A Newborn Found in a Basket Under a Tacoma Cemetery Bridge
A coroner's grim morning in 1895: an abandoned infant discovered in Oakland Cemetery, wrapped in a lady's undervest and calico, with no clue to its mother.
Tacoma, April 15.—Special.—The body of a small infant, not quite fully developed, was found about 10:30 o'clock this morning by a Mrs. Brighton, who lives in the south end of town. It was wrapped up in a basket which lay under a bridge in the highway through the Oakland cemetery. Around the basket were several pieces of newspaper. Just how the basket came to be found is not yet clear. One account says they were walking through the cemetery and followed their dog, who was chasing a squirrel, to the culvert, and there saw the basket. The remains are that of a male child, fairly well formed, which, had it lived, would have become light complexioned. The first wrapping about the little body is a lady's silken undervest of the ordinary ready-made sort, with nothing in the way of a laundry or other mark upon it to show who owned it or where it was purchased. About this was part of a calico garment of some sort, probably a portion of a child's dress. Coroner Parks has the case in hand and will make a thorough investigation aided by the police.
“The first wrapping about the little body is a lady's silken undervest of the ordinary ready-made sort, with nothing in the way of a laundry or other mark upon it to show who owned it or where it was purchased.”
The 1895 item treats a dead newborn as a police mystery and a moral scandal, but the detail that survives most sharply is the anonymity: a basket, a bridge, a garment without a laundry mark. Tacoma's cemetery has changed since, but the story still asks who was responsible for a child no one claimed.
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