BABIES MIXED

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13138, 12 September 1940, Page 2

BABIES MIXED

MISTAKE NOT DISCOVERED FOR j 15. MONTHS ’ BLOOD TEST PROOF Two babies were bonl in a Queens- | land hospital on May 1, 1939. It is now alleged, 15 months later, that on leaving the hospital the mothers | took the wrong children. i One mother, Mrs. Thomas, Tarnmine, is still satisfied she has her own baby, but the other is convinced a mistake was made because, she says, her baby bears a striking resemblance to the family of the first mother. The two families agreed blood tests should be taken. ' These showed a mistake had been made at the hospital. An official inquiry is to be held into the mix-up.

Mrs Tammine is “dazed, bewildered and broken-hearted” at having to hand to another woman the baby she had thought was hers. “Exchanging babies after 15 months is worse than dying,” she said. “I had always longed for a brown-eyed baby, and when they put one into my arms at the hospital I could have cried for joy. Now I have to have a blue-eyed baby after all. “I can’t understand my new daughter’s talk. My elder daughter does not want to play with her. The other one was my baby. Now I have to have this one. The baby I have lost grew into a lovely child and won a beauty contest when she was five months old. She was a real mother’s girl, but this new one is a man’s baby. She would rather be nursed by my husband than by me. The other baby was bigger, so we had to pass over all my lovely baby clothes.” Mrs. Angus Wakefield, the other mother, explained how the mistake was discovered. “My mother went to Mrs. Tammine and said she feared a mistake had been made,” said Mrs. Wakefield. “A doctor had told us the baby Mrs. Tammine had bore a striking resemblance to the Wakefields, and our baby was very like the Tarnmines. The blood test proved beyond doubt an error had been made.”

The husbands of bo'th women are employed at the Mount Isa lead mines in Central Queensland.