Twenty five year old Rebecca Law of Starling Green near Clavering, England, astounded her mother on January 14 when she arrived weeping at her home in Langley, some three miles away, in the small hours of the morning. Mrs. Law's dress was covered in blood, and she led her 6 year old son by the hand. She had, she said, chopped up her husband, Samual, then killed her 16 week old baby, Alfred with a hammer.
Investigation of the Laws' remote cottage confirmed this. Samuel Law, a dissolute ratcatcher, who had recently spent a month in prison, had been ferociously attacked with a billhook, and had over 100 deep cuts and slashes, mutilating his face, neck and shoulders.
Officials and the chaplain from the workhouse, where Mrs. Law found relief during her husbands inprisonment, testified at her trial that she was melancholic and a religiomaniac; her own statements bore this out.
She had deliberately chopped up Samuel after they read the Bible together. In her statement she averred: "All the time I was hitting him there was a noise on the stairs. They kept on blundering up the stairs- I mean the devils- but I was'nt afraid."
The Lord Chief Justice suggested that the jury might wish to aquit her without hearing further proceedings. They did so, and she has been removed to an asylum.
Source: Chronicle of Crime