Baby

The body of a newly born female child was found strangled in the shrubbery in the grounds of Alnwick Castle on 19 December 1948.

The body was found by a man that had been walking down Denwick Lane who had occasion to look over a high wall between the road and the castle grounds. He said that he saw something lying on the ground which he first conceived to be a child's doll and climbed down from the wall to look and found, to his horror, that it was the body of an apparently recently-born child.

When the police arrived, they preserved the footprints and marks there and took photographs of the scene.

The pathologist said that the child had been strangled with a piece of linen around its neck which he said proved to be a pair of knickers and a cord and said that a piece of them had been pressed into the child's mouth which had then pushed the child's tongue right back. He said that the cord had been tied around the child's neck in a double lap which had left a distinct mark and said that it had been tied with tremendous violence

The pathologist said that there was evidence that the child had breathed and noted that there had been no attention at birth. He said that he thought that the child had died about six or seven days before it was found. He said that the child was 21 inches long and had weighed approximately 7lbs. He noted that the hair on the child's head was long and black.

He gave the child's cause of death as being due to strangulation by a cord around the neck.

The inquest returned the verdict that its death was due to strangulation due to a cord tied around its neck, and a verdict of murder against some person or persons unknown was returned.