FULL TEXT: Mrs. Annie Margaret Montagu, of County Londonderry, Ireland, seems to be as perfect a lady and she is a tender and devoted mother. According to the evidence brought out at trial, she is in the habit of half killing her children whenever they are troublesome and disobedient. Her favorite discipline is tying up the little tots in painful and torturing positions and then rounding off their sufferings with a night in a dark and empty room.
A former governess, Miss Wallace, testified that Walter Montagu, a son, four years old, had upon one occasion been tied to a tree in the park and left there from early morning until sundown. At another time Miss Wallace missed the child for a period of eight days. When he finally reappeared the backs of his hands were puffed up as though the blood were stagnated. There were bruised on his neck and arms, and a general suggestion of his having passed through some terrible suffering. A Mrs. James, who had once been a nurse in the family, deposed that she had once seen Mrs. Montagu dragging another son, Austin, along a corridor by the heels, his head trailing and bumping on the floor. And nearly inmate of the house in a position to have heard such things testified to awful sounds of beating and the moaning of little children at night. A housemaid had seen Gilbert stripped naked and scourged until he was covered with blood. He was then thrown into a dark closet, where he lay wailing in agony all night long.
It appears that Mrs. Montagu is a person of severe and Spartan virtue. She announces, with something like honest pride, that these are the methods of punishment she has adopted, and that they give her satisfaction. She is trying, she says, to save her children’s souls, and she adds the totally unnecessary declaration that she does not care what becomes of their bodies. It no doubt consoles her to reflect that the soul of the little girl whom she killed in pursuit of her theory of reformation is now quite safe, and that thought perhaps sustains her under the persecution to which she is at present subjected by a cold and callous law. We are not at all surprised, however that Coleraine is wrought up to a perilous condition of excitement, and that the judge before whom Mrs. Montagu is being tried for manslaughter has found it necessary to exclude the public from the courtroom. Mrs. Montagu’s ideas are, to say the least, conspicuously advanced, and it may be that narrow-minded masses of that part of Ireland are not yet ready to accept the mangling and killing of babies as a praiseworthy feature of parental discipline.
[“Mrs. Montagu’s Philosophy.” The Washington Post (D. C.), Feb. 27, 1892, p. 4]
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FULL TEXT: It is difficult to consider women as criminals, and the average man shrinks from the contemplation of a condition which would rob life of nearly all its tenderness and romance. It is therefore more suitable to regard the women whose unnatural deeds occasionally cause nations to shudder in the light of monstrosities. Indeed, when a woman tortures her own children she is apt to be branded by the world at large as little less than a fiend. All newspaper readers are familiar with the circumstances surrounding the horrible death of the three-year-old daughter of Mrs. Montagu, of Cromore House, Portstewart, Londonderry, Ireland.
Her wealth, rearing and surroundings should have inspired her with a superabundance or tenderness, but, instead, she seems even to have been deficient in the maternal instinct usually accredited to dumb beasts. Many a mother has wept as with her own offspring in her arms she has read how Mrs. Montagu after scolding her child for her tardiness in dressing, tied its arms with a stocking. Attached to the stocking was a string, and the string was tied to a ring in the wall. For hours the culprit was left bound, and at 5 the mother, who had a time for everything, went to visit the cell on her domestic round. The child was strangled. The stocking was around her throat instead of around her arms, and the body was bent forward and actually hanging from the ring in the wall.
The mother could only suppose that the stocking had slipped, and that the child, being in a helpless condition, was unable to release herself.
Were this Mrs. Montagu's only offense, the occurrence might be passed by as an accident arising from a mistaken idea of the severity of the punishment which ought to be meted out to a child three years of age. There are, however, three other children, boys, and in addition to the charge of causing the death of the little girl, for which she was sentenced to one year's imprisonment at hard labor, she was also accused of habitual cruelty to her sons. Some of Mrs. Montagu's acts would seem to indicate a mind, which, if not entirely unbalanced, is'nt least seriously affected. For instance, Walter had once been tied for hours to a tree in the garden, and on another occasion he was locked up for days in the black hole and his hands were swollen as if they had been tightly bound; Gilbert, five years old, had been locked up in the black hole all night and the servants could not sleep because of his moaning. His hands too, were swollen and his fingers and toes were cut.
When the servant who saw all this remonstrated, Mrs. Montagu said it was done to save the children's souls; about their bodies she did not mind. For that reason, perhaps, she had not scrupled, as one servant alleged, to drag the infant Austin, by the heels along a corridor with his head on the ground Mrs. Montagu was not prosecuted on these charges, but it is possible that the knowledge that she can be rearrested and punished at any time may have the effect of preventing any further cruelty on her part after she has finished her term of imprisonment.
[“An Unnatural Mother. - Mrs. Montagu, the Woman Who Caused the Death of Her Child.” The Waterloo Courier (Io.), May 18, 1892, p. 9]
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