Baby

The head of a child was found in a box at a house at 15 Southey Street, Bootle on 21 March 1921.

A woman admitted suffocating the child and cutting it up and destroying it on a fire but was only convicted of concealing the birth of the child.

The woman had been a 24-year-old machinist.

It was thought that the woman had given birth to the child on 12 February 1921, without a doctor being called in.

However, about a month later the landlady of the house where the woman lived noticed a bad smell and found the head and neck of the infant child in a tin trunk in her bedroom.

The remains had been in the tin and wrapped up in brown paper and a lady’s stocking.

When the woman was arrested, she said:

She was then taken to the police station.

The policeman said that he then wrote the statement that she had made down from his book as the woman had made it and he read it over to her. He noted that he had not asked her to sign the statement as written in his note book as no one other than him was allowed to write anything in it. He said that he then asked her whether she wanted to make any corrections, but she made no reply. He said that he had asked her to account for the head of the child, noting that she was not in a fainting condition at the time and that there had been three police officers in the bedroom at the time.

However, it was noted that her solicitor had objected to her statement, claiming that it had not been made in accordance with Rule 9 of the Rules issued by the Home Office in 1918, relating to statements by persons suspected of crime.

The pathologist that carried out the post mortem examination said:

At the trial at Manchester Assizes on 2 May 1921 the charge of murder against the woman was withdrawn after it was heard that evidence that the child had had a separate existence was practically non-existent.

The woman was then found guilty of concealment but with a strong recommendation to mercy and sentenced to 7 days' imprisonment.