TRAGIC CHILD'S PLAY.

Auckland Star, Issue 291, 9 December 1925, Page 15

TRAGIC CHILD'S PLAY.

BABY DROWNED IN BATH. STARTLING EVIDENCE. CORONER'S OPEN VERDICT; i (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 4. Just playing babies with *her little sister, a child of five years brought awful'tragedy into her home afc Eedfernthis week. Mrs. Martha Delardes, of Calder Road, Eedfern, had two children —one aged five years and the other five -weeks. So young was the latter that she was not even "registered. About 11.30 a.m., Mrs. Delardes washed the baby, dried and dressed hei% and laid her in a basket on the hack verandah. She set the elder child to watch the baby while she went out into the yard to attend to some washing on the line. Mrs. Delardes was only away for ten minutes, but when sh° returned she found that the five-year- old child had' undressed the baby, placed it in the tub again, and was even then soaping the little body. Unfortunately, the baby had rolled over on her face, and the mother found that it had ceased to breathe. She hurried with the baby to the nearest medical man, but thougli he worked for hours on it with artificial means of respiration, he was unable to restore animation. A startling turn was taken at the coroner's inquest on the death of the baby, held within a week of the tragedy. Nurse Mitehelmore, who attended the mother prior to the baby's birth, stated that Mrs. Delardes did not appear to want the baby. "She came to mc before it was born," said the nurse, "and' asked mc to do something for her. She told • Mrs. Delardes that she did not waui, to go to Long Bay. After the baby was born she took it away from the mother, because the. latter told the nurse that if she did not take it out of the bed she would throw it out.----"If you leave it here, I will strangle it," Nurse Mitehelmore said Mrs. Delardes remarked. She attributed the mother's attitude towards the baby to the fact that Mrs. Delardes was not properly normal. She did not think that it was possible for the little girl to have undressed the baby and placed it in the tub again. Medical evidence on the mother waa contradictory, one doctor 'giving his opinion that Mrs. Delardes was quite rational, while another doctor thought she was overwrought. The coroner returned an open verdict. > ■ -^ ===^