Just found the following:
British Medical Journal
Saturday August 17th 1878
DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD BODIES OF NEWLY BORN INFANTS.
A CASE has recently occurred in Birmingham, which, like many similar ones noticed in these columns within the last few years, proves the necessity of some alteration in our present registration and burial system.
Ann Pinson, a midwife, fifty-four years of age, was charged before the Birmingham magistrates with concealing the birth of a 'child born in her house on the 15th January last. From the evidence given, it appeared that about. the 6th January last, a young woman named Harriet Leader, being pregnant, wet to the prisoner's house to be confined. A female child was born on the morning of the I5th, and on the same day, the sister of the mother saw the child alive, washed and dressed. Later on in the day,' the child died, and the question arose as to its burial. Prisoner sent out and purchased a soap-box, and placed in it the body of the dead child. At the back of the prisoner's house were recently found no fewer than eleven bodies of infants in similar boxes. After the child was placed in the box, the lid was fastened down, and, the box was handed by the prisoner to her
son, who wheeled it away on a barrow, and its whereabouts had not been discovered. Since being taken into custody, the prisoner had made several contradictory statements as to the disposal of the body; first that the mother of the child had taken it away and buried it herself, a statement which the prisoner subsequently declared to be incorrect; and that she had given it to a woman named Jane, who carried it to Aston or Saltley (suburbs of Birmingham), and had it buried there. Who this woman was, or where she lived, prisoner could not say. Ultimately, she was fined forty shillings for not registering the birth of the child, and it is to be hoped that this, in addition to the fourteen days she spent in gaol, will act as a deterrent to her and to others. The other cases were not gone into, the police being unable to trace their history. Thus ends another case of grave suspicion, and it is too much to be feared that similar cases will from time to time occur under the present system. Even if it be undesirable to register still-births, there can be no objection to a law requiring (under a
penalty) persons present at a birth, whether of a living or dead child, to give formal notice, within forty-eight hours, to the registrar of the district or some other authorised official.
All the best
Nick
