Crimes and Punishments.

The strong Tory sympathies of her parents caused him to regard the capture of Philadelphia, in 1777, as the harbinger of the good time approaching when the king should come to his own again, and Elizabeth, during the occupancy of the British army of that city, visited it, and remained for several weeks at the Indian Queen Inn, on Fourth Street, which at that time was kept by a distant relative of her parents. While there her loveliness attracted the attention of a young man, an incident which years afterwards brought her to an unnatural death, - that of a convicted felon.

After the war had ceased Elizabeth Wilson again visited Philadelphia, for the attractions of the metropolis of the commonwealth, the glare and glitter of the city, had made such an impression on her mind that the quiet stillness of the country became distasteful to her, while the drudgery of rural life, much greater than in our day, she endeavored to avoid by seeking employment at the Indian Queen Inn, where as a relative, by rendering some service in the household affairs, she was received as one of the family. The young man heretofore mentioned resided at the inn as a boarder, and Elizabeth, then in the full maturity of her beauty, became warmly, devotedly attached to him. His attentions were so marked that no doubt was entertained by her relatives in the city that a marriage between the young couple would ultimately result. They, like Elizabeth, did not suspect the traitorous heart of the young man, who, during the war, had acquitted himself as a bold, dashing officer. Sufficient it is to my purpose to state that the poor girl, unmarried, when on the eve of becoming a mother, was informed by the parties with whom she was living in Philadelphia that she must withdraw herself from their dwelling.

Whither to go she knew not, but at length she determined to seek the shelter of her father's house, and learning that a farmer living in the same neighborhood with her parents was in the city, she asked the privilege of riding thither in his market-wagon. It was late in the night, in those days of early hours, that she alighted from the vehicle at the gate of her childhood's home, and, in great agony of mind and body, she wearily made her way to the door of the house, which stood some little distance from the highway, and when there she was so exhausted that she could not rap for admission, but sank on the steps. Her moanings, however, aroused her father, who raised the window .and inquired, "Who's there?" "A poor sick woman," was the faint response to his question. The old man's feeling of humanity was touched, and he and his wife - Elizabeth Wilson's step-mother - hurried to the door, and raising the poor girl, bore her to a settee, without recognizing her as their child. And then before morning Elizabeth gave birth to two male children.

As soon as the mother had again strength she rode to Philadelphia to find the father of her sons, who had, a little while before their birth, absented himself from the Indian Queen, giving out that he had gone away on business and would be absent some time. On her arrival in the city she found him. He received her apparently with pleasure, and after they had been together several hours she remounted the horse and returned to Chester County.

The Sunday following, while her parents were absent at worship, she dressed herself, and taking her babes with her left the house, stating that she was going to meet their father and be married. She walked in the direction of Newtown Square, and for a week (excepting a neighbor going along the road conveyed her a short distance in his wagon, from which she alighted on the King's Highway leading to Philadelphia, and seating herself on a rock on the roadside, near the farm of Mr. Cope, in East Bradford, where he last saw her nursing her infants) nothing more was heard respecting her for a week or more; although it afterwards appeared that about dusk the same day she came to the Indian Queen Inn, in Philadelphia, haggard, and exhibiting all the indications of an unsound mind. Her children were not with her.

A week or so after the disappearance of Elizabeth Wilson, while some gunners were traversing the woods on the east side of the Edgmont road, above Street road, their dogs discovered the bodies of two murdered babies hidden beneath a felled tree, a little earth and twigs having been thrown upon the corpses to conceal them from sight. The remains were immediately taken to her father's house, - for she was at once under suspicion, - where they were fully identified by the clothing as her children. A coroner's jury was impaneled, and a verdict rendered charging the crime of murder on the absent mother. She was shortly thereafter arrested and lodged in the old jail in Chester. When taken into custody she remained silent, refusing to make any statement as to the deed, and a sluggish apathy marked her demeanor, saving at times when she would weep passionately and appeal to heaven for mercy.

When the Court of Oyer and Terminer for Chester County was held, the grand jury indicted her for murder and she was arraigned for trial, but to the clerk's inquiry, "How say you, prisoner at the bar, are you guilty or not guilty?" she made no response save weeping violently. Judge Atlee (William Augustus Atlee, one of the puisne judges of the