[Newspaper]
Publication: The Kansas City Star
Kansas City, MO, United States
vol. 11, no. 38, p. 1, col. 4-5
DETERMINED TO STARVE.
Mary Cross, Disappointed in Her Desire to
Do Murder, Refuses Food for Thirty-two
Days and Has Not Yet Weakened.
[Louisville Courier-Journal.]
COVINGTON, Ky., Oct. 25. — The Covington jail at the present time contains among its inmates one whose strangeness of action is fairly phenomenal, and quite outside the common occurrences in criminal society. The person in question is Mary Cross, a colored woman, apparently over 40 years of age. She has been in jail now for about six weeks. Shortly after she had been put in jail she formed the illusion to die from starvation, and to-day she completed the thirty-second day of a wholly voluntary fast. Not a particle of solid food has in that time entered her mouth, though it was almost daily offered to her. She has been taking, now and then, some cold water, and during the warm weather some small quantities of crushed ice. To partake of sight else no entreaties nor solicitations have been able to move her, and now, at the last, her determination is presented as stubborn and as inflexible as ever.
This singular creature was placed in prison in consequence of her expressed purpose of killing some member of the family of Mr. R. Hemingray, jr., with whom she was for some time a domestic, and against whom she conceived a most venomous and inveterate hatred for an imaginary wrong. While at his home some jewelry was one day discovered missing and the police intrusted with the work of hunting it up rather suspected the woman. They were able to discover nothing positive, however, and nothing was said or done to her till, of her own accord, she picked a quarrel with one of the officers and was in consequence taken to jail.
She was immediately released, however, but almost immediately got the notion fixed in her head that she was charged with the stealing of the jewels. These had been found, but this made no difference to her belief that Mr. Hemingray was responsible for her arrest. An effort to shoot him led to her being sent to jail where she was sentenced to 100 days' imprisonment. She soon began to fast, just as on the present occasion, and kept it up for fully thirty-three days, taking in all that time no food. Then, however, she suddenly weakened and gradually came round to the normal course of three meals daily. As the term of her imprisonment grew near its end considerable anxiety was felt, for she had on different occasions declared she would never die in peace till she had killed Mr. Hemingray or some of his family or set fire to his house.
After much trouble and effort she was induced to remove to Philadelphia, and the hope was that she would stay there permanently. This was doomed to be disappointed, and she returned in two weeks. Her aunt followed her here, and she was held over to the common court of the criminal court. Only a few days in jail had been spent, where she again declared that she would eat nothing, and that she proposed to starve herself to death. She has stuck to her purpose with a perversity that is astonishing, and it is evident that she has but to keep it up a short spell longer to attain her end.
Investigation has not sustained the idea of insanity. Her temper has always been of the most violent and perverse sort, and her present conduct, while going to the extreme, is in keeping with what is known of her antecedents. Still the case is a remarkable one and worthy the attention of the students of character and the speculation of the psychologist.
