From: MB@nospam.net   
      
   On 18/10/2018 15:27, David Marshall wrote:   
   > On 5th February 1905 the naked body of a baby girl was found in a   
   > backyard in Cymmer, Glamorganshire. Presumably acting on a tip-off, the   
   > doctor examined a young girl living nearby and declared that she "had   
   > the appearance of having given birth to a child". She was arrested and   
   > charged with concealing a birth.   
   > At her trial the magistrate was at pains to get the doctor to testify   
   > that the child had not "had an independent existence" and urged the jury   
   > to acquit her "in accordance with the medical evidence" which they duly   
   > did.   
   > The newspaper accounts are a bit sparse, but it seems clear that the   
   > girl, who would have been aged about twelve and a half at the time of   
   > conception, had successfully concealed her pregnancy and had given birth   
   > (unaided and undetected) to a full term, possibly stillborn, child which   
   > she had neither hidden nor reported.   
   > What was the law in 1905? Might the magistrate have bent the rules out   
   > of sympathy for a young girl?   
   > David   
      
   I was just looking through newspapers from 1905, there were a lot of   
   concealment cases.   
      
   In the case of Alice Watkins, the jury recommended mercy because she was   
   an orphan so never had a mother to advise here.  The judge agreed that   
   with the call for compassion and because she was a woman he would not   
   sentence to hard labour but still sentenced tp six months in prison in   
   the second division.   
      
   21 year old Maida Warner strangled her baby, she got 12 months hard labour.   
      
   Florence Salmon - nine months imprisonment   
      
   Lena Smale - nine months hard labour   
      
   That is just the first few pages, many more in just the one year.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)