FULL TEXT:
Raffamannock, Va., May 24. – Mrs. Maria Bruce, of this place, committed one of
the most diabolical and premeditated crimes ever read of the criminal calendar.
The woman had a very bright and interesting stepdaughter ten years of age, and
her husband is a paralytic, who has himself often been made feel the weight of
her displeasure. Little Maria Bruce, who was popular with everybody else, was
hated by her stepmother, who, from the time she married the child’s father,
conceived an unnatural hatred of the little girl, became of her innocent and
childish expressions of disapproval at the thought of her father’s second
marriage. Mrs. Bruce cam in the house a bad humor and found the little girl
lying upon the ground. After slapping the girl, this act seemed to work up her
fury to a still greater heat, and, selling the iron poker from the fire place,
she beat the skull of the little girl to a jelly. After committing this deed
the wretched woman was at a loss to know how to conceal her crime. Finally she
bore the body into a cabin out in the field, and, saturating the clothing with
kerosene oil, set it on fire. The fire caught the cabin, and some of the
neighbors rushed in and saw the horrible right. The half-roasted body of the
girl in a semi nude condition was lying on the floor and the step mother was
faced as she was in the act of fleeing from the cabin, her face covered with
the smoke and dirt caught n her efforts to keep the flames from spreading. She
was soon after arrested and is now in jail.
[“A Little Ten-Year-Old Girl Cruelly Murdered
by Her Stepmother.” Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel (In.), May 24, 1882, p. 1]
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For more examples, see Step-Mothers from Hell.
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