Republican Herald

MISCELLANEOUS.

TWO WOMEN TRIED AND CONVICTED
OF MURDER.

Two women, named Fanny Billing and Catherine Frarey, were recently tried in England for the foul crime of murder, committed under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. The following are the shocking particulars, as developed during the trial:-

The prisoner, Frarey, is the wife of a shoemaker at Burnham (the birth place of Nelson) and at the time of the commission of the murder in question, she lodged at the house of a Mrs. Lake, next door to the deceased. Peter Taylor, the husband of the murdered woman, is a haircutter: and in the beginning of the present year, formed an illicit connexion with Mrs. Billing, the prisoner. This begat a jealousy on the part of Mrs. Taylor, whom the prisoner, in consequence resolved upon murdering. For Mrs. Frarey's services to Mrs. Billing in this murder, the latter agreed to assist the former in getting rid of her (Mrs. Frarey's husband,) who had become jealous of her; and these two atrocious schemes were forthwith carried into complete and fatal effect. In the latter end of February, the two prisoners went to the shop of a chemist at Burnham, where they purchased three pennyworth of white arsenic, stating that they were sent for it by Mrs. Webster, a tradesman's wife, who, however, had not sent them. The arsenic was put up, in two separate papers, and the word "poison" written upon each, in large legible letters. One of these packets was procured to poison Mrs. Taylor, the other to poison Frarey's husband. In the evening of the 4th of March, Mrs. Talbot, a sister of Mrs. Taylor, called upon her, having heard that she was unwell. She found the poor woman sitting in a chair, vomiting frightfully, and in the greatest agony, calling out for water, and that "her stomach was on fire." Peter Taylor, her husband, was sitting by her side. Mrs. Talbot, seeing her sister so unwell, went to the house of the prisoner, Frarey, for some gruel, and having found some standing on the "hob," she warmed it and took it to the sick woman. The prisoner Frarey entered the room of the invalid at the same time, and after observing that "the gruel was too thick," she took it from Mrs. Talbot, and presently returned with it in a more liquid state, and said to Mrs. Taylor in the blandest tone, "I hope, my dear, you'll take some of it now from me, and that it will do you all the good I wish." At this moment the husband called Mrs. Talbot out of the room, leaving his wife alone with the prisoner Frarey. Upon the return of Mrs. Talbot to the bed room, she perceived that her sister had eaten some of the gruel, and found her much weaker than she had left her. She requested Frarey to go for the doctor, but she excused herself on the plea that "it was no use; the woman was a dead woman:" but she agreed to go upon the solicitation of the husband. The poor woman died before the doctor arrived, and her body was laid out by the prisoners and two or three others, who regaled themselves with copious streams of tea after the ceremony, in the very room in which lay the dead body of the person whom two of them had so recently murdered.

In the case of the husband of Mrs. Frarey, the following plan was acted upon, in pursuance of the original understanding that for Mrs. Frarey's assistance in murdering Mrs. Taylor, she (Mrs. Billing) would assist in murdering Mrs. Frarey's husband. It did not appear that any ill will existed between Mrs. Billing and Robert Frarey, or between Mrs. Frarey and Mrs. Taylor. It appeared by the evidence, that as Robert Frarey was sitting at tea with his wife and a friend, the prisoner Billing came in with a jug of porter, and asked Mrs. Frarey to give her a teacup. The prisoner Frarey rose and took a cup from a shelf, and gave it to Billing, who poured some of the porter into it, after shaking it up in the jug. Having done so, she turned her back, and having stirred it up with her finger, handed it to the husband, who drank it up immediately. The friend who was at tea, observing a white substance in the jug, said to Frarey, "Why, I could not drink sugar in my porter, if it were ever so." No reply was made and Billing left the house with the rest of the porter in the jug. In the course of the night, Frarey, the husband, was taken ill, and after lingering in great agony for two days, death put an end to his sufferings. His wife had him buried with all possible expedition. After the funeral, Mrs. Southgate, the person who was drinking tea with the deceased when the fatal dose was administered, said to Mrs. Frarey, "If I were you, I'd have my husband took up again and examined, for I'm sure the world will talk, and I'd shut the world's mouth." The prisoner replied, "I should not like it by no means, would you?" To which Mrs. Southgate answered. "Yes, I would like it, for if you don't, it will be a check upon you, and your children after you."

The story of the porter with the sugar in it got noised abroad soon after this, and the body was exhumed; and, upon examining the stomach, a quantity of arsenic was found in it. The purchase of arsenic by the prisoner was proved, as on the former trial, and their own voluntary statements before the coroner, were put in evidence.

The Jury returned a verdict of Guilty-and the Judge immediately sentenced them to be executed. "Frarey, towards the close of the learned Judge's address, fell into hysterics, but no sympathy appeared to be felt by the audience towards these monsters in human form.

Rick. Rep.