Aged ..., Gloucestershire. This is a miserable looking, diminutive,
hump-backed creature, about four feet in stature. She was a pauper in
the parish-workhouse, and, while there, she frequently had the care of
an infant belonging to the mistress of the poor-house. One day, while
nursing the child, and when it was naked, she very deliberately threw
it from a two pair of stairs window to the ground, where it was killed
by the fall; with equal deliberation she threw its clothes after it.
Report says, that she had given notice of her intention to do the child
a mischief the day preceding.
She now behaves herself extremely well, and attends divine service,
at which she conducts herself with great propriety. She perfectly
well remembers the horrible act of destroying the child, but says she
was deranged at the time; for if she had not been so, she would have
shuddered at an act so dreadful in itself, and for the crime at all
times she expresses the greatest sorrow and contrition.