Two cases of " morbid impulse " in children have
recently attraeted attention in the United States. In one, which tran- spired in New York, a nurse-girl, very quiet, good-natural, anti attractive in appearance, confessed that although she watched any child she liked very placidly she felt obliged to burn any child sbe did not like alive. She had done this in two instances, and attempted it in more, her plan being to lay the baby on its bed, heap clothes or papers under it, and fire them. In the second case, in poston, a boy named Pomeroy, only fourteen years old, Was' found guilty of maiming seven children, and condemned to the Penitentiary. Ile was of course "pardoned out," and immediately cut the throat of a little girl, named Katie Curran, who had come to his mother's store for papers. This was on 18th March, and on 22nd April he decoyed a little boy, named Millen, to the marshes, under pretence of showing him a steamer. Once in the marshes, he told the boy to lie down, and stabbed him to death with a jack-knife. In both instances, the murderers say they could not -help themselves, though the girl only killed children she did not like ; in both, insanity is assumed ; and in neither is there the faintest evidence of insanity beyond the crimes themselves. It is more than likely that the nurse-girl is merely a supreme -example of callous selfishness, like Constance Kent; and that the lad kills children as he would kill cats, for the pleasure of destroying life. Both confessed quite readily.
Previous page
