Quantcast
Channel: Unknown Gender History
Viewing all 1778 articles
Browse latest View live

The Shanghai “Female Jack the Ripper” - 1930

$
0
0

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): Shanghai, Feb. 10. – The activities of a female "Jack the Ripper" are baffling the police in the foreign settlement at Shanghai. Two child murders have been reported in the past two days. On Saturday afternoon a Japanese girl seven months old was stabbed an the neck and strangled, and last night the water police picked up a Chinese girl in the harbour, who had been strangled in similar manner.

The murder of the Japanese baby occurred in an upstairs room at its home, and the police are searching for a pretty Chinese girl with bobbed-hair, believed to be a cabaret dancer, who was seen by the mother of the murdered child to leave the premises shortly after the tragedy. The absence of any apparent motive for the crimes intensifies the mystery surrounding them. The entire staff of the Japanese Consulates is assisting the, municipal police in their endeavour to trace the murderess.

The father of the first victim is a cashier at the Yokohama Specie Bank at Kajiwara.

[“Children Murdered - Mysterious Crimes At Shanghai.” Western Argus (Kalgoorlie, W.A., Australia), Feb. 18, 1930, p. 25]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 3): Shanghai, Tuesday. – TheJapanese, consular police, in conjunction with the International settlement police, have arrested the supposedly femaleJack the Ripper,” in connection with two child murders, which have been committed within two days.

She is a Japanese dancing girl, employed at a local cabaret. It is believed that she is insane.

On Saturday, afternoon a Japanese girl, seven months old was stabbed in the neck and strangled.

On Sunday night, the water police picked up a Chinese girl in the harbour strangled in a similar manner.

The Japanese crime occurred in the child's home upstairs. The police began the search for a pretty, bobbed-haired Japanese girl, believed to be a cabaret dancer. She was seen by the mother of the murdered child when leaving the premises.

The absence of an apparent motive intensified the mystery. The entire force of the Japanese consular police assisted themunicipal police intracking the murderer.

[“Brutal Murders - Two Children inShanghai- Japanese GirlArrested,” The Canberra Times (Australia), Feb. 12, 1930, p. 1]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): Shanghai, February 11. – The Japanese consular police, in conjunction with the international settlement detectives, have arrested the supposed female “Jack the Ripper.”

A Japanese dancing girl, employed in a local cabaret, confessed to the murders. She is believed to be insane. Two young children were murdered in two days.

[“Child Murders - Cabaret Dancer Confesses,” The Advertiser (Adelaide, S.A., Australia), Feb. 12, 1930, p. 17]

***

Predatory Women & the 20th Century Extortion Scam Called the “Heart Balm Racket”: Quotes

$
0
0

The “Heart Balm Racket” is what the wide-spread and highly remunerative misandric practice came to be called. It is was the extortion scam practiced by predatory women who would, under false pretenses charm a well-heeled man and coax a man to give her written marriage proposals – written, so they could be used later in court, and in a minimum quantity of three, to satisfy evidentiary requirements – and then, after she had gotten her valuable court-ready documentation would then use all her art to make herself so unattractive a prospective wife that her suitor would retract the offer. They called these women “gold diggers”; the grounds of their law suits was termed “Breach of Promise.” These women were, in essence, highly sophisticated and dishonest-to-the-bone, blackmailers.

Nowadays, the practice of allowing predatory women to be remunerated – or given other advantages, such as lighter prison sentences – for falsely representing themselves as victims when in fact such women are cunning sociopathic con artists, is again institutionalized and legalized under the guise of feminism (cultural Marxism). It is instructive for us to look at, and learn from, past examples of scams run by predators of the “victimized sex” such as the Heart Balm Racket, the Badger Game, the Alimony Racket, the military Allotment Racket, and, finally, the worst of the worst, the “Black Widow” serial killing, women who married men and then murdered them, frequently for insurance pay-offs.

**
QUOTES – from historical articles included in The Unknown History of MISANDRY:

JUDGING by the falling marriage rate in the United States, American women seem less interested in wedlock than the women of European countries; yet no others complain so loudly nor so publicly when their hopes of wedded happiness are thwarted, and no others demand – nor receive – such expensive poultices for injuries to their pride, affections and expectations of comfortable support. …
The judgments rendered and the amounts awarded in this Land of the Free for breach of promise, alimony and alienation of affections are the wonder and amusement of Europeans, and are not equaled in any other country. When a woman is bereft of the love of an American man, she has, in the opinion of his peers, lost something of almost incalculable value, and great should be her compensation. – Mary Day Winn 1930 (source)

***
Breach of promise suits largely degenerate into extortion suits against unwitting, unsuspecting and wealthy males.
Many students of social welfare and relations believe present laws are archaic and nothing more than weapons to enforce revenge, retaliation or collect a nice stipend for the enjoyment of life. That the racketeering should be stopped is the belief of many lawmakers and, with Indiana leading the way, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania Legislatures may soon be considering revisions of their statutes that will take heart balm off the gold basis. – John L. Coontz – 1935 (source)

***
Wretches who moan that love is fickle
-- Here is the point about these squaws –
None of them ought to get a nickel!
Curb this Cupid-ity! pass some laws!

-- To A Legislator.” 1935 (source)

***
Thousands and thousands of dollars are being taken by unscrupulous packleg lawyers in such cases and it’s up to us to give a woman a chance to see how it will work. It is a start in the right direction and it will overcome the filchers.”
Senator Leo N. Smith of Indianapolis asserted that 999 out of 1,000 breach of promise and alienation of affection suits were nothing but “shakedowns.”
Let’s eliminate this evil from the good old state of Indiana,” he thundered.”-- 1935 (source)

***
In that period from the “Gay Nineties” until the beginning of the depression in 1929, the United Slates courts witnessed a miniature “Thirty Years War” of their own. It was no bloody strife over religious or economic issues, but the prolonged battle of the breach of promise suit. – Theodor Apstein 1935 (source)

***


CHECKLIST


















***

Baroness von Kalinowski Wanted Big Money (Heart Balm Racket) - 1913

$
0
0


By Nixola Greeley-Smith

FULL TEXT: New York, May 29. – Testimony is now being taken in New York in the suit brought by Baroness Ursula von Kalinowski against Michael J. Hurley, paint manufacturer of St. Louis, for $2,500,000 damages for blighted affections.

Affection to the value of two and a half million dollars is certainly SOME affection even when you consider that it was lavished upon the fickle and unworthy Hurley by a high-born German baroness.

In her deposition the noblewoman said that she had followed Hurley from one city to another in Europe and finally across the ocean in response to telegrams in which he promised to marry.

I think nearly all women FEEL the same way about breach-of-promise suits, to-wit, that they are sordid, disgraceful, and that no really self-respecting woman is ever involved in one.

But if we accept the logic of the present economic status of woman we simply cannot THINK as we FEEL on the subject.

A woman like the Baroness Kalinowski has NO ACTUAL VALUE.

Without either trade or professional training, her economic worth is represented by zero. She has nothing to give anyone save the problematical quantity called “affections.” Now affections when they are offered for sale are worth precisely what you can get for them.

The baroness thought she had arranged a life transfer of that exceedingly perishable commodity to a man worth millions. If the buyer backed out of his contract assuming there was one then the baroness is damaged to the full value of her blighted hopes.

Admitting that the woman who puts a commercial value upon her love sets herself before the world as livestock. she is entitled to damages nevertheless, just as any other prize animal is damaged in reputation and saleability if the man who has arranged for this purchase refuses to complete the bargain.

There is no getting away from the fact that so long, as sex is generally regarded as something which women have to sell and men to buy, we shall have breach-of-promise suits, the known as alimony and all similar social weeds which owe their noxious being to the economic dependence of women.

Until women regain the eugenic choice of which she alone among all females is deprived, she has the right to set a value in money upon her alighted affections.

Her affections are the tools of her trade, her means of livelihood. Damage to them is the most serious injury she can receive. So long as she profits by their disposal she must be damaged by their rejection.

The Baroness Kalinowski, and other women like her, are just a little more logical, a little more cold-blooded, if you like, a little more sordid than millions of their sister women, the pitiful peons of sex.

[Nixola Greeley-Smith, “Woman Asks $2,500,000 Heart Balm,” The Day Book (Chicago, Il.), Jun. 2, 1914, p. 10]

Belinda Laphame, San Francisco Midwife Accused of Murdering Babies & Storing Their Bodies in Jars - 1893

$
0
0

NOTE: Belinda Laphame (alias Mrs. Dr. Godfrey, alias Belinda Rozet, alias Dr. Goodman, alias Dr. Mary Goodwin, alias “Gypsy Queen.”), a midwife, was tried for three separate murders and acquitted each time. Two of the trials followed the deaths of abortion clients. One of them was for the murder of a two-day-old baby.

***



FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): San Francisco, May 3. – Lottie Watson, the young woman whose infant daughter Mrs. Belinda Laphame, the Geary street midwife, is accused of murdering, gave sensational evidence at the preliminary examination this afternoon. She said Mrs. Laphame kept in the house three small babies, which had been killed by her. Their little bodies were preserved in alcohol and the jars were kept in her room. When questioned by Judge Conlan she said the babies were all well developed and according to Mrs. Laphame’s remarks to witness had been born alive. They had been murdered by her because she could not get any one to adopt them.


[“Bottled Babies - Sensational Testimony at the Laphame Infanticide Examination.” The Herald (Los Angeles, Ca.), May 4, 1893, p. 4]

***

From the inquest testimony of Mrs. Watson, mother of the baby whose dead body was found to have contained opium.

EXCERPT (Article 2 of 3): “At home I have seen many new-born babies and I know that mine was weak and sick. Several weeks ago I hurt myself in stepping from a buggy, and I was afraid I should lose the baby. It didn’t cry much.”

The doctor said it was very weak. It would not nurse, so the doctor fed it from a bottle, but it only took a little.”

“I had it with me, but it got cold, and so she took it downstairs near the stove. I bad it with me some of the time— not half though. I don’t think — I liked to have it; but she said it was better downstairs. Besides I was awfully weak, and suffered pain all the time.”

“On Monday she brought me in a bottle of that stuff they say the baby died of. She said it had been bought for the other lady.

She gave me doses of it for a while. When she brought it to me it was empty from the bottom of the label up.”

“I saw my poor little baby about two hours before it died on Tuesday. After she told me it was dead I asked her to bring it up, but she said I had better not see it.”

“She cried some herself. She was always gentle and kind to it, and to me, too. I am awfully sorry for her.”

“Did you tell Dr. Laphame that you wanted the baby put in a foundling asylum?”

The girl smiled faintly. “Oh, no, I was for takin’ it away with v«. I wanted the baby. It’s my first baby.” She smiled again.

[“Infant Murder. - Dr. Laphame Arrested For Poisoning A Babe. - Opium Found In Its Body. - Suspected Foul Play Leads To A Startling Discovery. - The Inquest Held Yesterday. - A Female “Specialist” Accused of Murdering Lucy Williams’ Two-Days-Old Child.” The San Francisco Call (Ca.), Apr. 22, 1893, p. 8]

***


FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): There were some sensational developments in the Laphame murder case in Judge Conlan’s court yesterday afternoon when the preliminary examination was resumed. Attorney Ferral recalled Mrs. Mary Ann Watson, mother of Lottie Watson, who give birth to the murdered babe.

In answer to questions she said she never saw Mrs. Laphame give medicine to the child, but saw her give it to her daughter out of the bottle handed in in evidence.  The medicine was only given her daughter once while she was suffering pain and the bottle was left on a small table in the daughter’s room.

Judge Conlan, at this stage, said to Attorney Ferral: “I wish you would endeavor to control your client. Her unseemly levity will only hurt her case.” The rebuke had the desired  effect.

Mrs. Watson continued her evidence. She saw the child alive over an hour and
a half before it died in the kitchen. She was not sure if any grown-up person was there at the time. She advised her daughter to get the baby adopted, as she did not wish to take it to Brentwood.

Lottie Watson was recalled by the prosecution, and gave some startling testimony.

“When the Coroner called at the house,” she said, “Mrs. Laphame came to my room and she had three or four babies from four to five months old in her besom which were preserved in alcohol in jars, and which she said she had taken out of the jars as she was afraid the Coroner might in his search discover them. She said she wanted to shield herself for fear of the detectives.”

“Why did you not testify to this before?” asked Judge Conlan.

“I didn’t remember at the time. A young lady had a baby on the Wednesday I was there, and it was also preserved in alcohol.”

This testimony created a profound sensation in court, and the defendant glared savagely at the witness.

Attorney Ferral commenced his cross examination by asking:

“Do you think you could recollect anything else if you had more time?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you talked with any one about the case?”

“I might have spoken to my own people. I spoke with Mrs. Burmeister, my brother and mother about it.”

“Did any one speak to you about it?”

“Yea. Mrs. Maynard asked me why I had not told about the babies.”

“When did you first see the babies in the jars?”

“The first day my brother and I went to the house on April 8. We had been talking for a little, and then she showed them to me”

Attorney Ferral asked her to draw upon paper the size and shape of the babies, but as an artist Lottie was a signal failure.

“Now,” said Mr. Ferral, “why did she show you the babies in the jar.”

“She said why did I not come sooner, and she could have attended me, and she then
showed me the babies in the jars as an illustration of her process with other girls. I never asked Dr. Popper or any one else if that could be dime. The babies in the jars were in a closet in the dining-room downstairs where she kept her medicine bottles, and she told me if I had taken some of the medicine I wouldn’t have had any trouble at all. I told Detective Rogers about the babies to-day.”

Attorney Ferral pressed her hard with questions as to why she had not told the detective or others about the babies before, to all of which Lottie answered, “I didn’t like to tell.”

Continuing she said:

“I think it right to tell it now to save others from the same trouble. Mrs. Laphame
showed them to me wrapped up in a cloth the day the Coroner was at the house, and she said she was going to burn them that night. She was crying and nervous at the time and afraid of being arrested.”

“Who was the first person you spoke to about the babies in the jars?”

“Mrs. Williams, the other patient in the house, as she bad also seen them.”

“On the Wednesday before I had my baby Mrs. Laphame showed me a baby which had been prematurely born that day.”

This closed the case for the prosecution.

C. L. Barrington, chemist, who made the analysis of the babe’s stomach, was the first witness for the defense, but he simply repeated the testimony he had already given.

Mrs. Amanda M. Brunkall, a dressmaker, testified to having known the defendant for the past three months. She saw her last on April 18 at her house. Mrs. Hogan and Mrs. Watson were, there in the kitchen.

“I went there,” said the witness, “at a quarter to 1 in the afternoon, stayed till a quarter to 7, left and came buck at a quarter past 7 and stayed till 8. A few minutes after I first entered Mrs. Laphame asked me to look at the two babies and said she thought one of them was dying. I said, ‘Don’t they (meaning the mother and grandmother) feel bad about it?’ and she said, ‘No, I don’t think they care; they won’t look at it.’ The grandmother came in and I spoke to her about it dying, and she said,Well, it will be better off.’ The baby died shortly before 8 o’clock that night.”


Mrs. Annie Hogan, 131 Turk street, said she had known Mrs. Laphame several years.

“I was in her house.” she said, “on April 18. I went about 5 p. m. and remained till 6. Mrs. Laphame told me to look at the two babies. One was very sick and in spasms. I helped her to bathe the sick baby in warm water.

“Mrs. Laphame said to me, ‘What will I do if it dies?’ and I said to send to an undertaker’s and get it buried. I then left, and immediately sent my boy to the United Undertakers on Fifth street. It seemed to be a nice healthy looking baby.”

In answer to Prosecuting Attorney O’Keefe the witness said: “The baby wasn’t dead when I left and I immediately sent to the undertaker’s.”

“Do you menu to say,” said the Judge, “that you sent to the undertaker’s before the babe wan dead ?”

‘Ye?, I saw it was going to die. It was getting black and blue.”

“Is your husband Pete Hogan, who was in my court to-day on a charge of vagrancy?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the witness.

Dr. O’Brien cave some evidence as to the result of the autopsy on the child’s body. Mrs. Lacuna then took the stand and she proven a moat unsatisfactory and intractable, witness. She was cautioned again and again by her counsel to only answer the questions put to her, but she branched off always and kept ill in hot water all the lime.

She said Lottie Watson told her the rather of the child was dead, and subsequently
said she was to be married in the end of May to the son of a Baptist clergyman.

The man, who proved to be Lottie’s brother, told her to be very careful of his wife, meaning Lottie.

Defendant denied that she had ever shown Lottie any dead babies and never showed her the closet in the dining-room.

She denied giving Lottie any medicine out of the bottle produced in evidence and never made the remark, “What’s good for the mother is good for the child.” She would not give tincture of opium to any child or, in fact, anybody.

She denied taking the babies to Lottie’s room the day the Coroner was there, and never told her to say nothing about the babies or hew her own baby died. All she told Lottie was that she needn’t give her true name, as she and her mother were afraid of publicity.

At the time she told Mrs. Hogan to go to the undertaker’s she thought the baby was dead, but it did not die for ten minutes after she left. She told Mrs. Hogan to go to the city undertaker’s so that the baby could be buried at the city’s expense.

She talked about knowing an undertaker named O’Connor on Mission street who buried her own child, but was stopped by her counsel.

There was no cross-examination. Mrs. Hogan was recalled by Judge Con- lan, and said she called at 5 p.m., on April 18, and left at 6. The baby was then not dead, but had spasms.

Mr. Brunkall was also recalled and said she called at Mrs. Laphame’s house on April 18, at a quarter past 4, remained until a quarter to 7, came back at a Quarter past 7. Baby died almost exactly at 8. Mr. Hogan had just gone when witness returned at a quarter past 7.

The Judge wanted to satisfy himself as to the contradictions regarding the time the babe, was supposed to have died.

“This is not one of the usual preliminary examinations for murder,” said Judge Conlan.

I must say the conflicting testimony and the contradiction; of the witnesses are remarkable on both sides.

“Lottie Watson and her relatives are shielding each other as much as possible and it is the same with Mrs. Laphame and her friends.

“It is not worth while for me to review the testimony. The judgment before the. Superior Court on the charge of murder.”

“Will you grant bail?” asked Mr. Ferral.

“No, I will not,” said the Judge.

Mrs. Laphame became quite hysterical. She kissed Mrs. Brunkall, laid her head on her shoulder and sobbed bitterly, she also kissed Mrs. Hogan and went below sobbing and crying as if her heart would, break..

[“Held For Murder. - Startling Points Against Mrs. Laphame. - What Lottie Watson Saw. - Babies Preserved in Alcohol in Jars. Conflicting Testimony and Contradiction of Witnesses.” The San Francisco Call (Ca.), May 4, 1893, p. 7]

***
***

NOTES ON CASE:

ALIASES:

Belinda Laphame, alias Mrs. Dr. Godfrey, alias Belinda Rozet, alias Dr. Goodman, alias Dr. Mary Goodwin, alias “Gypsy Queen.”

DEATHS:
5 babies in  “bottles” or jars, reported by abortion client
Lottie Watson’s , child, 2-days-old, died May 1893 (“Mrs. Lucy Williams,” error in early reports)
Amelia Donely, died Oct. 10, 1893, abortion client; tried and acquitted (“Donelly”)
Lillie Staley, abortion client, died 1894; tried and acquitted

***

Rape Scare in Edmonton, Canada

$
0
0

A Voice for Men Radio, July 11, 2013

EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Tonight we have a very special and urgent radio show response to the events currently unfolding in Canada regarding the massive media coverage of Men’s Rights Edmonton’s “Don’t Be That Girl” campaign.  Members of the group will be joining us to discuss the deluge of attention coming from the press and angry feminists across the country.  We invite ALL interested parties especially any feminists who want to weigh in.  This is an opportunity to have an open debate with those who oppose Men’s Rights Edmonton’s  actions and we look forward to their participation.

***

Ella Holdridge, Funeral-Loving Teenage Serial Killer from Tonawanda, New York - 1892

$
0
0

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): Buffalo, N.Y., July 20 – The frightful death of Louisa Stormer, and the severe illness of five or six other children of Tonawanda, has brought to light the fact that 14-year-old Ella Holdridge is a murderess. Her frightful crime is the result of a morbid desire to see death scenes enacted. She was attended every funeral that has occurred in the neighborhood for several years past. Funerals have been infrequent hereabouts lately. Ella, it seems, took upon herself the duty of supplying subjects. She administered rat poison to several pupil’s of Father Baker’s institution at Limestone Hill. They suffered frightfully while she stood by and coolly awaited the coming of death.

The helpless little ones ran shrieking from her presence. Medical aid was summoned and her lives were saved. She claimed to have been given them hot water, and as no serious results followed no investigation was made. The Stormer girl was her next victim. The dead child never spoke after the dose had been given  her, and as the physician called gave a certificate of death from summer complaint no suspicion was attached to the Holdridge girl, who saw her die and was the most interested spectator at the grave.

Only a day after Louisa Stormer was buried she fed the children of Mrs. Wallace Eggleston, who left them in her charge, liberal allowances of rat poison. Dr. Edmonds was called. He detected the evidences of poison at once. Heroic measures were adopted and the little ones now hover between life and death, little hope of their recovery being entertained. He left the bedside of the Eggleston children one hour, and the next he was called in to save the life of the 5-year-old child of Henry Garlock, who had been poisoned. The child, too, had been playing with Ella Holdridge and told of eating food prepared by her. Dr. Edmunds sent for the Holdridge girl and forced her to confessed that she not only poisoned the children at the institution, the Egglestons and little Garlock, but actually murdered Louisa Stromer. She described with great earnestness and tragic effect the horrible sufferings of her victims and seemed to gloat over the death of Louisa Stormer who she said “made the prettiest corpse ever put under New York soil.” The coroner is now investigating the case. The girl is under police surveillance.

***

EXCERPT (Article 2 of 3): The village of South Tonawanda (N.Y.) was thrown into a state of excitement over a startling case of poisoning that has just come to light. Ella Holdridge, a fourteen-year-old girl, is charged with having given several of her playmates “rough on rats.” One child died and three others are not expected to live. The little daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Steiner was taken sick and died three hours later. It was then thought she had cholera morbus. On the following Wednesday Mrs. Eggleston went to Buffalo, leaving her little girls, Susie, aged ten, and Jennie, aged five, at home. Ella Holdridge came over to play with the children, and while there coaxed the children into the house and forced them to take the poison, which she had mixed with chocolate. She told them it was good, and that her mamma used it in coffee. The children were very soon taken ill, and Dr. Edmunds was sent for. He said they had been poisoned. The Holdridge girl was sent for and questioned. She finally confessed to having given them the poison.

NOTE: The original article discusses two separate juvenile murder case (the other not being a “serial” case).

[“A Pair of Juvenile Fiends.” The Tuapeka Times (Lawrence, New Zealand), Nov. 2, 1892, p. 5]

***



FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): Buffalo, N . Y ., July 20.— Out at Father Baker’s institution at Limestone Hill there is a girl of 14 years, Ella Holdridge, whose morbid passion for seeing death and funerals has led her to kill one of her playmates and cause the serious illness of three others by poison.

The Holdridges have lived in Tonawanda several years, While in all other respects Ella has been like other children, her parents and the neighbors have always noticed that a funeral or the announcement of a death seemed to set her wild.

She grow to be a very familiar figure at the burying ground, for almost as certainly as there was a funeral the child was near the open grave.

Tonawanda is 10 miles from Buffalo, but it might just as well be at the bottom of Lake Erie so far as the publicity of news is concerned, and thus it is that Ella’s crime did not become known tor more than a week.

Her plan was to administer rat poison, which she made as agreeable to take as possible by mixing it with cocoa. When the children refused to take it willingly she threw them on their backs and forced it down their throats, leaving them to die if they would, but watching their suffering from a distance and gloating over it.

As far as can be learned this

Child Borgia’s Work

began in earnest July 7. On that day Ella had boon playing with Louisa, the 7-year-old daughter of Herman Stormer. Shortly after she left Louisa was taken violently ill. The weather was hot, just the kind in which children’s complaints flourish, and the physician called prescribed for summer complaint. None of his remedies eased her sufferings, and alter two days of intense agony the little girl died.

She was buried on the 11th, and one of the conspicuous figures at the Stormer home during the days intervening between death and the funeral and at the open graveside was little Ella Holdridge, solemn and quiet, but her eyes flashing with excitement, her cheeks burning and her face full of mystery.

The doctor had given a certificate of death from summer complaint, and no thought of
murder or poison entered the mind of any one until last Wednesday, when Mrs. Eggleston came to Buffalo on a shopping expedition, leaving her two young daughters at home. She had been gone only a few minutes when the Holdridge girl went to the house. The children were playing around the doorstep.

Ella took them inside and told them she would make them something nice. Shelooked the door and made a pot of cocoa, into which she threw a generous handful of rat poison.

One of the children didn’t like the taste, the liquid was poured down her throat. Then Ella told them both they would be all right soon, directing thorn not to tell any one.

That night both children were taken violently ill and Dr. Edmonds was called. He at once suspected poison. Questioning the little patients closely, he learned enough to nut him on the

Track of the Child Poisoner.

Ever since then Dr. Edmonds has been attending the children, and may save their lives, although the hot weather tolls against them.

While he was working over the Eggleston children it was discovered that the 5-year-old son of Mr. Garlock had been poisoned.

A panic seized the neighborhood. Every child was catechised to learn if it had eaten or drank anything given them by Ella Holdridge.

By hard work the physicians who attended the Garloek boy saved his life, although he is yet very ill. In the mean-time, Dr. Harris, who attended the girl who died, and Dr. Edmonds had compared notes, and Justice of the Peace Rogers and Coroner Hardleben were notified and began an investigation.

The Holdridge child was sent for and questioned. At first she denied having given any of the children anything to eat or drink, but when told that she had been seen making the cocoa, and that it was known she had poisoned them,. she very naively and with wide-open eyes said:

“Dear me, is that so?”

Then she made a full confession. She told how she had made the cocoa with the
poison in it, and how she had forced it down the throats of the little Eggleston children because she wanted to go to a funeral and thought they would look so nice dead. When the death of little Louise Stermer was brought up she frankly said:

“Yes, she’s dead. Poor Louisa! But she looked awful pretty, and her funeral was awful nice.”

Ella had given her the poison in a drink of water, she said, She told her tale in the most matter-of-fact way, without seeming to realize the enormity of her act.

At the conclusion of the confession Justice Rogers sent her to Father Baker’s for safe-keeping until the coroner’s investigation is finished.

It has been learned that after she had given the poison to the little Stermer girl Ella went home, and her mother, noticing that she seemed to be laboring under suppressed excitement, asked her what the trouble was,

“I don’t know,” she replied, “but I guess

Little Louisa is Goin’ to Die.

‘cause she’s pretty sick. The doctor is there.”

From then until the child died Ella made frequent trips to the Stermer house, tiptoed her way to a window and peeked in. Every time she ran back to her mother and cried almost joyously.

“I guess she’s most dead now.”

Finally little Louisa died. The first intimation Mrs. Holdridge had of it was when Ella ran into the house clapping her hands and dancing up and down, saying gleefully;

“I guess she’s dead now, ‘cause they’re all in there crying, and there’s a man there with a box. She’s dead, she’s dead; I know it,”

And she danced outinto the street. Mrs. Holdridge is almost prostrated with grief.

“I questioned Ella,” she said, “but allI can get from her is that she thought they would look nice dead and she wanted to go to the funerals.”

“She seemed always to have a perfect mania for deaths and funerals. Every time any one died she learned of it in some way and would dance up and down with joy, clapping her bands and saying: “He’s dead! He’s dead!”

“Then if she could she would slip away and go to the cemetery to the funeral.”

“Several times when she bits returned home after an absence, and I questioned her she would tell me enough to lead me to believe she had been following a funeral.

“So deeply was she interested in the death of little Louisa that she slipped away once or twice the evening before she died and went to the house. This she told me just before they took her to Father Baker’s”

The girl was seen in the institution today and questioned, but could give no explanation of her poisoning, other than that “they looked nice dead.” When asked how she knew the poison would kill the children, she said:

“If it killed rats and mice it would kill children.”

Her mind seems perfectly free from evil, and she said, very quietly and earnestly :

“LittleLouisa looked very pretty dead.”

She says she got the poison “in the house.”
.
[“They Looked Nice Dead. – Little Girl Near Buffalo Liked Funerals. - For This Poison She Gave Seven-Year- Old Louisa Stermer Poison. - She Was Not Suspected Till Many Children Were at Death’s Door.” The Boston Daily Globe (Ma.), Jul. 20, 1892, p. 4]

***

VICTIMS:

Father Baker’s institution at Limestone Hill; multiple children
Susie Eggleston; (10)
Jennie Eggleston (5)
Henry Garlock (5)
Louisa Stromer, died

***


More cases: Serial Killer Girls

***

Margaret Messenger, 14-year-old English Serial Killer - 1881

$
0
0

NOTE: Two murders, on separate occasions, are attributed to Margaret Messenger. In our collection of female serial killer case, we ordinarily keep to victim count of three or more (including failed attempts), but in cases where the killer is so young it seems reasonable to make an exception. Cases of children who murder on more than one occasion are, it goes without saying, important sources worthy of study for those who wish to understand the crime of serial killing and the mentality, methods and motives of such killers.

***

FULL TEXT: A sentence of death passed upon a girl of 14 for murder is fortunately almost unique in criminal annals, and, in that sense, it is a source of satisfaction to learn that MargaretMessenger, who was condemned at the last Cumberland assizes, has been respited. The girl was m the service of a Mr. and Mrs. Pallister, a farmer and his wife, living in the neighbourhood of Carlisle, and acted as nurse to their three children, one of whom a boy, was drowned on the 27th June last. On the 2nd July the parents went to Carlisle market, leaving the baby and the second daughter, aged five years, to the prisoner’s care. “Whilst at work about 10 in the morning, a hired boy named Haffen was startled by bearing a baby’s scream, and on going into an adjoining field be found the eldest child with the nurse, who told him that a tall man had taken the infant away. Later on she was seen bringing the dead body of the child towards the house and on being questioned told various discrepant stories as to what had taken place. Further investigation proved that Messenger had laid the infant face downward in a boggy place, placed a stone upon its head, and so suffocated it.  She even confessed later on that she bad herself killed the baby alone and unaided. At the time of commuting the crime she was only 13, and bad but just attained her 14th year when brought to trial. Between seven and 14 an infant is prima facie deemed incapable of crime; but if the Court and jury have good reason for believing that he or she is able to discriminate between right and wrong, conviction and punishment may follow upon the indictment. This they did in the case of Margaret Messenger, and sentence of death was passed upon her in the usual form, since it is no longer lawful for it to be merely recorded, but it was obvious from the first that effect would be given to the strong recommendation to mercy, on account of the prisoner’s youth, which accompanied the verdict of the jury. The juvenile murderess bas been respited, and an inquiry is to be instituted into her state of mind what makes the case more horrible is that she has confessed to Dr. Orange, medical superintendent of the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, that she had murdered another child of the same family – the little boy who was drowned in the well a short time before – having purposely thrown him in, “The idea occurred to her, to quote her own words,” as she was chopping sticks in the yard and she took him to the well and drowned him.”

Instances of juvenile and precocious depravity are, unhappily, not without precedent; but the entire absence of motive in this case, as well as its close correspondence with the symptoms recognised by the medical faculty as indicative of homicidal mania, incline Üas to the more charitable view of the case, and we may safely assume that Margaret Messenger was not responsible for her actions when she murdered the two poor little children. It is difficult if not impossible, accurately to draw the line between manic aberration and crime, or even eccentricity of conduct, but it may be taken for granted that mania consists in some actual lesion or disease of the brain, although the injury may be so alight as to comprehend every grade of perversion of mind or moral sense. Since the time of Locke it has been generally conceded that lunatics have not as a rule, lost the power of reasoning, but that baling once entertained some illusion, they err through reasoning from wrong premises. This is particularly noticeable in cases of homicidal mania, a very common form of which is when the patient believes himself to be acting under a Divine command or follows an absolutely uncontrollable impulse to commit the crime. M Esquirol,  from the observation of numerous cases in France and Germany, has come to the conclusion that many forma of monomania, capacity in women, only show themselves in an unexpected tendency to commit homicide or incendiarism. Works on medical psychology are full of instances in which persons otherwise unsuspected insanity have confessed to murderous inclinations, and have been applied to a physician for protection against the themselves. One eminent doctor narrates a case which throws much light upon that of the young convict at Carlisle – namely, of a nursemaid who admitted that upon each occasion of dressing or undressing the infant confided to her charge, she was seized with an almost uncontrollable desire to murder it. It may seem, at first sight, somewhat disquieting to contemplate the fact that a large amount of latent and unsuspected insanity, and that of a homicidal character, does undoubtedly exist in our midst at the some time it must be remembered that the persons afflicted by it are for the most part either of low physical and intellectual development, or have an hereditary taint of insanity, while the tendency may be re proceed or altogether eradicated by cheerful surroundings and proper education. Conscientious home training of children, with careful selection and good treatment of those who are brought into the household from outside, will reduce danger to a minimum Still, the misery which may be caused in a family by such an occurrence as thatto which we have alluded, where a mother and father were exposed to so terrible and irreparable a loss as that of two infant children within a few weeks of each other, would point to the necessity of drawing public attention more seriously to the question of the criminality of lunatics;for while it is necessary that irresponsible persons should be protected from the fatalconsequences of their acts, it is equally undesirable that criminals should escape on theground that none but a madman could have committed such extremes those laid to their charge.

It is a well ascertained fact that homicidal and suicidal mania is more or less epidemic in character. Great criminals are almost always repeated, and it is a common experience for several persons to give themselves up to the police and confess to the commission of undetected murders. Nor even these confessions always be attributed to the influence of drink or a morbid love of notoriety; the real explanation would seem to be that a tendency of the kind exists without being suspected in many persons of weak or ill-balanced mind, and the notoriety given to murderers and the publication in minute detail of the particulars of their cases prove an actively exciting case for developing such latent germs of insanity. The mischief done by pandering to a morbid popular taste for sensational incidents may therefore have a more serious effect than the corruption of public morals, and may prove a direct incitement to crime. Even novelists andpoets, when they graphically depict the sufferings of the love-sick heroines who languish and die on being deserted by their lovers, are touching upon more delicate ground thanthey perhaps think; for the disease they describe is known to the faculty as a specific form of monomania, and the hectic lush and consumptive wasting away, of which they make so much, are the recognised symptoms of a disease which is liable to be spread abroad, and even to become epidemic, The law which makes insanity, if not an excuse for crime, at least a reason for the non-punishment of the criminal, requires moat cautious interpretation, and we are happy to say that the good sense and experience of oar judges seldom, if ever, allow it to be abused. The law deems every accused person responsible for his acts unless it be distinctly shown that he is non compos mentis, and it throws the onus of proving this fact upon the defence. This is a moat salutary provision, and as all persons acquitted on the ground of insanity are detained during Her Majesty’s pleasure, there is no fear of dangerous persons being let loose upon society in consequence. In Margaret Messenger’s case the presumption of her insanity, and therefore of her incapacity to commit crime, is strengthened by her extreme youth. In the case of adults, collateral circumstances must be taken into account, and the balance of justice much more delicately held. The responsibility which rests with the officers ofthe Crown in such circumstances is a very heavy one, but they may well be left to exercise it in most instances without the pressure of public agitation being brought to bear upon them. It would have been a shocking scandal to carry out the last dread sentence of the law upon a child of 11; but her “capacity for crime” would probably have been judged with a less lenient eye had she attained to what are generally called years of discretion without manifesting any more symptoms of mental disease than, those which were brought out at her trial.

[“A Youthful Murderess.(From The Standard (London), Nov, 12.) The Argus (Melbourne, Australia), Dec. 30, 1881, p. 7]

***
VICTIMS:
June 27, 1881, Pallister boy drowned in well
July 2, 1881, baby, suffocated in bog with stone

***


More cases: Serial Killer Girls

***


For similar cases see: Baby-Sitter Serial Killers

***

Marie Doiselet, French Serial Killer Baby-Sitter -1889

$
0
0

FULL TEXT: A double murder has been committed at Bar-sur-Aube, France, by a little girl named Marie Doiselet, who is only 13 years old. She was engaged as nursemaid in the house of a neighbour, named Caratnauti, and was entrusted with the care of his two children, one aged six months and the other two years and a-half. The youngest died suddenly on June 23, and the other under precisely similar circumstances on July 23. Suspicions were excited, and it turned out that the youthful murderess had killed each of them by placing a handkerchief over the mouth and nose, and pressing heavily on the chest until suffocation ensued. She confessed the crime and the methods of its execution, and said she wanted to get rid of the trouble of looking after the children.

[Untitled, The Otago Daily Times (Dunedin, New Zealand), Jan. 15, 1889, p. 2]

***

NOTE: Two murders, on separate occasions, are attributed to Marie Doiselet. In our collection of female serial killer case, we ordinarily keep to victim count of three or more (including failed attempts), but in cases where the killer is so young it seems reasonable to make an exception. Cases of children who murder on more than one occasion are, it goes without saying, important sources worthy of study for those who wish to understand the crime of serial killing and the mentality, methods and motives of such killers.

***


More cases: Serial Killer Girls

***


For similar cases see: Baby-Sitter Serial Killers

***

Fanny Scofield, 13-year-old Serial Killer: Oswego, New York - 1896

$
0
0

FULL TEXT: Oswego, N.Y., November 14. – The police here have placed under arrest Fanny Scofield, thirteen years old, on suspicion of having poisoned two-year-old Fern Field, the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Field, who own a farm in the neighborhood of the village of Mexico, ten miles from Oswego. The arrested girl is the daughter of a farmer who lives some miles away from the Fields house, and has been in their employ for a year as serving maid. She stoutly denies her guilt.

When Mr. ad Mrs. Field returned home and found their child screaming with pain and writhing in convulsions, they dispatched the helpers on the farm in all directions for medical help. The parents partially relieved the sufferings of the little one by hot baths, and managed to obtain a possible clue. The child said that she had asked Fanny Scofield for something to eat. Fanny gave her some milk, she said, and soon afterward he felt a pain in her stomach. The information was laid before Coroner Vowinkel, who sent for Dr. W. Maulins Smith, of Syracuse, to make an autopsy. Dr. Smith discovered traces of arsenic in the stomach, and it is believed that “Rough on Rats” was administered in the milk. The coroner issued a warrant for Fanny’s arrest, and she was taken to the county jail in Oswego last night.

There is a grave suspicion that the prisoner was guilty of poisoning another daughter of the Fields, who died, under similar circumstances, in July last. At that time no one thought anything but that death was due to natural causes, and no autopsy was made. The family now recall that the circumstances of the first death was identical with that of the last, and it has been determined to exhume the body and have an autopsy performed. There is great indignation manifested by the villagers and farmer folk at the suspicious deaths, and it is only due to the extreme youth and apparent ignorance of the prisoner that saves her from their wrath.

[“Arsenic In Their Milk. – A Thirteen-year-old Girl Charged With Poisoning Her Two Charges.” Baltimore American (Md.), Nov. 15, 1896, p. 11]

***

NOTE: Two murders, on separate occasions, are attributed to Fanny Scofield. In our collection of female serial killer case, we ordinarily keep to victim count of three or more (including failed attempts), but in cases where the killer is so young it seems reasonable to make an exception. Cases of children who murder on more than one occasion are, it goes without saying, important sources worthy of study for those who wish to understand the crime of serial killing and the mentality, methods and motives of such killers.

***


More cases: Serial Killer Girls

***

“Why Didn’t They Chop Off Wicked Moulay Hassen’s Head?” - 1938

$
0
0

Moulay Hassen’s  real name was Oum-el-Hassen. She also used the alias Léonie Vallon. The press called her “The Ogress of Fez.” The famous French writer Collette was assigned by the newspaper Paris-Soir to cover the trial.

Moulay Hassen’s case is particularly difficult to research due to the colorful myth surrounding her exploits. Two specific myths were perpetuated by the press: 1) that she received the French Legion of Honor medal, an award for which she seems to have been seriously considered for, but which she did not in fact receive, and 2), that she was executed (by guillotine) following her first conviction for murder in the case which identified her as a serial killer. She was condemned to death by guillotine but was never e executed – due to her political connections, nit would seem – and was freed allowing her to continue her career of kidnapping, torture and murder of mostly female victims before she was again arrested, prosecuted and convicted, receiving a sentence of 15 years in prison.

“Moulay Hassen” (Mulay Hassan) was also the name of Sultan Hassan I (1836-1894) of Morocco. Morocco’s Crown Prince in the mid-20th century was named Moulay Hassen, as well as the current crown prince, born in 2003.

***

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 4): WHEN the mass-murder trial of Moulay Hassen green-eyed ex-glamor girl and night club owner, opened in Fez last month, M. Julin, prosecuting, said: –

“Of the fourteen girls known to have been in mates of this club in the past year, three have disappeared, four are dead, and seven have been tortured so badly that they will be invalids for life.

“Once a girl entered this, haunt she was never seen again outside.”

Mohammed Ben Ali Taieb was accused as an accomplice in the killing of Cherifa, a beautiful dancer in Hassen’s secret club in Meknes.

M. Julin said the girls had been starved, tortured and beaten, Cherifa had fallen seriously ill.

Fearing an injury if the girl was taken from the house, Moulay Hassen had struck her on the head with a wooden mallet and forced Ben Ali at pistol point to finish the murder.

She had cut up the body. Children playing on waste ground discovered parts of it in the loose earth. The trail led to the night club.

Search at the club revealed a bricked-up cupboard and in it were found four girls and a boy of fifteen. They were still alive, but all bore marks of having been tortured before they were bound and gagged and dumped into their living tomb.

Moulay Hassen’s career was then described to the Court. Born forty-eight years ago in Algiers, she gained fame as the most beautiful cabaret girl in Northern Africa. When tribes from the Atlas Mountains rebelled in 1912 and crossed the desert, she saved the lives of twenty French officers by hiding them in her house. She was recommended for the Legion of Honor.

After years of stardom as a dancer in Algiers, she suddenly disappeared. She was believed to be linked with drug traffickers and white slavers, but no trace of her. was found until the police visited the club.

Moulay Hassen was sent to gaol for 15 years and Mohammed Ben Ali Taieb for 10 years.

[“Smith Tells Of  Glamor Girls’ Grim Fate in Morocco,” The Daily News (Perth, W.A., Australia), Dec. 21, 1938, p. 6]

***

ILLUSTRATION CAPTIONS (for Article 2 of 4) - ABOVE: Developed sketch by a French police observer of the tragic moment when the wall in Mme.Moulay Hassen’s villa of iniquity at Fez was broken into and four of her slaves, three girls and a boy, were found starving and emaciated inside it. --- BELOW: Cheriffa, the Dancing Girl, for whose murder Mme. Hassen was put on trial at Fes, Africa, where the French colonial officials condemned her and afterwards reported her execution – but it now turns out that she did not die at all and is still very much alive and expecting freedom.

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 4):

~ Condemned and Officially Reported Executed for Her Unspeakably Cruel Crimes, It Now Leaks Out That She Is Still Alive and Soon May Be Free—But Who Her Powerful French Protectors Are and Whether They Are Inspired by Fear or by Gratitude Remains a Dark Mystery ~

Meknes, French Morocco. – Convicted, sentenced to death and reported to have been beheaded in 1937, Moulay Hassen, the murderess of Meknes, turned up the other day in a Moroccan jail, alive and kicking, with only a short sentence to serve.

By this unexplained dodging of the guillotine’s blade, the woman, already the most famous as well as infamous of modern Africa, adds another chapter to her career and joins that mysterious host of ghosts-in-the-flesh, officially dead but supposed somehow to have cheated the grave.

There was the Dauphin, supposed to have survived the French Revolution, and his counterpart, a daughter of the last Russian Czar, supposed to have been overlooked when the Reds murdered the rest of the Royal Family.

Evidence has been offered that John Wilkes Booth was not shot after he assassinated Abraham Lincoln but died many years later, of natural causes. Some believe that King Edward VI of England, far from dying in his youth, as the histories say, became Francis Bacon, and even wrote the works attributed to William Shakespeare. However, there have always been grave doubts about these alleged grave-cheaters but seemingly none at all about Madame Moulay Hassen.

Few persons ever deserved the death penalty more thoroughly than did Moulay, who not only murdered but tortured her victims alive. Yet the blackness of her life was illuminated by brilliant deeds, some so courageous as to be heroic. For one of these which was officially recognized, she almost received the Legion of Honor, but it is believed that others which are only whispered about, were even more important in the eyes of the Government.

The woman can hardly be explained except as a Jekyll-Hyde character.


It looks as if the Government of French Morocco also suffered from double personality when it handled her case. First, as an upholder of law, order and the sanctity of human life, it tried, convicted and sentenced her to death for murder. Then the soft-hearted government personality seems to have taken charge and done nothing but put the murderess in a nice, safe cell until public opinion had cooled down. No doubt it was mindful of what the convict had done for the Government in the past and perhaps gave a thought to what might happen if she were put to death.

The evidence had been so overwhelmingly against her that conviction was inevitable, and the death sentence seemed equally so. But it was weeks before this was confirmed in an official dispatch, followed still later by another that sentence had been executed. When it was learned the other day that the murderess was alive, serving a 15-year sentence from which she may be paroled at any moment, the authorities casually explained that the reports of the death sentence and execution were errors.

The one of her execution certainly was but it is by no means sure that the death sentence was not actually pronounced and then secretly reprieved. In any event, why did the Moroccan authorities and the parent government at Paris make no effort to correct the errors?

It is much as if a famous murderess were to be found alive in Sing Sing Prison and the American authorities merely explained that reports of her sentence and execution were errors which they had not bothered to correct. Can it be that officialdom wanted the public to believe that justice had been satisfied and that the truth is only now being revealed to soften the shock of her expected release?

The Bible relates that the woman Rahab had a house in the wall of Jericho, in which she hid Joshua’s three spies, and for which she was duly rewarded. Moulay also had a house in the wall of Fez, in which she saved the lives of 16 young French officers from a mob of natives. Her house at Meknes, from which she was taken to jail, was also in its ancient wall. Houses in the wall had advantages which appealed to women of Moulay’s mysterious ways.

The French authorities had for some time heard blood-curdling stories of tortures and even murders in Moulay’s wall-house in Meknes but, as often as they traced them down to anyone who might really know, the man or woman trembled and would not say anything, so they never pressed their investigations of the woman who always replied to their questions:

“I saved the lives of 1,000 Frenchmen.”

But one day that stock answer was not quite enough. A wind had blown down a fig tree in Moulay’s garden and from where the roots had been children pulled out some of the bones of what, had been a young woman. Someone else might have placed the bones there but the police thought they would at least make some pretense of investigating the latest rumor that four people had been buried alive in one of the walls of Moulay’s house.


Most of the walls gave forth hollow sounds and the young officer in charge not knowing where to begin and remembering that he was dealing with a woman of great political influence, decided it would be better for his career not to begin at all. Just as they were about to leave, there came a scratching sound.

“What is making that sound?” asked the officer, and Moulay replied without hesitation:

“It is a cat that hid in there when we had some repairs made a few days ago.”

The officer had his doubts and pounding on the wall with a pistol butt, shouted:

“This is the police. Is anyone behind that wall? Answer in the name of the law!” After a brief silence there came an answer, a faint mewing, like a cat.

“Satisfied now, Monsieur Gendarme?” said Moulay, “or do you wish further to annoy the savior of General Poeymirau?”

The officer realized that he had probably already annoyed her far too much for his own good and with a red face bowed as a preliminary to retreat, but he straightened up from the bow, with a snap. Another sound was now coming from that wall, faint, hollow and ghostly, like a voice from the tomb. It said:

“No, I will not keep quiet. Help! There are four of us here and we are dying.”

After that the poisonous looks of the most powerful woman in Africa could not restrain the police from breaking down the plaster and taking out three girls and a boy, almost naked and almost skeletons.

“Water!” they moaned feebly, and it was Moulay who jumped to bring it to them, but the boy feebly pushed it away, whispering:

“No, poison—policeman get it.”

With an angry gesture, Moulay smashed the pitcher on the floor and the police filled another. When the four had recovered enough to talk they told a long, pitiful story of how Moulay had enticed them into captivity, had them trained to dance and then kept them prisoner, on pain of death.

“We have been in there four days without food or water,” one of the female skeletons said. “She told us she would take us out and flay us alive if we spoke.”

“But I didn’t care because we were going to die anyway, if we didn’t,” interrupted the boy. “And we can tell you whose those bones were you dug up in the garden. They were Cheriffa—we saw her murdered and that’s why she did this to us.”

Cheriffa was a pretty girl somewhat older, who had been white-slaved some time before and it was she who had told them that escape was hopeless.

Poor Cheriffa not only had to accept the attentions of guests but stand tortures for their amusement. One of these was to dance nude with a tray of goblets brimming full of boiling hot tea over her head. About once out of four times she was able to get away with the dance without scalding herself.

On the night of the murder, a fat old Pasha had the idea of sticking pins half way into the dancer’s flesh and then heating them red hot with his newest toy, a cigar lighter. He did it once too often. The tortured girl whirled, punched his fat stomach and then kicked him in the chin so hard she almost broke his neck. The four rescued prisoners told of how the short-lived rebellion was put down, of seeing Cheriffa beaten to death and her flesh fed in strips to cats.

The bones were then ordered to be boiled and buried in the garden, and after that Moulay had walled up the witnesses.

“How did the cat get in?” asked the police.

“I was the cat,” replied one of the girls.

“When she walled us up, the old devil promised to let us out sometime if we did not speak. But in ease anyone should ask if someone was within the wall we were to mew like a cat. We did not see the sense of her telling us that because we were bound and gagged. But she must have known that perhaps one of us would get her hands loose and untie the others because that is what happened.”


Once the natives saw Moulay, then about 47 years old, behind the bars, the spell of fear was broken and there was a rush of witnesses to testify against her. The woman’s defense was not very strong except that statement about saving 1,000 Frenchmen. This incident had happened in Meknes when a plot to slaughter General Pocyrhirau and his garrison of 1,000 men was so carefully laid for the annual Aissaua Blood Festival that it was not suspected and would doubtless have succeeded had not Moulay warned them just in time.

But it was long before that when she performed her most famous and spectacular service, at Fez. There a regiment of native soldiers mutinied, leaving their sixteen French officers at the mercy of the mob Not knowing where else to go they fled to Moulay’s house on the wall for sanctuary, and got it.

She and her girls went to work on the young officers, making them shave their moustaches, staining their skins, powdering their faces, rouging their cheeks, pencilling their eyebrows, blackening their lashes, painting their lips, fitting them into the robes and headgear of the house’s wardrobe and dousing them with perfume. By the time the mob broke in it found what looked like about 16 more girls than usual lying around on the divans but no sign of the men. Off went the mob to search elsewhere. For these and many other services, which have not been formally cited, she was proposed for the Legion of Honor but the respectable women of France rose in wrath against a woman of Moulay’s profession receiving that honor. There was a delay but pressure would probably have put the thing through had not Moulay made the tactless remark that if they did not hurry up, she would hang the decoration on the tail of her mule when it did come. That killed her chances forever.

Though nobody outside high government circles can say positively it is whispered that Moulay could tell things that must never come out. All the more reason, one might think, for cutting off her head. But perhaps the political dynamite is in the hands of her friends and agents, safely in some other country, ready to be touched off unless the dangerous woman is speedily released. At present it is just another dark mystery of the Dark Continent.

[“Why Didn’t They Chop Off Wicked Mme. Hassen’s Head?” The American Weekly – San Antonio Light (Tx.), Dec. 25, 1938, p. 3]

***



FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 4): Night club orgies, which allegedly occurred in the house 6$ a once beautiful dancer, who for years held sway over French Morocco, gave an amazing aspect to a murder trial at Fez. Proceedings ended in the dancer, who has been described as the ‘Female Landru of Morocco’, being sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor, and her husband to 10 years.

Couple thus dealt with are: MoulayHassan, otherwise “Moulay the Nightingale” (48), owner of a night club, and Mohamed Ben Ali, her husband, who claims to be a direct descendant of the prophet Mahomet.

The woman has had an extraordinary career, chapters of which were listened to in court by wealthy men and women who knew her at the height of her power.

Born in Algiers, the “Nightingale” gain ad fame as the most beautiful cabaret girl in Northern Africa.

When tribes from the Atlas Mountains rebelled in 1912 and crossed the desert, she saved 30 French officers by hiding them in tier house at the risk of her life.

Then she went to Maknes, where for a second time she proved the saviour of French Army officers.

Learning that the Pasha was planning a massacre of Europeans, following the Biff revolt, she warned the French, and the plot was discovered.

On both occasions the “Nightingale” was recommended for the Legion of Honor, but she never got it. During subsequent years of stardom as a dancer in Algiers she acquired thousands of pounds worth of jewels as the reward for performing before great Moroccan chieftains.

Little by little, however, as her beauty faded, she lost her power and her money.

Finally she retired to a small house in Fez where she lived a mysterious life.

She was said to be a spy, and was believed: to be linked with drug traffickers and white slavers.

Two years ago the “Nightingale” and her husband were arrested following the discovery of the dismembered body of a pretty dancing girl named Cherifa.

Police investigations began when, children playing in the street accidentally knocked over a basket and picked up a human hand.

In the blanket were found the remains of Cherifa.

The inquiry led to MoulayHassan’s house, and her husband confessed that be helped the “Nightingale” to strangle the girl.

In Mohammed’s room were found a knife, an axe, scent and bloodstains A thorough search of the place followed, daring which the police heard a faint tapping sound.

They found a tiny concealed room, with no light, in which were four girls and a boy, “living skeletons,” the heaviest weighing less than Set.

They said they had been lured to the house by the “Nightingale,” who met them in the streets of Meknes. They were imprisoned, beaten and starved.

They declared they had seen MoulayHassan and Mohammed strangle the girl Cherifa as they watched through a crack in a door.

When news of the discoveries spread troops had to be called to prevent the angry populace from lynching the “Nightingale”.

Wizened and bent to a degree beyond her years, MoulayHassan, who was accused of murdering Cherifa, appeared each day in the court wearing white robes.

She listened impassively to the case against her and her husband, who was charged as an accomplice, and to a host of witnesses called to support it.

•◊• Girls, Starved, Tortured And Beaten •◊•

M. Julin, who prosecuted, told the Court: “Of 14 girls known to have been inmates of this house in a year, three have disappeared, four are dead, and seven have been tortured so badly that they will be invalids for life. ‘Once a girl entered this haunt she was never seen again out side.”

M. Julin declared the girls, of whom Cherifa was one, had been starved, tortured, and beaten. When Cherifa fell ill, Moulay Hassanstruck her on the head with a wooden mallet and forced Ben Ali at pistol point to finish the murder.

MoulayHassan denied the charges, and I said the girls were her tenants, whom he saw only once a week when they paid the rent. Ben Ali, she alleged, killed Cherifa. Asked to explain the discovery of the boy and four girls in the secret room, she said: “I know nothing about it.”

Ben Ali denied his wife’s story, and said he was only an unwilling accomplice forced to murder Cherifa under a threat that the “Nightingale” would shoot him.

Asked if the girls or anyone else knew of the crime, he replied: “No one but Allah saw us.”

Addressing Ben Ali, the judge said “You are a descendant of the Prophet by the Smailia branch, but you were not presented from abandoning yourself at anearly age to the basest debauchery.”

[“’Female Landru’ Of Morocco - Beautiful Dancer Denies Throttling Dancing Girl” The Mirror (Perth, W.A., Australia), Dec. 17, 1938, p. 8]

***


FULL TEXT (Article 4 of 4):

“Then she let them down by a cord through the window; for her house was upon the town wall, and she dwelt upon the town wall.” — Joshua II. 15.

MEKNES, French Morocco. – MOULAY HASSEN for many of her 47 years ran a more or less exclusive but hospitable harem on the wall of Meknes, exactly as did Rahab on the wall of Jericho, when she saved the three spies of Joshua, according to the Old Testament narrative. This modern Rahab prospered even more than the Biblical one, but the other day she was thrown into prison, charged with a series of crimes, including walling up alive three girls and one boy and chopping up the body of a rebellious bayadere [temple dancer], spicing the pieces with catnip and feeding them to her pampered pack of pet cats.

Yet, in 1912, all France hailed this woman “whose house was on the walls” as a heroine because she had saved not three men, as Rahab did, but sixteen French officers, in her den of vice by disguising them as some of her girls. In 1925 France rang with her praises again for betraying a great conspiracy against General Foeymirau’s troops at Meknes. For this she was proposed for the Legion of Honor and almost, but not quite, received it.

For many years this wall-girt city has been full of whispers about Moulay Hassen, once beautiful but now with a face as hard as the jewels which weigh her down. They were tales of murders and torture so fantastic, that when they reached the ears of the French ruling class, they caused only amused smiles. No modern woman could be such a devil, they thought.

The natives believed, but never complained to the authorities because they were mire she would not be punished and they feared her vengeance. They saw the highest army officers and government officials bow low, as if she were royalty. Lest there he any doubt of her influence, the woman used to boast:

“The French owe me a thousand lives and I have not yet collected all the debt.”

Like Kipling’s Lahm, in his famous story, “On the City Wall,” she could leave her great fortune in jewelry lying about unguarded and nobody dared rob her. Yet this idea that she was above the law was entirely a delusion which was shattered by the innocent hands of a couple of little children.

Moulay, besides her original house on the wall, had acquired a dance hall and a private home with a large garden in the native quarter. Into that garden one day two small boys managed to penetrate and amused themselves by digging a hole in the soft earth under a fig tree. After a while they wandered out into the street carrying with them some queer white things they had unearthed. A few minutes later a police inspector found them trying to fit together the bones of a human hand. Investigation brought to light the almost complete skeleton of a young woman scattered about the earth under that fig tree.


To the astonishment of the natives, the police confronted Moulay in her house on the wall for questioning. Haughtily the woman who had almost won the Legion of Honor denied knowledge of the bones and reminded them that they had better remember to whom they were talking. The questioning inspector finally paused and was remembering that very thing when he heard a faint scratching sound behind a recently-plastered wall.

“What is making that sound?” the inspector asked.

“A cat,” replied the woman. “I have many here, as you can see, and one must have gotten imprisoned last week when workmen repaired the wall.”

“Let it out,” the inspector ordered, rind the woman answered:

“I have already arranged for a plasterer to come tomorrow. He will know how to make a small hole and not do much damage.”

The inspector looked searchingly at Moulay’s hard face, which pave no indication that she was not telling the truth. But his eye wandered to Mohammed Ben Ali, one of her servants, who was trembling.

“Ali,” he snapped, “by Allah, tell the truth —what’s behind that wall?”

Ali wrung his hands, but he answered:

“Allah is my witness it is only a cat.”

“We will see,” said the inspector, drawing his pistol and with the butt striking three blows. The wall gave back three hollow sounds. He cried:

“This is the police. Is anyone behind that wall? Answer in the name of the law.”

There was a tense silence, and then, from behind the wall, came a faint mewing sound, like a cat. Monlay Hassen smiled.

“Satisfied now, Monsieur Gendarme?” she asked. The inspector’s face turned red as he realized that, perhaps he had gone too far with the “savior of Gen. Poeymiran.” Then came a muffled voice speaking through the wall. It said:

“No, I will not keep quiet. Help! There are four of us here and we are dying.”

The police went to work on the wall with he nearest tools they could find, and soon dragged forth three girls and a boy, almost naked, hardly better than skeletons and more dead than alive, from a space so narrow that they had no room to lie down.

They were given water, and then the police wanted to know why they had mewed like a cat instead of calling for help the first time. One of the girls spoke faintly, as she rolled sunken eyes at the Hassen woman:

“She ordered us to make a noise like a eat if anyone should knock on the wall. She promised, if we did, to let us out before we died, but if we spoke she would torture us to death.”

“But I did not believe her, so I cried out to you,” the boy skeleton interrupted. “We have been here four days without food or water, but we know whose bones those are you ring up in her garden. That was Cheriffa, the dancer.

“We saw her murdered.”

“What have you to say to this?” asked the inspector sternly. Scornfully Moulay is reported to have answered:

“France owes me 1,000 lives.”

Whispers fly fast in Meknes, and when the ambulance arrived for the four half-dead victims, a great crowd had massed beside the wall. With only a murmur, the natives watched the four taken away, but when the police appeared with Moulay Hassen a prisoner, a roar went up and the police had all they could do to save her from being torn to pieces.

As it was, the mob did pretty well in the way of souvenirs, because Moulay had insisted on going to jail as she went everywhere, loaded with jewels, moat of which disappeared in the scuffle. Already gems are being offered to tourists, guaranteed “by the beard of the Prophet” to have been snatched from the throat of “Moulay Hassen.”

After twenty-four hours in the hospital, the four prisoners in the wall gave such testimony that Ali broke down and corroborated it. Now that, the police say, the spell of terror this woman had yielded was broken, many other witnesses came forward, so that the authorities assert that they have a complete case against Moulay for the murder of Cheriffa, but they are trying to find out what became of ten other girls who disappeared in that house on the wall.

The four prisoners in the wall said that they had once been a little band who danced and sang to pick up pennies in the foreign quarter until one night a woman, covered with jewels, asked them how they would enjoy eating all the good food they could. Though they did not like the woman’s face, the four were children of the native poor who had never seen a square meal, except through a restaurant window, and the appeal was irresistible. She led them to her dance hall, where she fed them till they fell asleep in their chairs.

 
Next morning, bathed, perfumed and for the first time in fine clothes Moulay invited them to join her band of dancers. By this time they knew who she was but thought it would be safe enough in the dance hall, from which it was always easy to escape. For a few weeks they were trained in dancing and singing, but receiving no pay, which, they understood, would only come when they were skillful enough to earn it. One evening they were delighted to hear that this tribe had arrived and eagerly followed Ali through the streets, supposedly to the house of a wealthy merchant, only to find themselves prisoners in the house on the wall.

There Moulay, with the satisfaction of .a person who has played a practical joke, explained that they were slaves for life, and death would be the punishment for any attempt to escape. At first they could not believe it and turned to Cheriffa,” a beautiful young dancer, who looked at them with sad, sympathetic eyes. Cheriffa showed them the scars on her own back and told, them hopelessly that Moulay was above the law, all powerful, and that there was nothing to do but submit to their fate or die. This was their story.

The girls had to receive the attentions of Moulay’s paying guests and the boy was kicked about and beaten as if he were a pariah dog of the streets. Occasionally the four protested, always being answered with the lash on their naked backs. One of the brutalities which especially delighted the cruel guests of the house was Moulay’s own invention, “the hot tea dance.”

In this the dancer appeared nude but balancing on her head a copper tray, loaded with brimming tumblers of boiling hot mint tea. With this burden the dancer was forced to go through a series of acrobatic movements which, with great skill and luck, might be accomplished without spilling the tea. The expert Cheriffa was able to do it about once out of every four times, on the others she scalded herself to the vicious delight of Moulay’s especial customers.

Cheriffa, with the fatalism of the Moslem, endured her sufferings without a moan, but one night the worm turned. The guest of honor on this occasion, was a powerful old tribal chief, who with Moulay, had taken heavily of hasheesh, a drug that often inspires the most fiendish cruelty. After Cheriffa had been scalded twice with hot tea, the chief insisted on sticking pins into her back and then heating them red-hot with his newest toy, a cigar lighter.

But the chief heated up one pin too many. Suddenly the dancer whirled, punched him in his fat stomach, and then as he started to collapse, delivered such a powerful kick on the point of his bearded chin that it almost broke his neck. Hoping that she had killed him Cheriffa turned on Moulay with such a torrent of invective as made even that hardened creature wince. The three girls and the boy said they followed their leader in her brief and hopeless rebellion. With the aid of the guests, Ali and other servants, the mutinous five were quickly bound and gagged.

After the chief had been taken away still unconscious, Moulay attended to the matter of punishment. While waiting for masons to arrive, she gave each of the four an unmerciful beating and then had them walled up with those instructions about mewing like a cat in case anyone asked who was behind their wall. Since they were gagged as well as bound, this seemed needless advice, but Moulay had experience in such things and evidently foresaw the possibility that one might untie his hands and release the others, as indeed happened very shortly.

They dared not try to break out at first, but contented themselves with scratching with a stick enough of the still-soft mortar to make a peephole from their prison. It was through this chink the prisoners say they saw Cheriffa first beaten to death and then her flesh cut into thin strips to be fed to the cats. When, for some reason the animals at first refused to eat human flesh, they say that Moulay spiced it with various herbs, including catnip, after which the cats accepted it. When this was over, they state that they heard her giving orders to boil the bones and bury them in her garden.

Ali revealed the alleged fate of Aicha, a dancer before Cheriffa, who had lost her health and looks under the abuse until she was no longer of interest to the guests of the house on the wall. Accordingly Aicha was notified that Ali was to take her to another house, in Rabat. The broken-hearted girl agreed, because nothing could be worse than what she was enduring. Just before their departure Moulay handed Ali, he says, a little loaf of bread, full of strychnine, whispering:

“When you get to Kenisset, get off the train, take Aicha for a stroll in the outskirts of the town, make her eat this loaf and then leave her.”

The servant followed instructions, returning to Meknes alone, after leaving the dancer dying under a tree. After describing the girl’s convulsions, to his mistress, she expressed herself as satisfied, he said. Asked what he had been paid for murdering Aicha, Ali replied:

“Nothing at all except that she did not kill me as she would have done had I disobeyed.”

Ali, who is forty-six years old, was well chosen as a slave of terror. But once that terror’s grip was broken, he proved a bad investment for Moulay by the stories he told.

Born somewhere in Algeria, Moulay Hassen must have been the runaway black sheep of a decent family. This was evident at the height of her fame and power, because not so much as a distant cousin even claimed relationship, and she never told who she really was. Yet to have been a relative of this influential person would have meant much profit in the way of graft and easy money. Her present downfall proves the wisdom of this silence.

At the age of eleven, a pretty, overgrown child, precocious in every way, she first appears as a follower of the French armies in Africa, and already something of a dancer. At twenty-one she had become an accomplished dancer and was already a business woman in a rather a big way for the country and the times, hiring other girls to work for her and beginning to get rich.

Always alert for new opportunities, she and her corps of girls followed the Moynier column into Fez, in 1911, and by the following year was running the largest “institution” of its kind in the city.

Then she met a wealthy captain who fell in love with her. He offered to buy out her “establishment” in Fez if she would come to France with him to spend his leave. For a large sum of money she consented. She became a favorite in Paris and made many friends, especially in military circles. But she soon tired of the young captain and passed from one admirer to another, collecting costly presents, mostly jewels, on the way.

Following the Agadir incident, in 1911, which resulted in the over-throw of the Sultan of Morocco, a French protectorate was established in Morocco. Moulay saw in this an opportunity to make money and returned. In Paris she had met many of the officers who now staffed the army of occupation. She received special considerations from them and organized a troupe of dancing girls to provide for the soldier’s amusement.

She divided her “employes” into three divisions. The first was made up of native girls and was reserved for privates in the regiments. These girls followed the various divisions on their long marches and often went into the desert to dance at the lonely garrisons. The next class were white women, some of them of education and excellent family, most of them victims of the still flourishing while slave trade on the African coast. These women had a house of their own and entertained officers for the most part or officials stationed at permanent posts. The final class of women entertainers were the dancers who were coached and trained not only to dance seductively but to play love songs on the “gombri,” a kind of mandolin that is supposed to stir the blood of those who listen to it. These women lived in a luxurious house in Fez to which only the wealthiest officers of the garrison were invited.

Noted cooks were imported to concoct new dishes for the jaded palates of the soldiers. Moulay eagerly searched for new talent to entertain her guests, and although she often treated the girls who worked for her with savage cruelty, she went out of her way to be kind and generous to those who naked for help. She did this to build up a good reputation for herself with the townspeople of Fez and to keep her house in good standing with the military authorities and the police.

One day a fortune-teller who professed to read the future in the sands of the desert told her:

“Once in every woman’s life pity takes the place of duty. You have come to me more than once for help and I am going to give you a good piece of advice. The French are your friends here in Fez. Tonight the lives of several officers will be menaced by a mob. It will be in your hands to save them. Only under your roof will they find protection. Pity them, forget your duty to your fellow-countrymen, and you will never regret it.”

Moulay went away undecided about warning the commandant at the garrison. Finally, she did go to a Lieutenant Garnler and told him of her fears. The officer laughed at her but decided to have a little relaxation with his fellow officers at Moulay’s expense and accepted her invitation to spend the night under her roof.

At that time Fez was peaceful and an insurrection of Moors against French rule had supposedly been crushed. The officers at the garrison took advantage of the lull and set about to enjoy themselves. The rebel leaders were waiting for just such a chance to take the officers off their guard.

That night as Moulay Hassen gaily filled the cups for her friends an angry mob gathered in the city and stalked the streets looking for men in uniform. Someone whispered to the leaders of the mob that several French officers had been seen entering Moulay’s “house on the city wall.” The rebels rushed to the home and began storming it, for it was built like a citadel.


As to what happened thereafter, there are two versions. One, the less credible perhaps, is that Moulay told the officers to follow her, and she hid them in a room at the back of the house.

By this time the mob had forced the door and the leaders went in search of Moulay whom many of them knew well.

“Moulay Hassen,” one of the leaders said, “we know that you have hidden some French officers here. We have come for them.”

As he finished speaking Moulay drew a pistol from under her robe and shot him. The rest of the mob drew back and Moulay moved to the door which covered the hiding officers, spread her arms across it and said:

“You, Mohammed, whose son lives now because of the remedies I gave him as he was dying, and you, Tahar, whom I saved from the executioner’s axe, were you ever ill-met at my doors? Did I ever refuse you the welcome of my house and the bread from my cupboards? You, Selim, Mansour and said, have you ever knocked at my door in vain, when you were cold or hungry or thirsty? Tonight I would be a dog to let you interfere with my guests, whoever they may he. You would be dogs to violate the sacred laws of Mohammedan hospitality.

“If you are dogs then enter, pass over my dead body and murder my guests and may the anger of Allah and the Prophet be upon your heads and on the heads of all your descendants, forever.”

The mob listened, were ashamed, and went away.

The other version of the story which is more generally believed but which is not quite so flattering to the French officers is that Lieutenant Gamier and fifteen other French officers, fleeing for their lives from the angry mob, found themselves in front of Moulay’s door and begged her to hide them.

“Impossible!” the young woman told the breathless young men. “They will hatter down that flimsy door and search the place. No, wait. There is only one way. Do as I tell you, quick”

‘Herding the fugitives into one of her back rooms, she first had them shave off their spiffy little moustaches and beards and then made them take off all their clothes. With the other girls as assistants, she stained their white European skins the tawny color of the native women, put wigs on some, turbans on others, pencilled their eyebrows, painted, rouged and powdered their faces, drenched them with perfume, covered them with jewels, and dressed them in the most elaborate garments of the house’s wardrobe, forcing the real girls partly to undress.


Distributed gracefully on couches together with the genuine girls, the disguised officers were impossible to detect from the real thing, in the dim light of closed shutters and much cigarette smoke. From the entrance, the scene looked like a Sultan’s harem. There was a furious pounding at the door but Moulay took one last look and gave a last warning:

“For the Jove of Aliah! Get your big feet out of sight.”

Pistol in hand, she then opened the door. Half a dozen leaders of the mob pushed in but hesitated at her levelled pistol.

“We want to search your place for Frenchmen,” they announced, and were quickly told that there were no men in the house.

“We are told that they were seen going in. Anyway, we are going, to search,” they said.

“It is a lie,” cried Moulay, with flashing eyes. “If you are honest, you may search. But if it is only a pretext to molest my girls, I will shoot through the heart the first man that attempts it. Voila! There they are. You may look—hut must not touch.”

A wise precaution for the Frenchmen.

Tile leaders gazed upon what to them was a most alluring spectacle and hesitated again. The charming girls nearest to them were voluptuously feminine and scarcely clothed at all.

Those further back were more modestly clothed hut so shy that many of them peeped coyly at them with only one eye over the top of a cushion.

This was a time of pillage and riot. Why should these expensive plums, ordinarily beyond their reach, escape their clutches?

Moulay read their thoughts and her voice was caressing ns she suggested:

“Come back tomorrow, after it is all over.”

That settled it.  The leaders made a search of the other rooms, found nobody, and on their way out paused once more to feast their eyes on that harem scene.

Just as the others were turning toward the door, one of the six evidently recognized one of the disguised sixteen. With a shout and outstretched arms, he started into the room.

The shout died on his lips as Moulay shot him through the heart.

The other five turned around, their hands going to their weapons, in sudden wrath. Moulay’s voice was deadly as she spoke:

“I warned him I would do this. Who wants to die next?”

Then her voice fell again to that caressing tone as she looked significantly at the leader.

“Can’t you wait till tomorrow?”

“Yes, if you will remember me,” the man agreed.

“And me – and me – and me,” jealously cried the others as they went out, hardly looking at the dead man they were carrying.

Next day the surviving five were not disappointed, because Moulay lived up to her reputation of “the little liar who keeps her word.” Though sixteen of her “houris” were absent from this party they were not missed.

For heroic, quick thinking Moulay’s achievement would be hard to beat, even if she was saving foreigners from her own people. The officers presented their rescuer with a bronze statue of herself which nobody recognized because the sculptor felt, it his duty to give her a Joan-of-Arc expression which was an even better disguise than she had given the young officers. They also handed Moulay a purse of 1,100 francs and politically she became the “Queen of Fez.” Her “salon,” asshe liked to call it, was frequented by men in gold epaulettes, who explained when this was noted, that the Hassen woman had become a valuable “intelligence department.”

This proved literally true in 1925 when she performed another service to the French arms, not so dramatic but more important because it was estimated to have saved about 1,000 lives.

There she wheedled from a native the details of a plot by a local Pasha to massacre Gen. Poeymiran’s garrison during the annual Aissua Blond Festival. On this occasion 100,000 religious fanatics would he ill town and the Pasha’s followers planned to incite this horde to join them in attacking the French soldiers. Moulay informed the general in time for him to place the Pasha and his lieutenants under arrest and the Blood Festival went off without bloodshed.

This time France almost went into hysterics of adulation over the woman who someone said was worth more than an army corps. The climax came when someone proposed her for the Legion of Honor, and for a while it looked as if she would receive it.

This was a little too much for the respectable women of France to stomach. Protests poured in and wives of men who held that honor said their husbands would throw it away if it was bestowed on a woman of such dishonorable profession. Yet it might have gone through had not Moulay, herself, piqued at the delay, announced that if they did not hurry up she would, like the Chief of the Haehem Tribe when he received it, tie it to her mule’s tail.

That statement killed her chances, and, though she pretended to scorn the decoration, covering herself with a fortune in gems, it really, broke her heart because it permitted respectable women to snub her.

She turned to hasheesh, which the authorities say is enough to explain the rest of her behavior.

[“Wicked Madame Moulay Hasssen and her ‘House on the City Wall’ – Like Rahab Who Saved the Spies of Hoshua, She Saved the Lives of Sixteen French Officers by Disguising Them as Her Girls, but When She Was Charged With Making Her Beauties Into Food for Her Beauties Into Food for Her Pampered Cats and Walling Them Up Alive, Her Distinguished Protectors Forgot Their Gratitude,” American Weekly (San Antonio Light, Tx.), Sep. 12, 1937, p. 4]

***



Mohammed Ali, Moulay Hassen’s henchman – “Cherifa,” he said referring to the girl whose decapitated head so staggered Yussef Bey, “refused to obey Madame, so after lacerating her, we put a cord around her neck, and ordering me to pull one end while she pulled the other, we slowly garroted her.”

[Stephen House, “Mass Murderess Once Won the Legion of Honor,” The Star (Wilmington, De.), Oct. 3, 1937, p. 10] (this article reports the erroneous story of Hassen’s execution and the false story of the Legion of Honor)

***

For more cases, see: Women Who Like to Torture

***

Anjanabai & Family of Ogresses - India, 1996

$
0
0

Anjanabai was the matriarch of a family in western India  that kidnapped and murdered children. Her daughters Renuka Kiran Shinde, 29, and Seema Mohan Gavit, 25, and the husband of Renuka, Kiran Shinde were arrested on Nov 19, 1996. The four were accused of kidnapping 13 children under five between 1990 and 1996 and killing nine of them, but only five of the murders could be proved. They abducted children in order to demand ransom and also to be used as as props in their petty theft rackets.

Anjanabaiwould instruct her daughters to  enter a crowed place where they could easily grab a child.  Festivals, where people were particularly distracted by spectacles provided favorable opportunities. The team would kidnap children from Nashik, Mumbai, Kolhapur and Pune. The child would be kept in their Pune residence.

The two sisters, Renuka and Seema, would carry a child in their arms to avoid suspicion while moving about in crowded places, snatching purses. The children were murdered when they grew too old to be carried about, or if they tended to cry in public and arouse suspicion.


News reports described details of two of the murders:

Outside a temple in Kolhapur, the cries of the child in their possession led to a scuffle. The sisters threw him to the ground to momentarily divert the public’s attention. As they seized their chance to escape, the women picked the severely injured child up and took him along. Later the sisters’ mother Anjanabai killed the child by smashing his head against a pole, police said. Another victim, a three-year-old who talked to passers-by about his parents, was hung upside down from the ceiling and his head was repeatedly slammed against a wall.

Renuka’s husband Kiran Shinde would also act as abductor, snatching children from railway stations, bus stands and temples in Kolhapur, Thane, Mumbai and Nashik. In preparation for the trial, the prosecution offered Anjanabai’s son-in-law immunity for his testimony resulting in the conviction of the ringleader and her two daughters. Anjanabai died in 1997 in custody awaiting trial. On June 29, 2001 the sisters were sentenced to death. In 2004 and 2006 their appeals were denied. To date (July 2013) the sisters still await execution.

***


For similar cases, see Murder-Coaching Moms

***

Dim-Witted Serial Baby-Killers, Ethel Lewis & Okal Gorham - Michigan, 1929

$
0
0

NOTE: Sources vary on the spelling of Mrs. Gorham’s first name: Opal,” “Okel,” “Okal,” “Oakel.”

***

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): FULL TEXT: St. Joseph, Mich., Feb. 14. – Two demented mothers who murdered their five children were questioned further today as authorities sought to learn if even more babies had died at their hands.

A confession signed by Mrs. Okal Gorham, 25, said the babies were poisoned or strangled to death by herself and her mother, Mrs. Ethel Lewis, 57. she could give no reason for the acts but said she and her mother frequently quarreled over family matters.

The women will be subjected to sanity tests today or tomorrow and the sheriff will seek to learn if they disposed of children born to unmarried women in addition to murdering their own.

The sheriff’s office announced that Mrs. Gorham had signed a confession which related how she and her mother killed four children. the story was disconnected and and it was impossible to tell the identity of the victims, Wilbur Cunningham, prosecutor said.

Murder charges have been withdrawn until the sanity tests are completed.

The murders were revealed when the coroner became suspicious over the death of the last infant. Mrs. Lewis claimed whooping cough caused the death but the coroner found finger marks on the child’s throat.

Mrs. Gorham, in one confession said seven babies had been killed but later changed her story saying only five were murdered. Three of those were her own and the other two her mother’s she said. One of her babies she wheeled 12 miles to Eau Claire, Wis., in a baby carriage to commit the murder, the confession said.

Mrs. Gorham declared her mother placed poison in milk given to the babies and some were killed in this manner. Others were strangled she said.

William Lewis, husband of the confessed murderer, said two of their children died at birth. He and his son-in-law Herbert Gorham, were questioned but the sheriff’s office inclined to believe they had done nothing to do with the murders.

A search for graves near the Lewis home was made but none were found. A more extensive search will be conducted later in connection with the theory that the two women disposed of illegitimate children in addition to their own.

[“2 Demented Mothers Slay Five Children.” syndicated (UP), Feb. 14, 1929, p. 1]

***


FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 3): St. Lewis, Mich., Feb. 13 – Sheriff Eved G. Bryant said tonight that Mrs. Okel Gorham, 23, had confessed she was present Sunday morning when her mother, Mrs. Ethel Lewis, 49, poisoned and strangled the infant of the infant son of the younger woman, and Mrs. Gorham had formally charged her mother killed three other grandchildren and four children of her own.

The young mother, whose home is in Dowagiac, Mich., charged earlier in the day that her mother had killed five infant children, but in a signed statement tonight, increased the number to eight.

“Ma put dope in the milk and choked it,” Mrs. Gorham said when questioned about the death of the boy, Clarence Wesley, 17 months old, who died Sunday.

“I seen her choke it with her hand.”

She had asserted previously that her mother gave the child poisoned milk Saturday night

Mrs. Lewis, the sheriff said, admitted placing poison in the child’s milk, but denied choking the boy or causing the deaths of the seven other children.

“It’s a lie. They’re all lies,” Mrs. Lewis shouted. “The girl must be crazy.”

The younger woman asserted in her confession that she also witnessed the poisoning of another daughter, Isabelle Gorham, but said she was not a witness to the others.

The children who Mrs. Gorham charges were strangled and not poisoned by her mother, besides Clarence Wesley and Isabelle, were Louise Jane Gorham, 18 months old, who died in February 1922, Mary Jane Gorham, 18 months old, died in November 1926, two twin daughters of the elder woman born of a former marriage to Henry Ford, a farmer living near Big Rapids, Mich., and two other infant children of the older woman, whose names she “couldn’t remember.”


All died at the home of Mrs. Lewis at Eau Claire, Mich., and a former home at Indian Lake, Mich., Mrs. Gorham said.

“She killed them because she didn’t like me to visit her,” was the only motive for the alleged slayings the younger woman gave.

Wallace Lewis, Eau Claire junk dealer, husband of Mrs. Lewis, and Herbert Gorham, were held, but denied knowledge of the alleged slayings.

Formal charges against the two women probably will be withheld, authorities said, pending a mental examination.

Investigation began Tuesday, when county officials were requested by the undertaker who conducted the funeral of the child who died Sunday to look into the case. Marks on the body, he said, led him to believe the child had been choked. Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gorham was arrested and the daughter’s charges followed.

Mrs. Lewis, authorities said, at first denied any knowledge of the deaths. Then, they said, she broke down, and at one point in the questioning said, “I didn’t know it would cause all this trouble.”

Mrs. Lewis was divorced from Ford about ten years ago, the marriage to Lewis following. Three children, born while she was married to Ford, now are living. Gorham is 61 years old.

[“Deaths Of Eight Children Laid To Mother By Woman – Four Tots Of Each Slain, She Admits – ‘Didn’t Like Me To Visit Her,’ Daughter’s Explanation.” syndicated (AP), The Galveston Daily News (Tx.), Feb. 14, 1929, p. 1]

***


FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): St. Joseph, Mich., March 9. – Mrs. Oakel Gorham, 25, and her mother, Mrs. Ethel Lewis, 49, accused of murdering one infant and suspected of killing six others, are mental deficients and should be sent to state institution for the rest of their lives, a sanity commission of two physicians reported to the Berrien county Circuit Court today.

The physicians were Drs. Roy A. Morter, acting superintendent of  Kalamazoo State Hospital for the Insane, and C. N. Sowers of Benton Harbor. The two women killed seven of their own babies, according to Mrs. Gorham’s confession.

YOUNGER HELD INSANE.

The younger woman is actually insane, suffers from delusions and is of the imbecile type, according to the report. Mrs. Lewis was found sane, but weak mentally with the mind of a six-year-old child, and of the imbecile type.

Berrien county authorities who have specifically charged the pair with murdering Clarence Wesley Gorham, five-months-old child son of Mrs. Gorham, on Feb. 10, are expected to approve the alienists’ recommendations.

STORIES DISCONNECTED.

Investigation of several mysterious baby deaths in the two families disclosed a squalid story of unwanted children born in poverty with their parents unable to care for them. Mrs. Gorham confessed the two women had killed seven of their children but her stories were disjointed and varied.

Prof. William A. Roemer, of Notre Dame University, after an informal examination of the two women reported that they were sane although of low mentalities.

The women’s husbands, Herbert Gorham, 61, and Wallace Lewis, 59,  were arrested with their wives on Feb. 12, but released after it was shown they had no connection with the baby murders.

[“Want Slayers Sent To Asylum – Women Baby Killers Defective, Doctors Report.” Syndicated (UP), The Pittsburgh Press (Pa.), Mar. 10, 1929, p. 6]

***

Julia Etta Fortmeyer, St. Louis Serial “Baby Burner” - 1875

$
0
0

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): The trial of Madame Julia Etta Fortmeyer, abortionist, which has been in progress here during this week, exciting a great deal of attention, came to a termination to-day, the jury returning a verdict of manslauguter in the second degree, and fixing the term of imprisonment at five years. Since her imprisonment she has bid open defiance to everybody, and dared conviction while boldly confessing her crimes. She says she has been plying the profession of an abortionist for the past fifteen years in various western cities under the guise of midwifery. To the World correspondent she confessed that she had committed several hundred of these infantile murders in St. Louis during the past seven years, more recently she had adopted cremation as the best means of getting rid the remains, and, without a shadow a blush or a remnant of feeling, calmly stated that she had burned the bodies of more than a hundred babies.

Mme. Fortmeyer is a large, portly woman, with cold gray eyes, capable and in the habit of working herself into a fury of rage upon slight provocation, when her language reaches a degree of profanity startling to the most callous.

Her practice, she says, has been confined almost entirely to people in the higher classes of society.

It was stooping to care for two girls from humble life that led to her discovery. For six years she had plied her profession unmolested by the police, moving about from one neighborhood to another, so as not to attract attention by a long residence in any one place. .Last August she was living at No. 1817 Morgan street, and had under treatment a German girl named Louisa Buhler, who had come here simple and honest from the quiet town of St. Genevieve, and had entered domestic service.

The ways of the city had bewildered her, and she had been seduced by a young grocery clerk. A negro huckster had detected her condition, and had persuaded her to go to Mine. Fortmeyer. Once under the influence of the doctress, she had yielded to the latter’s representations, and had submitted to have an operation performed. This was her own story, as she told it in court yesterday.

On Saturday, Aug. 8, while this girl. Louisa, was under treatment, Lena Miller, a fair-looking mulatto girl, applied for treatment, and was taken in. At midnight the work had been done, and an hour later this girl was dead. Sunday, Mme. Fortmeyer coolly notified the policeman on the beat that the girl had been sick in her house and had died in a spasm, and she wished the body removed. The request awakened the suspicions of the officer, and he insisted upon an immediate inspection of the premises. A hasty glance revealed the presence of a collection of suggestive instruments, and the woman was promptly arrested. Louisa Buhler lay sick in the house, but insisted that she had been suffering from an attack of cholera morbus. As the doctress sat in her cell at the station-house muttering to herself, she was overheard to say, “Ashes tell no tales.” Another hasty search was made, and in the stove were found the calcined bones of a child. In an place was found an infant corpse wrapped in paper, and evidently waiting cremation. In the ash-heap were found still other human bones. Confronted with these facts, Louisa Buhler confessed what she had undergone. The doctress had an accomplice in the person of a young woman named Sarah Fay, whom she was initiating into the mysteries of her craft. This woman had fled at the first indication of trouble, but was found, and she turned State’s evidence.

The Coroner’s inquest resulted in the holding of Mme. Fortmeyer responsible for the deaths of the two babes of Lena Miller and Louisa Buhler and for the death of Lena Miller. The grand jury found two counts against the doctress for murder in the first degree. During the trial just closed all the horrible mysteries of the abortionist’s profession were laid bore, and the details of the monstrous deeds told with sickening minuteness. Sarah Fay testified that three times she had seen Mrs. Fortmeyer wrap an infant in paper, saturate it with coal oil and place it upon kindling wood in the stove, and set lire even while the cried of the living child could be heard. The details of this testimony will not bear repetition.

Public opinion brands this woman as the greatest criminal the West has ever known, out-doing the Bendero, and the only regret felt at the sentence imposed is that it was not made heavier.

[“Madam Fortmeyer, The St. Louis Child-Murderess Convicted A Frightful Record of Crime.” (St. Louis Correspondence of the New York World.), Jan. 31, 1875, p. 1]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 7. – Last night about midnight Mme. Fortmeyer, sentenced to ten years imprisonment, made her escape from prison in Jefferson City, by forcing her body through over the transom of her cell. There were no gates or guards to impede her flight. She has bold and desperate friends on the outside, and there is little hope of recapturing her. Mme. Fortmeyer was convicted as the April term of the St. Louis Criminal Court of the murder of a young girl named Lena Miller and her infant child by malpractice. After her arrest a search was made of her house and the charred bones of two infants were found in a stove in her bedroom. She confessed to Detective Metzger that one of the infants was that of Lena Miller, which she had burned alive. A number of horrible developments followed, showing the accused to be a perfect monster, it being an undoubted practice of hers to burn every child delivered by her, whether dead or alive. There is good reason to believe that she has murdered and burned at least fifty infants during the prosecution of her inhuman business in this city for a series of years. She had also earned an infamous character in New-York and Chicago before she came to St. Louis, and her operations in the monstrous practice have probably been more extensive than those of any other person in the United States. After her arrest she boldly threatened to expose a large number of reputable people in this city if theydid not extricate her from her difficulty, and there were great efforts made by certain persons in her behalf, who succeeded in obtaining for her the light penalty of ten years in the Penitentiary, instead of the gallows.

[“A Monster At Large. – Escape From Prison of Mme. Fortmeyer, The Murderess of Fifty Infant Children.” The New York times (N.Y.), Oct. 8, 1875, p. ?]

***

EXCERPT: For years she carried on her criminal calling without detection, and was at length brought to justice only after the most careful preparation. She had operated on at least a hundred babies, whose remains she was in the habit of disposing of by the process of cremation.

L. U. Reavis, Saint Louis: The Future Great City of the World: with Biographical Sketches of the Representative Men And Women Of St. Louis And Missouri, C. R. Barns, St. Louis, 1876, pp. 557-561

***

Book: Life, Crimes And Confession Of Mrs. Julia Fortmeyer, Of St. Louis, Mo., Known As The Baby Burner: The Great Trial, Speeches Of Counsel On Both Sides, Her Conviction. Philadelphia : Barclay & Co., 1881

***

Mr. Belfort Bax Replies to his Feminist Critics. – Aug. 8, 1908

$
0
0

-- Women nowadays “want it,” not “both ways” merely, but all ways. -- 

[Belfort Bax, “Mr. Belfort Bax Replies to his Feminist Critics.” New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, and Art, London, Aug. 8, 1908, p. 287-288] 

***

FULL TEXT: Amid the various writers who have favoured THE NEW AGE with their views on the question of Female Suffrage, none have really traversed my original contention, as contained in my first article. That contention was, that occupying as they do a privileged position before the law – not only in itself, but still more in its administration – as against men, women have no just claim to the franchise. That the votaries of Female Suffrage feel this, is proved by the fact that their most serious efforts at arguments turn upon the iniquity of subjecting women to “man-made laws,” their staple policy throughout their agitation being, by dint of lying assertions and insinuations, ceaselessly repeated, to create the impression on the public mind that the existing state of the law and its administration not only does not favour women, but is actually unfair to “the sex.” Now, as I have pointed out, to anyone in the least acquainted with the theory and practice of the English law, there can be no doubt whatever that the latter, in theory and still more in practice, is entirely and without any exception whatever, one-sided and partial to women and against men.

The only correspondent of THE NEW AGE who has really touched the point at issue at all, while admitting the substantial truth of my remarks, confines himself to suggesting exaggeration on my part and observing that our infamous anti-man marriage laws were unjust “not on one side only.” But I must deny the charge of exaggeration, a denial that can be substantiated by illustrative cases galore. As regards the marriage laws, I insist that the unfairness is wholly and solely on one side. But I must here make an explanation. There does exist on paper one slight concession of fairness towards the husband. The divorce law, namely, ordains that an adulterous wife, owing to the fact that by her adultery she can introduce into the family, and compel her husband to support, a bastard child, can be divorced by the husband on proof of adultery alone, whereas for a wifeto obtain divorce from her husband (in which case, of course, the above reason does not obtain), it is necessary to prove cruelty in addition to adultery. Now, believer as I am that marriage ought to be an absolutely free union, it is certainly not my case to defend the existing marriage laws as a system. But I do say that, given that system and our present property and family relations generally, nothing can be more reasonable or more equitable as between the man and the woman than this provision of the English law respecting divorce.

Yet when brought to book and challenged to give a concrete instance of the unfairness of “man-made laws “ to woman anent which the woman’s righter is perennially blathering at large, it is invariably this very innocent and natural provision of the divorce law that is trotted out, it being the solitary instance in which the law does not overtly favour the woman at the expense of the man. But I have said that this provision exists on paper merely, and so it does, since in practice it remains a dead letter. For the discrimination in question is now practically abolished, anything which the wife objects to – coming home late at night, going out to a party without taking her with him, holding her hands when she attempts to scratch or bite him – being adjudged technical cruelty by the husband within the meaning of the law. Per contra, the Act of 1895 condones expressly the adultery of the wife, providing she can successfully plead “neglect” (an elastic term) on the part of the husband. So much for this solitary case in which the Feminist, to his horror and indignation, finds that the law does not for once avowedly favour women at the expense of men. But apart from this isolated example, the whole marriage law is one tissue of favouritism to the woman and injustice to the man, as I have already shown.

And yet we find in “advanced” journals tirades like the following: “Any fool, any blackguard, any coward, is wise enough and worthy enough to be allowed a legal and a holy license to torture and insult a woman. Anything with the title of husband in his pocket may goad and stab and lash and sear the soul of the slave we call a wife” (Clarion, July 17) Unfortunately, the champion liar who can gush forth the mendacious, sentimental slush, of which the foregoing is a sample, does not stand alone. His performance is but part of an anti-man crusade of misrepresentation and falsehood carefully organised and skilfully engineered, the object of which is, and has been, to inflame public opinion against men in the interests of female privilege and of female domination. Feminists well know that the most grotesquely far-fetched cry anent the injustice of man to woman will meet with a ready ear. They well know that they get here fond and foolish man on his soft side. Looking at the matter impartially, it is quite evident that man’s treatment of woman is the least vulnerable point in his moral record. Woman, as such, he has always treated with comparative generosity. But it is, of course, to the interests of the abettors of female domination to pretend the contrary. Accordingly everything has been done to excite prejudice in favour of woman as the innocent and guileless victim of man’s tyranny, and the maudlin Feminist sentiment of the “brute” man has been carefully exploited to this end. The result of two generations’ agitation in the above sense is seen in the existing state of the law, civil and criminal, in which the “Woman’s Movement” has succeeded in effecting the violation of every principle of rectitude towards the male side of the sex-equation. The existing laws connected with marriage which place the husband practically in the position of legal slavery as regards the wife is typical of the whole.

That the present “Votes for Women” movement is only a phase of the anti-man crusade which Feminism has been carrying on for nigh two generations past with the aid of the Press, is shown, not only by the persistent efforts to represent “ man-made laws “ as unjust to women, but by the incidental remarks of Suffragette leaders in which the sex animus is shown, no concealment being made of the intention to use the suffrage for rivetting on man the chains of legalised female oppression. For example, Mrs. Pankhurst recently represented one of the functions of emancipated “Womanhood” to be the handing over of the luckless male to the Female blackmailer by raising the “age of consent” above sixteen!! The allusion made at the same time to the “daughters of the working class “ is a piece of demagogy too thin to deceive anyone as to the venomous sex-spite animating this outrageous proposal.

Again, in the Daily News for July 30 a suffragette objects to a woman being punished for murdering her child, protesting that the father, who had had nothing to do with the crime, ought to have been in the dock in her place!

In the present agitation we see merely the culmination of a Feminist campaign organised with scarcely any attempt at concealment, as I have said, on the basis of a sex-war. But this sex-war is at present one-sided, the man’s case goes by default. There is no sex-conscious man’s party to be appealed to and to engineer public opinion in favour of the claims of the most elementary justice for him, as here is a sex-conscious woman’s party to further any and every iniquitous claim of the female sex. So long as the present state of things lasts, organised determination on the one side and indefinite gullibility on the other, are likely to maintain the ascendancy of the Feminist cult and increase the sphere of female privilege.

It has often been remarked that even if the suffrage were granted, the enforcement of the laws decreed by a female majority would be dependent on the goodwill of men. This observation we are accustomed to find greeted by Feminist jeers. The jeers may be justified for the moment, but the intrinsic truth of the observation remains none the less. So long, namely, as the Woman’s Party can continue to bulldose men as they have done up to the present, so long will they be able to make men obey and enforce their behests, whether formulated directly through the suffrage or indirectly by hoodwinking public opinion as they do now. But when once men get tired of this, when once the reaction sets in and a sex-conscious Man’s Party forms itself, then Heaven help the women!! The anti-man ranting sisterhood do not seem to realise what the position of their sex would be if men took to refusing to act against their “brothers.” They think it the most natural thing in the world for women to talk and act in this strain as regards their “sisters.” The explanation, to my mind, is simple. They instinctively feel that man is more than sex, that he stands for humanity in the concrete, whereas woman stands, par excellence, for sex and sex alone. As I have often pointed out before, common phraseology recognises that while man has a sex woman is a sex. The hollowness of the sham of the modern dogma of equality between the sexes is shown by the fact that the assumption of inferiority is called into requisition without any hesitation when there is anything to be gained by it for the cause of female privilege. The dogma of equality is reserved for pleading for the franchise, for the opening up of the professions, and similar occasions. According to the current theory, while women are fully equal to men in capacity for government, administration, etc., and hence, while justice demands that these spheres should be accessible to them, they are so inferior to men in the capacity to control their actions and to distinguish right from wrong, that it is not to be thought of that they, poor weak women, should be treated with the same impartiality or severity by the law as is dealt out to men. Women nowadays “want it,” not “both ways” merely, but all ways. At least as good arguments may be produced to prove that the apparent muscular inferiority of women to men is not fundamental, as are adduced to prove that the apparent intellectual inferiority is not fundamental. There are plenty of instances of extraordinary bodily strength in women. And yet we never hear these arguments. Why? Because Feminists have no interest, but quite the contrary, in perverting the truth on this side, whereas on the other, their demands require that they shall prove equality – the aim being to ensure for women all honourable, agreeable, and lucrative occupations in life, while guarding them carefully from all rough and disagreeable work and from all unpleasant responsibilities. Hence it suits their book to admit the physical, while denying the mental, inferiority. My constitutional objection to privileged classes extends also to a privileged sex. Hence my (as some deem it, intemperate) zeal in exposing the hollow humbug on which the practical demands of the “Woman’s Movement” rest.

Turning again to the present agitation, it is noteworthy how the evidence as to the numerical strength of the Suffrage movement adduced by its advocates is about on a level with the arguments advanced in support of the general principle of Feminism. A stage army, the vanguard of which probably amounts to some five hundred, which can on occasion, from all England, be raised to ten thousand (among these, girlish youth and innocence being particularly prominent), such is all that has yet been achieved, and such it is that we are asked to regard as representing the public opinion of England. However, one may suppose that the Feminists are so accustomed to their statements otherwise being allowed to pass by default, that they have come to regard the supineness and gullibility of public opinion in these matters as a safe speculation. Hence, at the beginning of the twentieth century the figure of British Womanhood rises up before us, reeking with privilege, and, in alternate strophes, tearfully whimpering and threateningly shrieking that she has not enough, that she wants more! Such, at least is the Womanhood of the Feminist agitation. In concluding this controversy, I can only reaffirm my original position unshaken, and that is, that whatever other arguments there may be for or against “Votes for Women,” certain it is, under any ordinarily recognised standard of fairness and equality, that so long as women enjoy those privileges before the law at the expense of men which they now do, it is unjust that they should be given facilities for increasing them by the concession of the franchise. 

[Belfort Bax, “Mr. Belfort Bax Replies to his Feminist Critics.” New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, and Art, London, Aug. 8, 1908, p. 287-288]

***


***

New York’s “Alimony Club”: Ludlow Street Jail - 1904

$
0
0

FULL TEXT: Ten thousand men in New York, it is estimated conservatively, are paying alimony, says the New York press. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are dodging it. Ten thousand women are receiving  returns from ventures in matrimony that lasted anywhere from a few days to many years, and hundreds would collect similar payments if they could. Many of these men are supporting two households. Some of them have married again and must provide for wife No. 2 as well as for wife No. 1. Others are called upon to furnish funds for the maintenance of their former wives, although these women may have becomes the wives of other men. The general rule of the courts is to allow the woman one-third of her husband’s income as alimony, which makes the payments range from $5 a week to $100 or more, although the larger amount is seldom reached.

The Alimony club of New York, as this aggregation of men is known, is one of the largest in the world and its non-resident list is a wonder. The out-of-town members are the dodgers, and these find it convenient to visit New York on Sundays, when writs in civil processes may not be served on them. They have taken up residence in neighboring states. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, and Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark, Greenwich and other cities and hamlets have what are known as alimony colonies. Human ingenuity has worn its fingers to the bone to dig up some method of remaining in the state and avoiding the payment of the sums ordered by the courts, but the only way it has found is for the erstwhile husband to go to jail periodically and purge himself of contempt of court and at the same time get rid of the burden of accrued debt. A certain inconvenience attaches to this method, however, so that recourse is seldom had to it.


The size and influence of the non-resident list of the Alimony club has been recognized and members are catered to by transportation companies. Not for nothing does the Pennsylvania railroad run the “alimony train” from Philadelphia to New York on Saturday nights, landing passengers in the city just after the stroke of midnight. Not for nothing does it start the same train homeward again just before the “witching hour” on Sunday, for it is well patronized by men whose business keeps them away during six days and permits them “to blow in for a sniff of New York” only once a week.

“Whenever you see a man in the theater district looking often at his watch on late Saturday night,” said a railroad man, “you may know he is a member of the Alimony club. He is giving  himself until the last minute before starting for the ferry. You never can get one of them to forget the hour.”

Not for nothing are suburban trains and ferryboats of other lines run at the same hours, for the alimony colonies along the lines are deserted from Saturday evening to Monday morning.

One former resident of New York who lives in Philadelphia makes this trip every week. As soon as the decree was given against him he packed up his belongings, wound up his business interests and hied him away. But he could not cut the social ties that bound him to the glittering district of upper Broadway so he returns to it when the streets are clear of deputy sheriffs.

Another man whose home is in the same city makes the trip two or three times a month, but he never knows whether he will get back. He is far in his former wife’s debt and she is anxious to collect from him. She knows of his visits to New York and has obtained an order for him to show cause why he should not be committed for contempt. Every Sunday night a man with the order is waiting at the ferry station, hoping the debtor will miss a car or forget to look at his watch, so he will arrive after the midnight hour. Any little accident, and the man will remain in New York for an indefinite period.

A third man moved to Newark after the judgment of the court was given. He could not give up his business interests, as he keeps in close touch with them throughout the week by telephone and comes to his office on Sunday and goes over the week’s transactions.

In the colony in Greenwich is a man who directs his business by proxy. Full reports are taken to him every night by a clerk and he sends his orders back by the same messenger. The method is slow and not altogether satisfactory, he says, but it is better than paying alimony.

One class in particular that is on the non-resident list of the Alimony club is the actor’s. Many a player foregoes engagements in New York because he will not, or cannot, obey the mandate of the court that he hand over to his former wife a part of his stipend. Chief among these men was Robert Mitchell. For ten years he was absent from the city because of a decree issued in 1891, and he returned this season only when the death of his wife who had divorced him cancelled his liability. The award in the Mitchell case stands among the large ones on record, Judge Beach allowing $5,000 a year. Another large award is that made in the case of Mrs. Annette B. Wetmore, now Mrs. Markoe, against William B. Wetmore. That was for $6,000.

Highest on the list, however, is the case of W. E. D. Stokes, of the Ansonia. The referee advised an allowance of $12,000 a year. A compromise for a lump sum was made later, as is done in the majority of cases where the allowance is large and the man is wealthy. In such cases as W. K. Vanderbilt a division of property is made in lieu of alimony.

[“New York Now Has an Alimony Club – Ten Thousand Alimony and Hundreds More Dodge the Court Order,” Fort Wayne Sentinel (In.), May 4, 1904, p. 5]

[Image: “County jail,” 1870, From Manual of the Corporation of the city of New York.(New York : The Council, 1840-1870) New York (N.Y.). Common Council, Author; illustrator: William Roberts, wood engraving]

***


***

The Alimony Racket – Checklist of Posts

$
0
0



This checklist is in progress. There are 66 items.

Come back and you will find more TREASURES.

***

If you ever took a class in school or college that offered a “herstory” of the relations between the sexes (called by Marxists “the genders”) which did not give you the sort of information that is included in the following original-source articles on the copiously documented history of the larcenous Alimony Racket* then you ought to conclude that your teacher is a con-artist, who stole your (or your family's) money and fed you lies, distortions, and half-truths.You deserve to get your money back (whether tuition or taxes).

The orthodox (politically correct) narrative is a fraud, a hoax, a sham and its promulgators are violators of human rights.

(*Alimony Racket, the term, refers not to justifiable alimony, but rather to the long-practiced rackets perpetrated by predatory women against men they deliberately schemed to make into their indentured servants through scams and frauds.)



There is an awful lot of reading material here. How to deal with such a pile of information? My humble recommendation is that if you want to join the Great Awakening and make a contribution to the growing and epic fight for liberty against tyranny, then you should shut-off the God-damned TV, skip the God-damed video games and get to work educating yourself.

***

MAIN REFERENCE:

The Alimony Racket: Quotations

***

CHRONOLOGICAL CHECKLIST:

The Alimony Racket in the 1870s

“It’s Awful To Compel One Man To Help Support The Wife Of Another.” – The Alimony Racket in 1901

New York’s “Alimony Club”: Ludlow Street Jail – 1904

An Alimony Racket Booby Trap - 1909

The Borrowed Baby Alimony Hoax - 1909

Peter Ball, Alimony Hero - 1911

Victimizing Veterans: The Alimony Racket in 1920

Samuel Reid: The First Fathers’ Rights Activist? - 1925

Judge Lewis vs. The Alimony Racket: Chicago, 1925

"A Parasitic Class": Alimony Racket - 1925 (by a female author)

"Those Alimony Grabbers" - 1925

The Alimony Racket in 1926: "Alimony Heiresses"

The World's First Men's Rights Organization - 1926-1930

Early Men’s Rights Writings by C. M. Castellazzo – 1927

Alimony Racket: “The Business of Gold-Diggers” - 1927

Female Lawyer to Help Victims of Gold-Diggers - 1930

Alimony Reform League vs. Sociopathic Sadism in 1935

Alimony “A La Kafka”: The Case of Henry Kolker – 1935

Alimony: An American Tragedy - 1952 (by a female author)

Anti-Misandry: Picketing in 1966

***

Augusta Grammage, Baby Farmer Convicted for “Feloniously Slaying” A Young Child - 1875

$
0
0

FULL TEXT: At the Old Bailey, a baby farmer, named Augusta Grammage, was lately sentenced to ten years' penal servitude for “feloniously slaying” a young child that had been entrusted to her care. The judge characterised the case as one of the most brutal that had had come before him.

[From “Clippings From The Home Papers,”  The Nelson Evening Mail (New Zealand),  Jan. 21, 1875, p. 4]

***

Baby farmers were rarely convicted. This brief news report does not disclose any other possible killings, thus Grammage is not included in the Female Serial Killer list. Yet the case is included in the list of Baby Farmers who were serial killers.

***


For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.

***

Martha Cooper, New Zealand Serial Baby-Killer - 1922

$
0
0

NOTE: Daniel Cooper was an abortion provider.  Together with his wife, he offered an adoption placement service for unwed mothers. This service was a fraud. The couple collected money the from mother and then starved the baby to death. The Coopers were charged with murdering three babies following the discovery of as body of a newborn at Lyall Bay. Daniel Cooper was found guilty of the murders and hanged at the Terrace Gaol on June 16, 1923. Martha Cooper pleaded that she had only taken part in the atrocities because her husband had forced her to, although it was reportedly she who had been the person who had deliberately starved the babies to death. She was acquitted of the charges and left the country soon after.

***

FULL TEXT: Wellington. Wednesday. – The Court of Appeal this morning delivered written reasons for the dismissal of the application by Daniel Richard Cooper for ,leave to appeal against his conviction for murder.

The Chief Justice, Sir Robert Stout, in the course of his judgment, said that the main reason given by counsel for Cooper in support of this application was that evidence had been admitted with respect to the finding of other bodies than the one in respect of which Cooper was charged with murder, and that such evidence was not admissible until a prima facie case of murder had been made out. I am of opinion,” continued His Honor, that, even if that be the law, sufficient evidence has been adduced to warrant the Court in admitting the evidence. There was some evidence — first, that a child found buried on the prisoner’s property was the body of the child of Margaret McLeod, and it was this child Cooper was charged with murdering. There was evidence to the effect that the body was that of a child about the age her child was at the time of its disappearance; second, that the child had been born alive, and had lived a few days; third, that the child was of dark complexion; fourth, that the sex was the same; fifth, that the child had been given by McLeod to Mrs. Cooper, who was living with prisoner, and that immediately after McLeod was told by Cooper that the child had been given to persons for its adoption. There was evidence that she had demanded possession of the child, and could not get any definite answer as to whom it had been given by Cooper, nor where it was; and the child could not be found. Further, there was evidence that the child had not been adopted. All these facts were put forward in Court before evidence as to other children was advanced.

I am of opinion,” concluded His Honor, that this case is indistinguishable from the case of Makin against the Attorney-General of New South Wales, and Regina v. Dean, and the Court is bound by the decisions in these cases. In view of these decisions, it is clear that evidence regarding other bodies found in the ground at Newlands belonging to prisoner was relevant evidence, and tended to show he had been guilty of killing babies, the custody of which had been granted to him by their mothers. The jury could rightly infer that from evidence adduced.”

Mr. Justice Hosking, in his judgment, concurred with the Chief Justice, that a prima facie case was made out before the evidence objected to was admitted. Mr. Justice Salmond said the case was indistinguishable from Makin v. the Attorney-General of New South Wales, and the admission of evidence objected to was in accordance with the rule laid down by the Court of Anneal in Regina v. Whitta and Regina v. Smythe: Amplication for leave to appeal was therefore refused..

[“The Murder Trial. - Cooper’s Conviction. Application To Appeal. Reasons. For Refusal.” Syndicated (Telegraph. Press Association), The New Zealand Herald (Auckland, New Zealand), May 31, 1923, p. 9]

***
Images taken from a long article, “’Foul Deeds Will Rise’ - Coopers Tried For Murder - The Massacre of the Innocents - Out-Heroding Herod,” New Zealand Truth (Wellington, New Zealand), May 19, 1923, p.. 5]

***

***


For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.

***

Minnie Dean, New Zealand “Baby Farmer” Executed For Killing Babies - 1895

$
0
0

EXCERPT from Wikipedia: Williamina "Minnie" Dean (2 September 1844 – 12 August 1895) was a New Zealander who was found guilty of infanticide and hanged. She was the only woman to receive the death penalty in New Zealand.

In 1895, Dean was observed boarding a train carrying a young baby and a hatbox, but observed leaving the same train without the baby and only the hatbox. As railway porters later testified, the object was suspiciously heavy. A woman, Jane Hornsby, came forward claiming to have given her granddaughter, Eva, to Dean, and clothes identified as belonging to this child were found at Dean's residence, but Dean could not produce the child herself. A search along the railway line found no sign of the child. Dean was arrested and charged with murder. Her garden was dug up, and three bodies (two of babies, and one of a boy estimated to be three years old) were uncovered. An inquest found that one child (Eva) had died of suffocation and one, later identified as one year-old Dorothy Edith Carter, had died from an overdose of laudanum (used on children to sedate them). The cause of death for the third child was not determined. Dean was charged with their murder.


In her trial, Dean's lawyer Alfred Hanlon argued that all deaths were accidental, and that they had been covered up to prevent adverse publicity of the sort that Dean had previously been subjected to. On 21 June 1895, however, Dean was found guilty of Dorothy Carter's murder, and sentenced to death. Between June and August 1895, Dean wrote her own account of her life. Altogether, she claimed to have cared for twenty eight children. Of these, five were in good health when her establishment was raided, six had died whilst under her care, and one had been reclaimed by her parents. Apart from her two adopted daughters, that left fourteen or so children unaccounted for, according to her own record.

On 12 August, she was hanged by the official executioner Tom Long in Invercargill, at the intersection of Spey and Leven streets, in what is now the Noel Leeming carpark. She is the only woman to have been executed in New Zealand, and as capital punishment in New Zealand has been abolished, it is likely that she will retain that distinction. She is buried in Winton, alongside her husband, who died in a house fire in 1908. Her crimes led to the belated passage of child welfare legislation in New Zealand – the Infant Life Protection Act 1893 and the Infant Protection Act 1896. 

***

***


For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.

***

Diane & Rachel Staudte, Missouri Mom & Daughter Serial Killer Team - 2013

$
0
0

According to criminal charges filed in June 21, 2013, Diane Staudte (51), of Springfield, Missouri confessed to poisoning three family members with anti-freeze. Yet Mrs. Staudte had good reasons for her homicidal house-cleaning campaign.

The serial poisoner told detective that she chose to terminate the life of her husband Mark because she “hated him.” Her son Shawn deserved to die  because he was “worse than a pest.” Daughter Sarah, who survived the attempt on her life, barely, was deemed not fit to live because she “would not get a job and had student loans that had to be paid.”

At first, this killer mom attempted to cover up daughter Rachel’s role as an accessory. Yet ultimately Rachel (22), was revealed to have planned and executed the crimes in tandem with her malicious mother.

Antifreeze was the poison of choice.

***

ANTIFREEZE

Antifreeze seems to becoming a bit of a trend among homicide addicts of the fair gender.

Julia Lynn Turner, of Marietta, Georgia, used antifreeze to murder two partners. In 1995, she killed husband Maurice Glenn Turner, age 31. On January 22, 2001, she killed her boyfriend, Randy Thompson, age 32, father of a child conceived while married to her first victim.

Stacey Castor of Clay, New York, was convicted in 2009 of killing a husband and a brother, and attempting to murder a daughter using antifreeze, and idea she got from watching a TV news report on the turner case. Her husband was sitting beside her watching as she gained her antifreeze inspiration.

She killed second husband David Castor, using antifreeze, in2005. The murderess tried, unsuccessfully, to pin the guilt for the two successful murders on her third targeted victim, daughter Ashley Wallace, who had been very close to her deceased father. But Amy survived the antifreeze and the fake suicide note created by her mother became damning evidence against the poisoner.

***

VICTIMS:

Died:
Mark Staudte, 61, Diane’s husband, died April 2012
Shawn Staudte, 26, Diane’s son, died September 2012

Survived:
Sarah Staudte, 24, Diane’s daughter, survived June 2013 poisoning

***

Diane Staudte is far from being the first female serial killer who enlist one of their adult children as accomplices in their repeat homicides. The following cases are examples of  murder-coaching moms: Guadalupe Martinez de Bejarano (1892, Mexico), Ivanova Tamarin (1912, Estonia), Rose Veres (USA, 192), Mary Eleanor Smith (1938, USA), Leonarda Cianciulli (1941, Italy), Silvia Meraz  (2012, Mexico).

Among these murderous moms are two cannibals, one sadistic sex offender and two cannibals and a human-sacrifice cult leader on the list.

***


For similar cases, see Murder-Coaching Moms

***
Viewing all 1778 articles
Browse latest View live