New Hampshire Statesman

Murder.

Our southern Post-Rider communicates the following information: On or about Christmas, a man by the name of Josiah Winfield, of the town of Reading, Steuben county, called on Dr. Richard Husten, of the same town, and requested of him two portions of arsenic, to destroy the rats, as he said. But the doctor, suspecting him, gave him two emetics instead.

When Winfield left the house he was followed by the doctor, whose suspicion of some improper design on the part of Winfield, induced him to observe his motions—and arriving at his house, observed him (through the window) feeding one part of it to his own infant child, and urging his wife to take the other. Both wife and child were, and had been, extremely unwell for a considerable time past, and this monster in human shape, wished to murder them, to rid himself of the trouble of attending upon them.

The doctor having seen sufficient to convince him of the foul design of Winfield, immediately entered the house, and charged him with his murderous design—which we are told he at length confessed. The child died in the course of a short time after, in consequence of the powerful operation of the medicine upon its debilitated frame. How any human being could be so lost to the dictates of humanity, and the most common feeling of our nature, as to attempt the murder,—by poison, of a wife and his own infant, when in a situation that would naturally seem to call forth our most tender sympathies—when confined to the bed of sickness, we are perfectly at a loss to imagine. We can dwell no longer on this revolting and heart-rending subject. The fellow is now safely secured in the jail at Bath—there to await the punishment due his atrocious crime.