Quoted by Taylor, Anderson
speaks of a woman accused of child murder, who walked a distance
of 28 miles on a single day with her two-days-old child on her
back.
There is also a case of a female servant named Jane May, who was
frequently charged by her mistress with pregnancy but
persistently denied it. On October 26th she was sent to market
with some poultry. Returning home, she asked the boy who drove
her to stop and allow her to get out. She went into a recess in a
hedge. In five minutes she was seen to leave the hedge and follow
the cart, walking home, a distance of a mile and a half. The
following day she went to work as usual, and would not have been
found out had not a boy, hearing feeble cries from the recess of
the hedge, summoned a passer-by, but too late to save the child.
At her trial she said she did not see her babe breathe nor cry,
and she thought by the sudden birth that it must have been a
still-born child.
Shortt says that one day, while crossing the esplanade at
Villaire, between seven and eight o'clock in the morning, he
perceived three Hindoo women with large baskets of cakes of
"bratties" on their heads, coming from a village about four miles
distant. Suddenly one of the women stood still for a minute,
stooped, and to his surprise dropped a fully developed male child
to the ground.
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