South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1883.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3301, 31 October 1883, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1883.

General satisfaction will be felt at the verdict of the Coroner’s jury in the case of the death of the child Whitely at Dunedin, through being overlaid by its mother. It appears that the woman went to bed drunk, probably so far gone as to have forgotten the presence of the child, —with the shocking result that the poor innocent died of suffocation. The father also, it seems, was intoxicated. The jury having heard the evidence, returned a verdict of manslaughter against the mother, who was committed for trial accordingly, and the Coroner censured the father in deservedly severe terms, for his participation in the drunken orgie of his wife. The affair having reached this stage, it does not matter much what penalty is meted out to the wretched woman ; it is enough that a jury of intelligent persons have shown such straightforwardness, and realised the responsibility that lay upon them to give a true verdict, and not to gloss over apparent crime, or culpable negligence. The woman, they considered, killed the child, not with murderous intent, but negligently, and they said so. Will this episode have the effect of startling careless parents into sobriety and solicitude for their helpless children ? Mrs Whitely, the jury considered, killed her child, and she is now charged with manslaughter. But there is many another mother who “ forgets her sucking child,” and it is to be hoped this sad tale of intemperance and its consequences may be read and pondered in every drunkard’s home. We offer no embellishment of a plain story, but we direct attention to an incident which ought to be everywhere noted.