Baby

The skeleton of a newly-born child was found in the roof of a house in Gloucester on 4 October 1944.

It was found by a workman who was searching for a leak in the roof.

It had apparently been there for a number of years and was badly decomposed. The remains were described as consisting of bones and dried skin that appeared to be very old. A doctor that examined the child said that the skeleton was that of a newly-born child and had measured 16 1/2 inches in length.

The doctor said that the child had been dead for at least 12 months, and probably longer, many years. He added that it was impossible to discover its sex or its cause of death.

The workman said that he had clambered through a 15-square-inch trapdoor at the bottom of a wall in the attic and had found the bones under the tiles by the side of the built-in chimney.

It was noted that they had been covered by some very old brown paper, some of which had been eaten away.

The was nothing on the remains to identify the child.

The attic that the trap door was in had only just been occupied three months earlier, having remained empty since it was last known to have been used four and a half years earlier.

The coroner returned a verdict that the remains were those of a human being, sex unknown, that had probably been dead for some years and that owing to decomposition that he was unable to state the cause of death.