FULL TEXT: The Brest journals give an account of the arrest of a servant girl named Bougaran, charged with the murder of three infants, the children of Mr. R—, Professor in the College of that place, and of one other child, the daughter of Mr. M—, clerk to the juge de paix at Lesneven [“error in orig. “Lanseven”]. The first three children all died in November, apparently from a gastric affection, which caused them to vomit blood and fecal matter. A few days later the fourth child died, under precisely similar circumstances, a day or two after-he had engaged the servant who had lived with Mr. R. Suspicion then arose that she had poisoned all the children, and she was in consequence arrested. When interrogated she confessed that she had killed all the children by forcing them to swallow excrements, and then cutting the veins of the neck with a knife, which she inserted in the mouth. The post-mortem examination of the poor children has fully proved this statement to be true. The girl affirms that she committed the crimes under an irresistible impulse, and that, had she remained longer with Mr. M.— she should have murdered his other child in the same manner.
[Untitled, from “Foreign News and Gossip.” Column, The Brookluyn Daily Eagle (N. Y.), Dec. 30, 1865, p. 1]
