Baby

The body of a female child was found wrapped up in a parcel on the foreshore of Haslar Creek, Gosport on the morning of Thursday 27 March 1924.

The body was discovered by an engine-room artificer of the Royal Navy who was on duty at the time at the Coastal Motor-Boat Base at Haslar Creek. He saw a brown paper parcel on the foreshore near the pontoon a few feet above the tide line which was at the time dead low.

The parcel was tied up with string and when he opened it he found the dead body of the female child.

A doctor said that the child had been born alive and had weighed almost 7lb. He said that death was due to exposure and want of attention at birth. He said that the child must have lived for more than a few minutes and had not been dead for more than three days.

A police constable said that no clue as to the identity of the child could be gained from the paper and that extensive inquiries in the district had yielded no result.

When the Coroner summed up he said that he wasn't surprised by the findings of the police and asked the jury to bear in mind that there was no evidence pointing to any directness of either murder or manslaughter.

An open verdict of found drowned was then returned.