Baby

The body of a newly born infant was found decomposed in a field in Southrop.

The body was found by a carter that had lived in Langford, Oxon as he was riding in a cart down the Southrop to Filkins Road near Lechlade, when he noticed what appeared to be a brown paper parcel of groceries lying in a shallow cavity under the roots of a maple tree of a hedge.

He said that he got the box, which had no word or sign upon its outside, and that when he opened it he found the body of a child wrapped up in calico and wood shavings.

A police constable that examined the contents, which he said could only be described as 'mummified', said that it was that of a child aged about two or three months that had been so large that it had apparently been bent and forced into the box.

He noted that there was nothing to indicate the cause of death.

At the inquest at the Parish Rooms in Southrop on Friday 29 September 1911 the jury returned an open verdict.