Cats on the Bed Suffocate Infant

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7377, 10 November 1930, Page 2

Cats on the Bed Suffocate Infant

BEREAVED MOTHER’S GRIEF Painful scenes attended a recent ifiqneat at Liverpool on a five-months-old baby, named Patrick William Stewart. The young father was in the witnessbox describing how he was summoned to the child’s bedroom and mshed off to the, hospital with the, infant, wrapped 1n a blanket when Mrs Stewart entered the court-room. Sho staggered forward in' a half-fainting condition, and had to be assisted to a seat. There she sat moaning and crying in distraught tones, “Oh, my baby! My heart’s breaking for my little son.’’ Affected by his wife’s distress the husband broke down and wept a 3 he continued his evidence. Replying to the coroner, Mr. Stewart declared that there were “thousands of cats in the district,’’ and they were always running upstairs into tho houses. Mrs Stewart had to be assisted into tho witness-box. In a sobbing voice she described how, about 8.30 p.m., for the first time, she put tho baby in the bed to sleep. She usually left it with her mother next door, but on this occasion her mother was not well. At 9 o’clock Mrs Stewart went upstairs again and found two grey cats sitting at tho bottom of the bed. j “Then,” she’added, “I saw another cat jump from the bed. I chased them out and then looked at the baby. Something seemed to be wrong with him. . “I to.unched his hand and felt it was cold.’’ At this point tho young mother broke down again, and called in piteous tones for her dead child. The coroner mentioned that he noticed a hair, probably a cat’s hair, i on the lip of the child when he saw • it. He thought the probable cause of fe death was tho overlaying of a cat on 1 the child, although there was no de- % finite evidence to show it. • A verdict of ‘ Death from suffoca-