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MAGUS

44 about the child. I didn’t pay any heed to the idle stories of people who said the child was “so- and-so”’ (a changeling). Robert Woods – ‘I know Miss Lodge’s grounds about a mile from this town. I was there on 2nd April, about 11 o’clock. In the gripe of a ditch, I observed the dead body of a child. It was wrapped in old clothes and covered with some tufts of grass and fog. I went to Mr Pooler, Miss Lodge’s gardener, and told the circumstance. I next went to Rainey’s, steward to Miss Lodge. A man of Rainey’s and I went to the ditch. In the course of the day an inquest was held on the body. Dr Colvan attended. I saw the body removed from the ditch. There was an old dirty cloth wrapped round the head, old flannel rolled around the body and a black cloth round its neck. I heard that the body and the clothes were removed to the infirmary’. Joseph Barbour – ‘I carried the dead body of a child from Miss Lodge’s side of Mr Dobbin’s dam to the infirmary and delivered it to the doctors’. John Colvan, Esq. – ‘I am a physician and surgeon. On the 2nd of April last, I saw a dead body in Miss Lodge’s grounds. The body was that of a child of probably five or six years. I re-examined the body at the infirmary. It had the appearance of having been dead for a considerable time. Putrefaction had commenced on the abdomen. It was a cold, dry time for the year and the place where the body was found was a cool one. It might, therefore, have lain for a longer time than we could reasonably suppose. I named eight or ten days at the time of the inquest as I was pressed for an opinion but I thought it might have been dead much longer. My opinion is that the child’s death was occasioned by external violence. There was a large bruise betwixt the eyes and one much larger on the right side of the throat. The tongue protruded partially from between the lips and teeth. From these marks and from the apparent weak state of the child, I not only concluded that its death had been a violent one but I was even led to form an opinion as to the mode of the death. The skeleton was that of an emaciated child; and apparently, a little violence would have occasioned death. The wounds appeared to have been inflicted by some hard, blunt substance. They might have been caused by a fall or a blow. I observed on the right side of the head, a cicatrix of a large ulcer which had denuded the bone. The right eye was completely blind from a disease we term stapheloma, or projecting humour and the left eye was also injured from opacities of the cornea. Two of the toes on the right foot had run together in healing from small-pox. It was I and an apprentice of mine, Mr Davison who lifted the body out of the ditch and undressed it

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