Baby

A roadman employed by the Corporation found the body of a female child in Spen Dyke near Daggers Hall Farm.

The body was wrapped up in a bundle, tied with string and jammed against a spar. The man said that he had been working on the road for the past three weeks and had not noticed the bundle before.

The bundle was opened by a policeman.

The autopsy stated that the child was 14 days old. He said that because of the state of decomposition that he could not determine the cause of death but judging by the state of the jaws he said that she had been smothered and after being kept for a certain amount of time had been put into the dyke 6-7 days earlier.

The coroner said that the cause of death was a mystery but that if she had died of natural causes then she would presumably have been buried properly and said that he thought the chances were that she had been done to death by either drowning or suffocation.