Baby

The body of a newly-born female child was found in a field.

The child was found in a field by the banks of the River Tame at Kingsbury on 9 March 1915 by a farmer that said he was going to look at his sheep in the river meadow. He said that his little boy was with him and that he said to him, 'Look at that, dad'. He said that he replied, 'Come away, it is a dead dog'. However, he said that when he looked again he found that it was the body of a nude child. He said that he then went to fetch the police.

The farmer said that the field was very often flooded and that there were always plenty of dead dogs about there. He added that the floods brought down all the rubbish from Birmingham.

A policeman then arrived soon after said that the body was lying about 75 yards from the river and about 120 yards from the footpath. He said that the rubbish that had been washed up by the flood was 10 yards away and that he considered that the child had been placed there and not washed down by the river flood.

The doctor that carried out the post-mortem stated that it was a fully developed female child and that its lungs floated in water and that he thought that respiration had taken place. He said that he thought that the child had died from inattention at birth and that it had been dead for between two and three weeks. He added that he didn't think that the child had drowned.