Child

The body of a newly-born child was found dead in a cellar at a house at 25 Leonard Street, Perth on 3 July 1921.

A woman was tried but verdict of not proven returned.

It was claimed that she had given birth to the child on 2 or 3 July 1921 in the house at 25 Leonard Street and then assaulted it by tying a piece of tape round its neck and strangling and murdering it.

The woman's half-sister said that her sister had been married for four years and had two children and that her husband had been a miner but that they had lived apart for the previous two years. She noted that she had had noticed nothing unusual about her sister.

A bottle blower that had lived at the house said that his wife told him that the woman had had a child and that he asked her what she had done with it and she told him that she had put it in the cellar and that it had been born dead.

The bottle blower said that he then locked the cellar door and kept the key and afterwards went in with the police, upon which they found a jute bag tied up in a parcel which a police sergeant cut open and they saw the body of a child inside.

A detective sergeant said that they found a piece of tape tided tightly twice round the child's neck, with a reefer knot on the right side of the neck and towards the back. He said that the child's tongue and eyes were protruding and that the head and face were swollen.

A doctor that gave evidence said that the woman had told him that she had strangled it, but upon cross-examination admitted that she didn't exactly use the word 'strangled', and added that she told him that she thought it had been born dead.

Two other doctors for the Crown said that the child had been fully born and had life.

However, a doctor for the defence said that the medical report was not inconsistent with the child having been born dead, stating that in his opinion, the constriction of the neck must had been after the child's death.

He added that he had found mothers after childbirth temporarily mentally deranged and that very often at those times they did irrational things.

He added, upon cross-examination, that the protruding 'tongue and eyeballs were quite consistent with strangulation or asphyxiation before birth, although they could also have been caused by the putrefactive change.

When the judge directed the jury, he noted that the tests applied by the doctors for the Crown had been relied on for many years and upon which many convictions had been founded and noted that if the doctor for the defence was right, that those convictions had been unfounded.

However, after fifteen minutes deliberation, the jury found the charge not proven.