FIEND IN PETTICOATS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2354, 21 November 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

FIEND IN PETTICOATS.

PARADES CORPSE OF CHILD FOR BEGGING PURPOSES.

There arc few tricks to which dishonest beggars have not resorted, but that employed by a woman who carried a corpse in her arms while begging alms at Crenelle (a suburb of Paris), one day last month, beats anything yet known- in tlie line of horrors. *Slie was standing at a street corner dressed in rags, and held up a little girl with a ghastly pale face to excite the pity of passers-by. It is no unusual thing to see women, even in the boulevards, carrying children about in this way, but what •attracted attention particularly in this case was the deathlike pallor of tlie child, which had its eyes closed ■and seemed asleep. First a few persons stopped to look at it more closely, and soon a crowd gathered. The mother continued her appeal, “Have pitv on my child, have pity on a poor mother,” with the usual accent of artificial tenderness. A policeman approached her, looked at the child, and invited her to step into a chemist s shop. The appearance of a policeman frightened her, and she tried to got away, but he held her and brought her to a pharmacy. The rags in which the child was wrapped were removed, and the poor creature was found stiff and cold, “Your child lias been dead already several hours,” exclaimed tlie chemist indignantly. “You must have known that the child was dead, and yet you continued to carry it about like that; you were begging with a corpse in your arms.” The woman did not answer. She was taken t-o the police station, -where slie stated that she had left her husband four years ago and took with her a sum of £BO, on which she lived for some time. When this was spent she took to begging, and used to sleep- with tlie child under the bridges ever tlie Seine at night. Her child had fallen ill a year ago, and, instead of milk, she used to give it water from the Seine to drink. -She said that a relative had offered to take care of the child, but would not let her see it. as often as she wanted, so that she refused. The police, however, learned that she refused to give up the child because she depended on it as her chief resource in begging. She lias -been kept in custody, and the little corpse was sent to the Morgue.