At the last Exeter assizes Mary Jane Harris and Charlotte
Winsor, residing near Torquay, were tried on a charge of murder- ing an infant child of the latter, but the jury were unable to agree, and were discharged. On the 28th July Charlotte Winsor was tried again, and Harris being admitted Queen's evidence proved that the prisoner had offered to kill her child for her for 41., and said she had " put by " four children for girls whom she named, receiving in each case a fee varying from 3/. to 51. She carried on murder as a business. Harris, who seems to be an evil but somewhat weak woman, declares that Winsor so " filled her mind up," fascinating her as it were with the horror of her sugges- tions, that she consented, and on 9th February saw her take away the child into another room to kill, and looked in to see it die, but by her own account did not see it. Winsor then brought it in dead, and the murderess and the mother stripped it and put it into a box, which \Vinsor subsequently wanted to take to Exeter, but was afraid, "it had such an air on it," and threw it away near her house, where it was found. The jury believed this story, which was corroborated on many slight points, and tells too strongly against the narrator to be an invention, and brought in a verdict of guilty, and the judge in passing sentence of death warned the wretched woman not to look for mercy in this world. We have commented on the story in another place, and would only add here that there is injustice, perhaps unavoidable, but still great, in pub- lishing the names of the women who employed \Vinsor. They are
ruined for life, without the chance even of being heard. •
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