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MAGUS

42 child). Sure he was tormented with the trouble it gave to everybody – no one would take this week’s earning to take care of it”’ ‘“John” (said I) “had you not (you should not have) done what you have done. I never brought a blush to your face (craved you) for all the trouble it gave me. I would have begged the world with it to take care of it”. To Mr Blacker – “I told the prisoner that if he had killed the child, all Ireland could not save him and that he had better make his road good”. Before the child took the small-pox it was a fine, healthy child. I know Mrs Rainey – she is rather a passionate woman. The report was that she alleged she had no luck in selling anything in her shop from the time it came about the house because it was “bewitched like”. The opinion of the country-people is that a bewitched child is a sickly one which has been left in place by a fine child taken away by the fairies. It was reported that Mrs Rainey advised the prisoner to take the head off the child and throw it behind the fire. To a Juror – I am sister to the prisoner’. [Witness here cried bitterly and there was a strong sensation in the Court] Elizabeth Rainey – ‘I am the wife of William Rainey and live in Armagh. I keep a huckstry. The prisoner lodged in my house for about a month. He left me on the Wednesday after Shrove Tuesday. When he had been with me for about a fortnight, his sister sent a child to him. It remained there for about a fortnight. It slept with him and got its diet with him. It went by the name of Felix. On the Sunday evening before Shrove Tuesday, prisoner borrowed my apron to put it about the child and after he had done so he took the child and left the house between seven and eight at night. He did not say where he was going. He returned in the inside of two hours without the child but bringing back the apron. I said to him “John, what did the child say when you were leaving it?” – He replied that it said nothing. I said, if they give it a fire and a bit to eat, it would not give them much trouble and he replied “not much”. He then asked me for a drink; I told him I had no water except what was hot in the kettle. When [the] prisoner took it away, it wore an old flannel petticoat with a patch on it – an old torn sarsnet coat – and an old black calico bib. I never saw it alive after that night. I saw the dead body of a child in the infirmary nearly five weeks afterward. I think it was that of Felix Blakely – Dr Colvan, Ann Finlay (last witness) and Mrs Magill were present. The prisoner remained in my house till the Wednesday after he took the child away’. To Mr Blacker – ‘I live in Lower Irish Street, Armagh. I am married and have five children from 3 to 15 years of age. The child was bare and hungry-looking; it had the small-pox and

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