The Baby-farming Case.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 6, Issue 47, 14 June 1895, Page 2

The Baby-farming Case.

Invercargill, June 11. At the Magisterial enquiry to-day into the alleged murder of the infant Dorothy Edith Carter by Minnie and Charles Dean, there was little new evidence. It came out that the infant was not the child of a married woman in Christchurch, but of a young girl, and that Mrs Dean did not get any premium with the child, but that £lO was to be paid on Ist June. The girl Cameron, who had been with Mrs Dean for fourteen years, and whose name had been used in the correspondence regarding the transfer of the infant, unhesitatingly identified the writing in the letters as Mrs Dean’s, and was equally emphatic in asserting that the signature “M. Gray,” in the chemist’s poison-book was also her writing. The witness was not about Dean’s house at the time this correspondence was going on, and knew nothing about it. Esther Wallace, a girl of fifteen, who resided with the Deans, said the woman was kind to children, and that she took oft her cloak and wrapped it round the infant Clark while crossing the paddocks to the house on the night she brought the child from the Bluff. She also said she heard Dean ask his wife if the lady who was to adopt Dorothy had any children of her own, this tending to show that Charles Dean was under the impression that the child was going to someone else.

When the hearing of the charge against the Deans of the murder of Dorothy Edith Carter was resumed yesterday, the Crown Prosecutor stated that he proposed entering on a new line of evidence, with the object of showing that on the 3rd May Mrs Dean had another infant entrusted to her which she was alleged to have murdered. In tendering the evidence he relied on the judgement of the Privy Council in the Makin infanticide case, when it was held that at the hearing of the indictment for murder of one infant evidence could be adduced of the finding of other bodies in the accused’s garden. His object was to show that that the death of Dorothy Carter was not the result of accident, but of design. Mr Hanlon, for the accused, objected, imitating that he would carry his objection to the Supreme Court, but the Magistrate (Mr Poynton) admitted the evidence. June 12.

This morning Mr Poynton committed Minnie Dean for trial for murder of Dorothy Carter, and dischared C. Dean. The Supreme Court sessions open on Tuesday. Later.

At the inquest on the skeleton found in Dean’s garden at Winton, evidence was given that four children disappeared from the house when no one was about it but Mrs Dean and a child who went away ; that in each case the witnesses were told that the child had been adopted, but none of them can be traced to any other person’s possession. The jury found practically an open verdict, but inclined to the opinion from the colour of the hair that tne remains were those of Willie Pheland, of Dunedin, a child born to a Mrs Olsen before marriage, who disappeared about two years ago, and who would now, if alive, have been six years old.