The Sun. — 1847-07-22 (London, England)

PARKE.) Maria Renshaw, 20, was indicted for having unlawfully abandoned a certain child of which she was tke mother, with the intent that it should die, and thereby intended to kill and murder it ; and in other counts she was charged with the intent to cast the burden of maintaining the child upon the inhabitants of the parish of Bexhill, where she had so abandoned it. Mr. Attree prosecuted, and Mr. Johnson appez.red for the defence. When the prisoner was arraigned, she at first pleaded Guilty to the indictment. Mr. Baron PARKE told her that the charge made against her was a very serious one, and as the indictment imputed several intents to her, each of which would require a different degree of punishment, he advised. her to retract her plea of Guilty and to bare the facts stated, so that the jury might express an opinion as to what her real intention was when she abandoned her infant.  The prisoner then pleaded Not Guilty. ' It appeared from the testimony of the witnesses that the prisoner had been in service at Hastings, and that she was in the familyway and near the period of her confinement at the beginning of June. On the 14th of that month she left Hastings and proceeded by the train to Brighton, where she took up her abode at a lodging house kept by a person named Howley, and on the 16th she was delivered of the infant in question, which appeared to be a fine, healthy child. On the 26th of June, ten days after her delivery, the prisoner said she had received a letter.from her father informing her that her mother was dying, and that she must go home directly, and her landlady accomp %flied her to the railway station at Brighton, whence she started with her infant by the halt-past twelve o'clock train. At this time the child was dressed in a new night-gown and shirt, and the other usual articles of dress for an infant, and the prisoner, although weak from her recent confinement, appeared otherwise in good health. When the train arrived at the Bexhill station, the prisoner got out with her child, and her conduct excited the attention of the clerk at the station, and it induced him to believe that she was not in her right senses. She asked a number of incoherent questions, and was seen wandering about the station apparently in great distress of mind for a considerable time, when She again came to the station, and her conduct was still very wild and extraordinary, and she at length left by the half-past five o'clock train for Hastings ; but at this time she had no child with her. On the same evening, a person living at Bexhill had occasion to go into a field in that neighbourhood to fetch a sheep home to be killed, and while he was so engaged he heard ,he moaning of a child, and proceeding in the direction whence the voice appeared to come he was led to a ditch, where he found an infant lying among some high nettles, and quite concealed by them from the sight of any casual passer-by„ and but for the cries of the poor infant it appeared very probable that it must have lain there and perished, The child turned out to be the prisoners ' • but it appeared that the shirt and night-gown had been taken off it, and it had nothing on its body but a napkin and a cap. The prisoner was afterwards taken into custody, when it appeared that she admitted having deserted the child, and the present indictment was then preferred against her. Mr. JOHNSON made a most feeling address to the jury on behalf of the prisoner, and urged that she had been driven almost to madness by the shame of her position, and that when she deserted her unhappy offspring she was not in a state of mind to render her accountable for her actions, and that therefore the jury ought not to find her guilty of having any of the wicked intentions imputed to her by this indictment. The jury, after deliberating a few minutes, returned a verdict of Not Guilty.