Baby

A man had been gathering cabbages on his land at Lampton when he found the decomposed body of a newly-born child with a cloth tied around its neck and covering its head.

His land was skirted by the Long Hedges.

The man said that he found the body several feet from the hedge on the level ground and about 300 yards down the Long Hedges footpath on the east side. He said that he thought that it had been lain on the ground saying that if it had been thrown over it would have been further from the hedge.

A mortuary keeper who cleaned the body said that the cloth had been tied tightly twice round the neck, in his opinion, deliberately. He said that it was so wet and rotten that it came away in pieces.

The doctor who examined the body said that it was in such a state of decomposition that he could not say very much about it. He said that the child was born full term and that there was a deep mark around its neck caused by the cloth and that it had died from strangulation.