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Minnie Taylor

Age: 10

Sex: female

Date: 5 Apr 1910

Place: Wesley Street, Great Ancoats Street, Manchester

Minnie Taylor was found hanged in the cellar.

An open verdict was returned.

Her clothes were wet and had burn marks on them and it was suggested that she might have set the mantlepiece and things on fire and then put it out with water and then to have been so scared of her parents that she had gone into the cellar and hung herself.

She had been left in charge of the house when her parents went out.

She was found hanging dead in the cellar when the father returned home. A part of a clothes line was found round her neck, the other end of which was fastened to a nail in the wall.

In front of the fireplace some partly burnt drapery and clothes were found. It was thought that the items had become burnt before Minnie Taylor had gone into the cellar because her clothing was wet and she was slightly burned.

At her inquest, the Coroner closely questioned her parents. He asked them whether Minnie Taylor had lived in terror of them but they denied it.

The father said that he did not hold with corporal punishment and the stepmother said that she had only used a strap on Minnie Taylor's hand.

When her body was examined at the hospital her clothing was found to be burnt on one side and was soaking whilst her skin was burnt on the thigh. The doctor said that she had several bruises on her but said that they were not likely to have been caused by whipping.

Minnie Taylor's brother said that he had never seen his father speak crossly to Minnie Taylor or seen either of his parents smack her.

Her father was an iron turner. The father said that he got home after 11pm on the Friday after being at a second house to find his son on the doorstep. He said that his son was afraid to go into the house as there was no one in. He said that he then went in but could not find Minnie Taylor and when he saw that the mantelpiece border had been burned he thought that she had caught fire and had been taken to Ancoats Hospital and so went there, meeting his wife on the way who had been coming home from the skating rink where she worked and who then joined him. However, he said that when they couldn't find her there he went home and made another search in the house and then found Minnie Taylor hanging in the cellar. He said that he cut her down but found that life was extinct.

He said that there was a strap in the house but that he never used it and said that he could not account for her bruises.

A lodging house keeper said that Minnie Taylor had come to her a fortnight earlier crying and told him that her step-mother had been beating her.

The step-mother said that Minnie Taylor had been insured in December 1909.

see www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

see Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Tuesday 05 April 1910

see Leominster News and North West Herefordshire & Radnorshire Advertiser - Friday 08 April 1910

see Croydon's Weekly Standard - Saturday 09 April 1910

see Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Tuesday 05 April 1910