KIDNAPPED BABY FOUND BY POLICE: WOMAN ARRESTED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22850, 21 January 1949, Page 5

KIDNAPPED BABY FOUND BY POLICE: WOMAN ARRESTED

(11 a.m.) SYDNEY. Jan. 21. After an 11-hour search the police yesterday afternoon located a six-day-old baby asleep unharmed in the suburb of Punchbowl, eight miles from Crown Street Hospital, from which she was kidnapped early yesterday. Newspaper and radio publicity re. suited in reports that enabled the police to pinpoint the movements of a woman from the hospital to the suburb. The police Interviewed a blonde married woman who allegedly admitted entering the hospital by the fire escape and taking the child. She had spent her last 3/- buying food for the baby. The woman was later charged with abduction.

The baby, a girl, was taken from a cot alongside her sleeping mother in a ward at the hospital, which was occupied by 15 other mothers and their babies.

A yardman at the hospital, which is Sydney’s biggest maternity establishment, said he saw a blonde woman whom he mistook for a nurse returning from a party enter the hospital by the fire escape early in the morning. A woman in evening dress and carrying a baby was later seen at King’s Cross. She inquired the whereabouts of a chemist. Matron A. Shaw broadcast an appeal for the baby’s return and gave advice on the care and feeding. ■Women’s Pathetic Story Mrs. Joan Charmian Frost, aged 21, who took the baby from the hospital yesterday, told the press that she thought she was taking the baby of a single woman. She desperately wanted a baby and could not have one of her own. She used to work at the Crown Street Hospital as a wardsmaid and knew the location of all the wards.

The ward she visited used to be the single women’s ward. She still had a few friends on the nursing staff and went to the hospital to see them and the babies. She added that she could not resist taking one. She put it under her coat and walked downstairs and out of the door.

When she reached the Wynyard station by taxi, she found that the last train had gone so she sat with the baby in an empty carriage at the Central Station until the first morning train. Mrs. Frost lives in a caravan beside her mother’s house. She is married to a sailor who Is at present at sea.

Mrs. Dulcie Isabel Boyle, aged 17, said, when she heard the story, that she could forgive the woman.