The Alleged Infanticide.

Manawatu Herald, 13 January 1894, Page 2

The Alleged Infanticide.

The adjourned inquest on the infant child of Lizzie Price wa3 held at Otaki on Wednesday, before Mr Simcox, coroner, and a jury of six. Inspector Pender represented the police.

The evidence of George Mcßeath, licensee of the Family Hotel, showed that the girl was engaged by him as barmaid on the 14fch September last. On the 9fch December she was very ill, and he sent her to bed. She told him the child only lived a few minutes.

Lizzie Lynch, cook at the hotel, said that on the night of Saturday, the 9th December, she went into her bedroom (No. 12), and, before retiring, she heard someone moving about in room No. 11, in which Lizzie Price slept. She next heard moaning in the room, and heard accused speaking in a low

voice. Between midnight and I a m. she heard a few low moans or groans, and immediately afterwards a child cried in the next room. In less than ten minutes 3he heard another strong scream of a child, and then all was still.

Catbleen Anderson, housemaid at the hotel, who slept in room No 10, deposed that she heard no noise on the night of the 9th.

Constable O'Rourke stated chat be searched the box of the girl Price, and in it discovered a male child, fully developed, wrapped in a towel, face upwards. The nose was bent towards the mouth, as if it had been compressed, and there was much discoloration about the head and the upper part of the neck. The lid was pressed down on the box, which was tightly packed, and there was a quantity of blood on the clothes in the box, both under and over the child. Price told him the child was born dead, but in answer to Mr Mcßeath she said it only lived a few minutes. There was no clothing for the child. The girt told him she did not expect to be confined so soon, and that she never killed the child.

Dr Drary deposed on making a post mortem examination of the body he found it was that of a fully developed male child with very strong lungs, and it must have been very healthy. Theie was a little blood in the heart, but it must have lost a lot of blood through want of attention. There was clear proof that the child must have lived after birth, but it was very hard to tell the cause of death, as the marks which appeared on the head, neck and arms might have been caused by protracted labour. The jury disagreed, and eventually the verdict of the majority of four was taken, viz., that the child was found dead, but that there was no evidence to show how it came by its death. They added a rider that the oook, Lizzie Lynch, was deserving of severe censure for not going to Lizzie Price's room when she heard moaning and groaning. The *\v\ X<lMle IPri«« w*f «übw

qnently brought before Mr Simcox, J. P.,- and remanded on the charge of wilful murder j,o Wellington/ $o appe&t' 6ii tile i?th itigt.— ffa '