WHOLESALE BABY FARMING: Discover of Eleven Skeletons: At the Birmingham Police Court yesterday, Ann Pinsent, a midwife living in Nechells, Birmingham was charged with concealing the birth of one child of an unmarried woman, named Reader. Mr. Jesse Herbert (instructed by the town clerk) appeared for the prosecution and explained that the police had had considerable difficulty in the case owing to the child not having, as yet been traced. The evidence of the mother, however, will show that she was confined at the prisoner’s house on the 16th January, that the child was born alive, and that the body was, on the following day, sent away by the prisoner who represented that death had resulted from convulsions. Since the prisoner was first arrested, the learned counsel added, the skeletons of no fewer than 11 infants had been found buried in a garden adjoining the prisoner’s house. (sensation). Evidence having been given as to the child being born alive, the prisoner was, on the application of the police, further remanded for a week. According to a statement of Detective sergeant Mountford, young women have been in the habit of being confined at the prisoner’s house, and “no one can tell what has become of the bodies.”
[see also York Herald: Saturday 3rd August 1878; Illustrated Police News: Saturday 10th August 1878]
Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.
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