CHILD SMOTHERED.

Thames Star, Volume LIX, Issue 16799, 29 May 1926, Page 5

CHILD SMOTHERED.

LESSON TO MOTHERS. SHOULD NOT SLEEP WITH INFANT A DOCTOR’S VIEW. A story of the death of an infant, under distressing circumstances, was related to the Coroner, Mr W. Lucas, this morning at an inquest on the death yesterday of Keith McCollum, the five-weeks’-old son of Mr and Mrs K. McCollum. In the course of her evidence, the mother said that on Thursday evening, she slept with the child in a double-bed, also occupied by another woman with a 10-months’-old baby. She ministered to its wants at midnight, and when she awoke at 5 o’clock the next morning found the child dead under her left arm, on the outside part of the bed. She thought the baby must have got under her during the night and died by suffocation. The other occupant of the bed said she shared it with the previous witness that evening, to make room for visitors who were occupying the available house accommodation. She remembered Mrs McCollum attending to the child at midnight, but did not again wake until morning. Dr A. S. Gray certified to the effect that death had been caused by suffocation. In answer to., the Coroner, witness stated that in an age when so much attention was being given to child welfare, the practise of having the child in bed with the mother was a thing to be deprecated. An occurrence of this unfortunate nature, should show how easily such accidents could be avoided if the child slept separately, or in a basinette by the side of the bed. The Coroner sympathised with the mother in the loss of her first child. He stressed the point that in these enlightened times it was not the cus-

tom for a mother to sleep with her young child. All danger of death could be easily obviated by placing the child in a cot beside the bed. He returned a verdict of accidental death bv suffocation whilst the child was in bed with its mother and others.