Infanticide at North Adelaide

Infanticide at North Adelaide

North Adelaide 1910- SLSA: [B 3466]

History is not always kind, nor nice...

 The Town Clerks Avenue isn’t well-known terminology for many Adelaidean’s, even many that probably walk the avenue daily. It’s a walkway through the parklands leading from Sir Edwin Smith Avenue at Angas Gardens, along the Torrens River to Frome Road. It was established in 1917.

 On December 20, 1885, Adelaide Corporation Ganger (labourer) John Collins was walking along the Town Clerks Avenue just after 7am, heading into work from his home in North Adelaide.  As he was wandering along the path, he noticed a package lying in a drain. He retrieved the package and look inside to find the corpse of a baby boy, wrapped in newspaper and a large sheet of brown paper.
 The blood on the paper was fresh and still damp.

 Collins rushed to the North Adelaide police station and reported the find to the local constable Bea. Police-constable Bea attended the location and found three men standing around the package discussing its contents. Bea retrieved the package and returned with it to the police station.

 That evening Doctor Melville Jay attended the police station and conducted a post-mortem examination on the child’s body. He found that the child weighed just over six pounds, was 12 inches long, and from the appearance of the babies’ head, had been through a long labour. The child’s head had been almost severed from its body. There were large incisions across the neck that cut through to the spine.

 Most horrific, Doctor Jay discovered the organs of the baby and discovered that it had been born alive, the right lung was full of air, but he concluded that its life must have been cut short very quickly as the left lung had failed to be inflated.
  Also submitted to the post-mortem were a knife and men’s jacket that had been discovered in a yard on Poole Street in North Adelaide.

  During an inquest held at the Destitute Asylum on Kermode Street, witnesses came forward with descriptions of the mother of the child. The first was Ada Chickwidden.

  On 19 December, prior to the finding of the babies’ body on the Town Clerks Avenue. Ada Chickwidden saw, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, a young woman of around 2 to 30 years of age, enter Hosking’s Shop in North Adelaide. The woman seemed unwell.
 She noted that she wore a black dress with a square plaid in front. The woman had entered the shop to inquire about the time.
 Prior to her entering the shop, Chickwidden had noticed the woman looking over the fence into the backyard. The woman left, and Chickwidden went back to her duties, leaving a bag with some paper in it, and a coat at the rear door outside the shop to be disposed of.
 On December 20, Chickwidden saw blood on the bricks at the rear of the shop, near the bag and coat she was taken outside the day prior.
 The night before, when laying in bed, she had heard someone telling a dog to quiet down but hadn’t paid much attention.
 During the inquest, Chickwidden identified the papers the child had been wrapped in as being the same ones she had put outside in a bag, she had meant to dispose of at a later date.
Chickwidden also stated she had seen the woman lying in the sand on New Years Day at Largs Bay, she went to speak to her, but the women would not look at her, so she left her there.

 The next witness in the inquest was Catherine Hollak of Finnis Street. Hollak stated she had heard noises coming from an empty “china man’s hut” next door to her own house. She went to inspect what was going on and found a young woman there. Hollak identified the young woman as one her and her husband had allowed to stay in their house a month prior. Hollak said to her; “This is a rather peculiar place for you to come.”; but the woman didn’t reply.
 Hollak asked her if she had a home, the woman replied; “No, I wish my throat was cut or that I was in the Torrens.”
 Hollak then offered the woman to come to stay at her house again and told the woman she would be back shortly, as she was first going to ask her husband if it was ok. Hollak left and when she returned the woman was gone.
 Hollak looked for, and chased her down in a street nearby, she asked the woman why she had left, but received an indistinct reply. The woman walked off and left Hollak standing there confused.
 Hollak described the woman as wearing a black dress and a black hat with a feather in it. She had seen the woman about the place for many years but had never known her name. Hollak knew the woman worked as a servant somewhere near Park Street but knew no more about her.

 A few days later the inquest reached its conclusion of: “wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.” It is not known whether the baby received a proper burial, or if the woman ever came forward

Researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2019

Bibliography

'INFANTICIDE AT NORTH ADELAIDE.', South Australian Register, (15 January 1885), p. 7.

'THE NORTH ADELAIDE INFANTICIDE.', Evening Journal, (6 January 1885), p. 2.