife of an electroplater, appeared In the dock on the charge of murdering her daughter, Ethel Harriet aged thirteen. Evidence was given that Mrs. Wood, when told that she would be charged with murder, said: “Yes, I know. I don’t know what made me do it She had a fit and was so bad I took a cord and tied H around her peck-to put her out of h® r misery I have been much worried about her lately." When asked In court If she had anything to say, the woman shook her head.

At about noon the distraught mother had rushed into the Caledonian road police station imploring the inspector on duty to hurry to her house to attend to her daughter, whom, she said, she had strangled. Her daughter, she said, suffered from fits and the continued illness preyed so much upon her mind and caused her so many sleppless nights that she bad not known lately what she had been doing Neighbors who know Mrs. Wood described her as an “ideal mother." "She

very seldom went out and devoted nearly all her time to nursing her daughter,” said one friend. "For some time the strain of looking after her daughter had been telling on her health.