Infanticide (1688)

Post date: Jul 17, 2012 6:19:8 PM

At Maidstone Assizes, 20 March 1688

Elizabeth Nash of Wateringbury, spinster, was indicted for infanticide. By an inquisition held at Wateringbury, 19 March 1688, before Edward Rose, coroner, on the body of a female child, a jury-Antony Codd, gent, Thomas Betts, Thomas Stone, John Gibbons, Nicolas Orpin, Stephen Dann, Richard Burstow, Henry Martin, Thomas Faireman, Simon Henekar, Richard Usmer, William Olliver, Thomas Crouch, William Crofts, John Patman, John Ridley-found that on 19 March 1688 at Wateringbury, Nash gave birth to a bastard which she killed by striking it on the head with a piece of wood.

[indictment endorsed] Elizabeth Codd, Sarah Ellett. True Bill.

She was found not guilty at the summer assizes 1688.

Steven MacDougall in his ebook, People of Wateringbury, 1650-1841,adds to the above account that the child had been found near to death by Jane Tomlin, who had called the "parish surgeon" and subsequently arranged the baby's burial for which she was paid 1s 6d by the parish. Elizabeth Nash was arrested and locked in the village cage before being jailed in Maidstone.