FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): On
Monday, at the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, the Lord Justice Clerk
presiding, a woman named Jessie King, residing at Stockbridge, Edinburgh, was
charged with having murdered three children by strangulation and suffocation,
the first child being twelve months old, the second six weeks, and the third
five month’s. The children were illegitimate and had been adopted by the
prisoner, who received sums varying from £2 to £5 in each case. In a
declaration made by the prisoner in November last she confessed that she
strangled one of the children; and that after getting the second child she
brought it home and gave it some whisky to keep it quiet. The whisky took away
its breath, and while it lay gasping she put her hand upon its mouth and choked
it. At the High Court yesterday the prisoner pleaded “ Not guilty.” Evidence
was led at great length for the prosecution, but there was no evidence for the
defence. The Solicitor-General withdrew the charge in the third case. The Lord
Justice Clerk, in summing up, said it appeared to be quite a common thing for
guilty parents to hand over their offspring to the care of others. When they
heard that advertisements for the adoption of such children wore answered by
twenty-five such persons they could not but have the most grave suspicion that,
under- lying the system of supposed adoption, there lay a state of things which
was dangerous to the moral’ welfare of the State. The jury, after an absence of
six minutes, unanimously found the prisoner guilty of murder on both charges.
Sentence of death was then pronounced. The prisoner was greatly affected, and,
upon being removed, said, “ Oh ! to be hanged ! What a death !”
[“Child Murders In Scotland.” The
Maitland Mercury (NSW, Australia), Apr. 4, 1889, p. 6]
***
FULL
TEXT: Jessie King, the woman whom the secretary for Scotland declined to
reprieve, and who was executed this morning, was baby-farmer who had insured
children’s lives and then poisoned them with whiskey. since her condemnation
she had been heard to declare that she preferred death to penal servitude for
life, and she had also shown homicidal tendencies.
[Untitled,
The Echo (London, England), Mar. 11, 1889, p. 2]
***
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