Outhouse birth
On 2 September 1919, nineteen-year-old Ellen Jane Sutherland was tried at the Perth Supreme Court for the manslaughter of her infant child. It was alleged that Sutherland gave birth to the child in an outhouse of her parents’ home. A doctor testified that the child had died shortly after birth when it asphyxiated in the fluid into which it fell. Sutherland tearfully testified that not only had she not been aware that she was pregnant, but was not even aware that she had given birth until the infant’s body was later discovered. After a short retirement the jury found her not guilty, echoing the sympathetic treatment common in such cases at the time.
This trial report is from The West AustralianDownload from Trove
