GIRL'S TRAGIC CHARGE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7070, 11 April 1901, Page 2

GIRL'S TRAGIC CHARGE.

SENSATIONAL CASE Of CHILD MURDER. Extraordinary evidence was given at Mark Cross (Sussex) Petty Sessions on Feb. 5, when Rose Summer, a general servant, was committed for trial, charged with the murder of her baby boy. The dead body of the chEd was found in. a pond near Quarry Bank, Groombridge. A stone, 6oz in weight, was . pinned inside the' baby's clothes. On. Jan. 1 the girl left her motlrer's house, and said she was going to take the baby to tie house of Mrs Guays, London Road, Tunbridge Wells, who, she said, was going to adopt it. She furthef said the father was a. j young man named Guayg, who had 1 gone to South Africa. She returned- in the evening without the child. v 'When she was arrested she was told that the child had been found' in a pond, and she replied, "I did not put it there." To the female searcher she voluntarily made the following statement: — • " My mother ought t6 have been here in\ stead of me. I s'bould not have taken: the child away had she not been- so unkind. I did not do it. A man did it. Aubrey Guays is the child's father's brother. He asked me how I was getting en. I told him I was very unhappy. He told me to meet him the next day. "I met him with the child. We went to Groombridge, where we were joined by a woman in black.. We walked along the road to a pond, where the man snatched baby from my arms, saying : ' This is the <. home for it,' and threw it into the pond. I clutched: at baby, but the woman pointed a revolver at me. I then- fainted." Mrs Guays, who is the wife of a professor of languages at Tunbridge Wells, said it was absolutely untrue that she had promised to adopt the child. She had no knowledge of the child or the girl. Further, she had no son named Aubrey. Her three sons' names were Alfred, Gabriel and Frank. Alfred went to South Africa last June. * When Mrs Guaya left the box the girl, who had been sobbing and 'half -fainting, exclaimed, " She is the woman."