JEALOUS OF HER HUSBAND'S CARESSES STEPMOTHER POISONS FOUR CHILDREN: AMERICUS TIMES-RECORDER, OCTOBER 19, 1913

The chemist's report did what two double funerals had not. Shown the analysis of the viscera of two of her stepchildren, boys who had died under what the dispatch calls "peculiar circumstances," Ellen Etheridge, named in the dispatch as Mrs. Ellen Walker-West-Etheridge, confessed. She told Prosecuting Attorney H. S. Dillard and Sheriff H. W. Randall that she had poisoned them, and then she told them about two more, who had died in June. The story went out from Waco, Texas, on October 18, 1913, and the next morning the Americus Times-Recorder in Georgia put it on its front page under a headline that named her motive before it named the crime.

By her own account, she gave concentrated lye to the two youngest, aged two and ten, in June, and arsenic to the other two, aged five and nine, in October. The dispatch never names them. One of the June dead was Eula Mae, born in 1911. The October dead were Oscar, five, and his brother Richard, who had been sent with their sister on the long walk to fetch the mail and came home to buttermilk laced with arsenic. Their sister drank little of it and lived. Their father, the ranch owner J. D. Etheridge, had eight children when he married her.

The rest of the story is about who she was. She was the daughter of the Reverend John Walker, a Baptist minister of Matagorda County, and she had been married three times. She had met Etheridge, the paper says, while living with her brother-in-law, Mel Malone, on a farm next to the Looney ranch, and his first wife had died that January with Mrs. West the only one at her bedside. The paper sets that last detail down and stops, with no comment and no continuation line. The indictments that followed named only the children.

This is a wire dispatch printed within days of the confession and two months before the trial; it reports what she was said to have told the authorities, and it is not a court record. It has the two boys dying on October 7; they died on October 2, and the chemist reported on October 7. It places her marriage in March after a meeting that January, which would mean 1913, but the marriage took place in the spring of 1912, and by another account her sister found her work as Etheridge's housekeeper. On December 23, 1913, a jury at Meridian convicted her of four murders and of attempting to murder a fifth child, and she was given life on each murder and five years for the attempt.

Printed on October 19, 1913, this front page of the Americus Times-Recorder is in the public domain, well beyond the ninety-five years after which the Library of Congress treats a newspaper as public domain in its entirety. The scan is the Library's own copy, from its Chronicling America collection, and the full citation and the Library's rights statement are set out under it.

Nothing in the dispatch was illegible, and it is transcribed exactly as set. The compositor put a full stop after "October 7" where a comma belonged, which breaks the opening sentence in two, and printed "she gave two other" without its final s; both stand. So does the triple-barreled "Walker-West-Etheridge." The story ends at "bedside" with no jump to another page, so the two columns here are the whole of it.

Front page of the Americus Times-Recorder, October 19, 1913: a two-column dispatch under the stacked headline "Jealous of Her Husband's Caresses / Stepmother Poisons Four Children," text only. — Americus Times-Recorder (Americus, Georgia), October 19, 1913, page 1, columns 1-2: "JEALOUS OF HER HUSBAND'S CARESSES STEPMOTHER POISONS FOUR CHILDREN." Library of Congress, Chronicling America (LCCN sn89053204).Select the scan to open it at full size. The full newspaper page: JPG or PDF.Rights: "The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials." This issue was published in 1913.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

JEALOUS OF HER HUSBAND'S CARESSES STEPMOTHER POISONS FOUR CHILDREN

Waco, Tex., Oct. 18.—Confronted by a chemical analysis of the viscera of two of her stepchildren, who died under peculiar circumstances October 7. Mrs. Ellen Walker-West-Etheridge, confessed to poisoning the two children and told Prosecuting Attorney H. S. Dillard and Sheriff H. W. Randall that she had administered poison to two other stepchildren, who died in June.

According to the woman's story, she administered concentrated lye to two of her stepchildren, 2 and 10 years old, in June, and she gave two other, 5 and 9 years old, arsenic in October. When the ranch owner married Mrs. Ellen Walker-West in March he had eight children.

The confessed murderess is the daughter of Rev. John Walker, a Baptist minister, of Matagorda county. She has been married three times. In January of this year she met Etheridge while living with her brother-in-law, Mel Malone, on the latter's farm, adjoining the Looney ranch. Etheridge's first wife died in January, and at the time of her death Mrs. West was the only one at her bedside.

Notes: a full stop, not a comma, is printed after "October 7"; "she gave two other" is printed without the s. Both kept. The article ends at "bedside." with no continuation line. No words were illegible.