- brance. A woman was tried at the Old Bailey for
the murder of her child, by dropping it into a privy. She declared that while there for a natural purpose, an uncommon pain took her, the child fell, and she sat some time before she was able to stir. On this occasion, we learn from Dr. Gordon Smith, that a practitioner was examined on the possibility of such an event; who stated that an instance came within his own knowledge, where, while the midwife was playing at cards in the room, the woman was taken suddenly, and the child dropped on the floor. To this the author just cited adds another illustrative case. It recently happened, says he, in the circle of my own acquaintance, that a lady who had borne many children, and must therefore have been alive to the import of uneasiness in the last hours of pregnancy, was sitting in company at dinner, and perfectly free from any consciousness of approaching labour, when she experienced an irresistible impulse to repair to the water-closet. She had scarcely arrived there when she was delivered: now had the place of retirement been differently constructed, this infant might have perished. It will very properly be urged that a woman, on finding what has happened, ought, if her feelings and intentions were honest, to give immediate alarm. This is true, but says Dr. Smith, we must admit, in the first place, the possibility of her not being able to do so, in consequence of the effects of the occurrence on her own person; and, in the next place, it is but just to allow that, although an alarm, after she has fully recovered, might secure her in the case of trial, yet as it can be of no use in restoring the life of the child, the idea of concealment will more naturally arise.
