Mother Attempts Drowning Infant Under Drink's Influence
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in New York is continually bringing to light cases of most harrowing suffering and shocking degradation which have their origin in strong drink. One of these of recent occurrence was a case wherein a working man, the father of five children, entreated an officer of the society to help them to save his youngest child, Annie, eight months old. The wife and mother, in a drunken frenzy, had resolved to drown the child, and for that purpose had started for one of the piers. The father and officer finally overtook her, and the officer seized her just as she had reached the middle of the Thirteenth Street pier and was about to throw the child into the river. The rescued child was given to the father, and the drunken mother was sent to Blackwell’s Island for six months. It transpired that another child of this wretched woman, aged 14, had some months before been sent to the House of Refuge for stealing to get “drink-money” for his mother!—Ex.