The Woman in Black and the Newborn Left for Dead
A Seattle coroner concludes that an infant found at a street corner was killed at birth by a blow to the skull. Detectives have no suspect, only a frustrated clue about a woman in black.
Coroner Askam is satisfied that the infant found at the corner of Squire avenue and Barclay street on Tuesday evening was murdered. An examination of the body made yesterday by the coroner disclosed that the skull had been broken in by means of some blunt instrument. The body was that of a fully developed child, which had evidently been killed immediately after birth, as the placenta still adhered to the body.
Last evening Coroner Askam and Detective Hart spent several hours in the vicinity where the little body was found, but did not learn anything as to who the perpetrators of the murder were. There are so many women who dress in black in that vicinity that the clue given by J. D. Roddick, who found the body, proved of little service. Coroner Askam will resume his investigation this morning.
“There are so many women who dress in black in that vicinity that the clue given by J. D. Roddick, who found the body, proved of little service.”
A newborn found dead at a Seattle street corner in the 1890s is a reminder that infant abandonment once vanished easily into anonymous city life. Today, safe-haven laws and forensic investigation would likely produce a very different inquiry, but the case still asks who gets protected and who gets forgotten.
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