![]() ![]() The presiding judge was Sir James Shaw Willes, and it was reported that during the trial, and especially while the details of the baby’s death were being described, ‘the learned Judge became painfully affected, so much so, that at one time he buried his face in his note-book and shed tears and seemed almost unable to proceed with the evidence’. When the case came to trial in Liverpool in 1859, the jury acquitted the woman, Agnes Bradley, on the grounds of insanity. The baby’s mother confessed that she was the poisoner and explained her reason: she was convinced she was guilty of some terrible sin for which she would soon be hanged and she ‘thought it better that her child should be sent to God, who would take care of it for her’. He had consumed a fatal dose of laudanum, administered to him in his bottle, mixed with milk and sugar. On Boxing Day 1856, a 10-month-old baby boy died in painful, violent convulsions.
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