FULL TEXT: Tallahassee, Fla. August 16 – A most shocking case of childish depravity and cruelty was brought to light here today, by the arrest and confession of Carrie Sampson a negro girl thirteen years of are whose home is in Moccasin Gap, a couple of miles south of the line bounding this (Leon) county from Thomas county, Georgia. Carrie is charged with the murder of a negro infant, Tom Bently, whose mother, an aunt of the girl, had employed Carrie to nurse it while she and other members of the family were at work in the field. During this time there was no one at the house except the girl and the baby.
It seems that several weeks ago the mother returned from
work to find her child mutilated as it cut by some blunt instrument such as a
dull blade. One of its ears was hacked off, the hands were lacerated and an
attempt had been roads to cut off another member. The girl Carrie was accused
of these enormities but seems to have satisfied the latter, her own aunt, of
her innocence by the explanation that while the baby was sleeping she had gone
into the yard to chop some wood as was her custom and during her absence two
puppies had bitten the child inflicting the injuries mentioned. The puppies
were at once killed and the girl continued to tend the baby.
Last Saturday however Carrie Sampson seems to have been
seized with another fit of almost incredible cruelty to wards the baby and took
its life in the following manner. She built a fire in the open fireplace and
allowed it to burn until only the coals and hot ashes remained. Into these she
threw the baby and heaped the hot ashes and coals over it, almost completely
covering it. Carrie then walked to the door and turned to watch the baby roast
to death laughing as it screamed and writhed in pain. When the infant ceased to
move, Carrie ran to where its mother was at work and told her that a big boy
was at the house burning up the baby. The mother rushed to save her child but
found it burned into a crisp utterly unrecognizable mass and, of course, dead.
The neighborhood in which this horrible affair occurred is
very secluded, being miles away from any settlement. The negroes at the Gap are
extremely ignorant and live in almost a primitive state and for these reasons
more than any other it was only yesterday that the infanticide was reported to
Sheriff Pearce in Tallahassee. He has arrested the fiendish girl murderess,
Carrie Sampson, and although she at first stuck to the story of the boy burning
the baby, the suspicious circumstances of the recent acts of mayhem furnished
too close a corroboration of her
guilt of the murder and when the seriousness of her position began to dawn upon
her, she broke down and confessed telling the story recited above. She will of
course be prosecuted for murder.
[“Horrible Case of Cruelty To Child – Nurse of Thirteen
Kills an Infant She Had the Care Of. - First Cut Off Its Ear - Denied the Deed,
Saying Dog Chewed the Member Off. Mother
Of Child Believed The Story - Few Days Afterwards Nurse Heaped Hot Ashes Over
Child and Roasted It.” Atlanta Constitution (Ga.), Aug. 17, 1899, p. 2]
More cases: Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Commit Murder
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[1019-1/23/21]
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