A LEGAL PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 4

A LEGAL PROBLEM

THE NEW-BORN CHILD

FIXING A PERIOD

An unusual verdict was returned by a jury at the Old Bailey recently in the trial of a young mother indicted for the murder of her three-weeks-old child, says the "Daily Telegraph. After evidence had been given for the defence by Lord Dawson of Perm, president of the Royal College of Physicians, the woman was found "not guilty of murder, but guilty of the act charged for which she was not responsible in law." Mr. Justice Humphreys ordered her to be detained during the King's pleasure. Another young mother, Mrs. Helen Allcorn, of Kentish Town, was reprieved only twenty-four hours after she had been sentenced to death for the murder of her two-year-old daughter. , The trial in which the unusual verdict was given was the third case of its kind heard at the Old Bailey in two days. It raised the question when a child should rightly be regarded as newly born. _ Brenda Hale, 24, of Tewin Hill, Welwyn, Herts, was. charged with the murder of her three-weeks-old unnamed boy child by cutting his throat. The jury, without leaving the box, returned a verdict of not guilty of mur-, der, but guilty of the act charged for which she was not responsible in law. Mrs. Hale was ordered to be detained during his Majesty's pleasure. JUDGE'S RULING. The verdict followed an important ruling by Mr. Justice Humphreys, who told the jury: "If you return the verdict which I think you will return, that this woman was not responsible for her actions, that relieves me from the necessity of having to sentence a person whom you may think ought not to be sentenced for any offence, since, in law, she has committed no offence, but has done an act for which she was not responsible by reason of her insanity." ' .... At the opening of the case, Mr. St. John Hutchinson, K.C., for the defence, stated that Mrs. Hale was willing to plead guilty to a charge of infanticide.' The Judge said that later he would be willing to hear legal arguments as to whether the case came under the Infanticide Act. Lord Dawson of Perm, president of the Royal College of Physicians, gave evidence for the defence. He thought that at the time Mrs. Hale committed the act she was suffering from, puerperal insanity and did not know what she was doing. Asked for a definition of a newlyborn" child, Lord Dawson said that the term had never been defined, and it was not denned in the Act of Parliament. "I should regard it," he said, as envisaging the first four weeks succeeding birth. When, we study the mortality of the early period after birth we are accustomed to fix a month. I believe the Ministry of Health in their statutes have also adopted a month.' Mr. Justice Humphreys, summing up, ssaid that he was bound by a decision of the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1927 on the question of the period relating to infanticide. . "I venture to express a hope, the Judge went on, "that Parliament may in the near future be disposed to put a short section into the Act saying what Is the definition'of a newly-born child. "A REASONABLE TIME." "If Parliament were disposed to do that I can imagine nothing ■"which would assist them more than the statement which we have heard expressed today by Lord Dawson that, from the point of view of medical statistics on the subject of infant mortality, there is classed as mortality of newly-born children the deaths of all those that take place within a month of birth. In other words, newly born for statistics of mortality, from the medical point of view, means four weeks. "I gather that Lord Dawson does not disapprove of that, and that if you must have some time fixed for a child being newly born and some date when it ceases to be newly born, four weeks is a reasonable time, having regard to the number of illnesses which children suffer and sometime die from." Mr G B. McClure, prosecuting, said that a note written by Mrs. Hale to her husband read: "Whatever happens now it is all my fault, and I will not have anyone blame my dear Walter (the husband). This trouble has been long seated. . . . God bless them all and little D. (her other child)." Mr. Walter Hale, a farmer, said that he married in June, 1933, and their marriage was a very happy one. A first child was born in 1934, and Mrs. Hale had been a devoted mother. Two days before the tragedy his wife said that she thought her brain was going, and she could not concentrate. When touching upon the control of credit during his address at the Parish Hall, Ellerslie, on Saturday evening, the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) used the term "currency cranks." At question time he was asked whether his remark applied to those of his colleagues in the Labour Party who were social creditors. Mr. Fraser: "Oh, no, certainly not; they are sensible men."