Murders of the deliberate kind appear to breed each other.
Only last week we remarked on the singularly deliberate murder of his five children by the blacksmith Gouldstone at Waltham- stow. On Sunday night, at Thornton Heath, Croydon, James Cole murdered his little son, three years old, by deliberately. taking hold of his legs and dashing his head against the floor. The child lived until Monday morning, not apparently in a conscious state, and, then died. The man was not under the influence of drink, but he has been repeatedly imprisoned before for violent assaults, and his wife and children seem to have felt the greatest fear of him. The evidence proved that Cole had been reading the story of the Walthamstow case all the Sunday, and had told his wife that he would settle his own children in the same way. Gloomy cruelty is infectious.
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