The New Hampshire Gazette

At the last assizes at Kingston in Surrey, a very odd trial came on, viz. Mary Davis was indicted for murdering her male infant. There was no evidence against her but her own confession, which was, that she went into the house of a constable on Saffron Hill, and there told him, as she could not be easy, she had murdered her child, which haunted her day and night, and appeared to her wherever she went; that she cut its throat on some rubbish near the Grange road, and the constable going there with her, found much blood sprinkled about the rubbish; she then told the constable she wrapped it up in her apron, and carried it to Billingsgate, and flung it into the Thames. This she said to three or four other people, and that she desired to suffer death for it, and signed her confession to this effect.

Being asked what she had to say in her defence, she told the court she had been out of her mind, and never had any child; and she thought when the confession was signed, it was her discharge.

Her father in law swore she had been confined by him and his wife, being crazy, and that he never heard she had a child; and she saying again she never had a child, a midwife was sent for, who took her to a neighbouring house, and afterwards swore, that, to the best of her knowledge, she never had a child. This poor young creature said to some, the child was buried at St. Giles's: and to others that she was brought to bed at Lidney in Gloucestershire, and came from thence with it after she had lain in three weeks; but a letter being sent to the parish officers of Lidney, wrote word, no such person had lain in there. She was acquitted.