“BABIES IN THE DOCK.”

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3388, 1 December 1911, Page 7

“BABIES IN THE DOCK.”

SENTENCES ON BOY AND GIRL LOVERS FOUND GUILTY OF ATTEMPTED MURDER. At the Old Bailey, Mary Webb and Arthur Mold, indicted for the attempted murder of their child 'by abandoning it in a brook at Wimbledon., were found “Guilty’ ’with a recommendation to mercy. Mary Webb was sentenced to three years under tlio Borstal system, and Mold to two months. . , The one is eigbten and the otuior seventeen. After darkness had! fallen Webb asked a man in a field off Robin Hood Lane to direct him to Wimbledon ; tire girl was carrying a white shawl. A quarter of an hour later Frcst heard cries, and saw a naked baby in the Beverley Brook. Ho took the child to a house near by, where it was tended, but it eventually died on August 26. Inquiries were instituted, and in Mold's bedroom acre found letters from tlie girl. One of them read : ‘ — Dear Darling Sweetheart. —I don’t like showing my face to my people. It would bo a blessing if the baby died. If it lives I have nowhere to go when I come out. I will put it out of the way. I shall not like to, lmt I am afraid i shall have to bring her to a watery grave, apd chance if I get found out. I don’t trouble much what happens to mo now. “Don’t think we are going to bo troubled with the kid,” ran another letter, “because we are not. As soon as it is dark I will go to Wandsworth Common, and I will drown it.” Mold, in a letter to the girl, wrote: —‘You are not my makeshift. I want to make you happy, but I dont’ know how.” He signed himself “Your everlasting sweetheart.” The girl in one of her letters sent Mold a sprig of lavender. The judge, in summing up, referred to “these two babies in the dock.”