Baby

The remains of a decomposed baby were found in a bundle on a grass verge at Park-an-Ithan, Sithney on the morning of Monday 18 July 1960.

The road junction where the child's body was found was about a quarter of a mile from Sithney Churchyard, 300 yards.

The bundle was found by the wife of a retired field officer with the Cornwall Agricultural Executive Committee when she looked out of her bedroom window, It was about 30 yards away. She said that it appeared to be a parcel on the verge beside the road and that when she went to look she found it to be a blanket covered with a blue raincoat. She said that the bundle looked suspicious and so she told her husband who then got out of bed to investigate and that she then telephoned the police.

She said, 'Several cars passed by, but we kept an eye open to see that nobody touched it until the police arrived. We were suspicious because of the way it was wrapped up so neatly. When the police came they opened it. They didn't actually say it was a baby, but we have come to that conclusion'.

The police said that the child had been full-term and had been wrapped in a lilac and white candy-striped sheet, a white bedspread, a cream cot blanket and a full-sized cream blanket around all of which was a woman's blue-green belted raincoat.

It was noted that another dead baby had been found the previous year on 13 January 1959 by a farm worker inside the south gate of Sithney Churchyard.

The child's body was later interned in the parish churchyard on Saturday 23 July 1960.