"About a week after the funeral, Mary May again waited upon him to request him to sign a certificate to the effect that her brother was in perfect health a fortnight before he died, that being the time at which, as it subsequently appeared, she had entered him as nominee in the Harwich Burial Club. Upon inquiring as to the reason of her desiring this certificate, she told him that, unless she got it, she could not get the money for him from the club. This at once supplied the vicar with what appeared to be a motive for 'foul play' on the part of the woman. He accordingly obtained permission to have the body of her brother exhumed; doses of arsenic were detected, and the woman was arrested. With the evidence given upon the trial the reader is, no doubt, perfectly conversant, and it will be unnecessary for me to detail it. She was convicted. Previously to her execution she refused to make any confession, but said, 'If I were to tell all I know, it would give the hangman work for the next twelve months.' Undue weight ought not to be attached to the declaration of such a woman as Mary May; but, coupled with the disclosures that took place upon the trial with respect to some of her neighbours and accomplices, and with the extraordinary rate of mortality among the clubs, it certainly does appear that the general opinion with respect to the mischievous effects of these societies is not altogether without foundation. "Although there are not in Essex, at present, any burial clubs in which children are admitted under fourteen years of age as members or nominees, still, as illustrating the evils arising from these clubs, I may state that many persons who are fully conversant with the working of such institutions have stated that they have frequently been shocked by hearing women of the lower classes, when speaking of a neighbour's child, make use of such expressions as, 'Oh, depend upon it, the child'll not live; it's in the burial club.' When speaking to the parents of a child who may be unwell, it is not unfrequently that they say, 'You should do so and so,' or, 'You should not do so and so;' '_You should not treat it in that way; is it in the burial club_?' Instances of the most culpable neglect, if not of graver offences, are continually occurring in districts where clubs exist in which children are admitted. A collector of one of the most extensive burial societies gave it as his opinion, founded upon his experience, that it had become a constant practice to neglect the children for the sake of the allowance from the clubs; and he supported his opinion by several cases which had come under his own observation."