CHARGE OF DISPOSING OF CHILD’S BODY

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26026, 1 February 1950, Page 6

CHARGE OF DISPOSING OF CHILD’S BODY

WOMAN COMMITTED TO SUPREME COURT

From Our Own Reporter

WAIMATE, January 31. Margaret Mary Roberts, aged 30, a single woman, employed as a cleaner, pleaded guilty in the Magistrate’s Court at Waimate yesterday to a charge of disposing of the dead body of her child with intent to conceal its birth. , Accused was committed to the Supreme Court, bail being allowed in the sum of £5O, with one surety of £5O. Mrs M. B. Holmes and Mr d’A. S. Grut, Justices of the Peace, were on the Bench.

In a statement made to Senior-De-tective J. W. Hill, who prosecuted, accused said the child had been born at the Waimate courthouse, where she was engaged in doing cleaning work on September 25, 1949. She had expected it to be born in the middle of November. She had made unsuccessful efforts to revive the child. Early on Sunday morning she took the body to the theatre, where she burned it in the incinerator. She was certain the child was not alive at the time. Senior-Detective Hill described a search among debris in the incinerator. and the recovery of small bones and other remains.