FULL TEXT: A crime has been brought
to light in New Caledonia which furnishes a ghastly illustration of the class
of malefactors sent out to that island by the French Government. The
perpetrator of it, we learn from the Neo-Caledonien of the 23rd of January, was what we should call a
ticket-of-leave-holder a woman named Roger. She and her husband had received a
grant of land on the banks of the Foa, and one day in August last, while the
head of the household was out at work, she took her little daughter, who was
only two years old, into a neighbouring wood, and, as it is believed, seized
the child by one of her legs, and shattered her skull by dashing it either
against a stone or the trunk of a tree. Some months elapsed the corpse was
discovered; and the skull, from which the flesh had disappeared, was found to
be fractured in front and still to exhibit a red stain on the spot where the
poor little creature’s life-blood had oozed out. It was ascertained at the
trial that this was the third crime of the kind the murderess had committed; the
first having been perpetrated in 1869, and the second in 1878. For the latter
she was sentenced to imprisonment for life with hard labour, but obtained her
liberation on being sent out to New Caledonia. No other motive was assigned for
her unnatural atrocities than that she disliked the expense and trouble
entailed upon her by having a child to look after.
[“A French Murderess in New Caledonia,”
The Singleton Argus (NSW, Australia), Feb. 9, 1884, p. 4]
[894-1/1//21]
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