ABSTRACT
At the Devon Lent assize session held at Exeter castle in March 1865, a twenty-one-year-old unmarried domestic servant, Harriet Vooght, was charged with the murder of her new-born child. The judge, in his charge to the grand jury, accepted that 'there were several circumstances tending to show that the death of the child had not been attended with any violence on the part of the mother' but, pointing to medical evidence that 'a piece of tape had been tied around the neck of the child', he directed the jury to 'find a bill for wilful murder and thus place her on her trial for the capital offence'. 1 At the trial, it appeared that on Monday 9 January, Harriet, who had been a nurse in the service of Mr Martin Strickland at Starcross near Exeter, had become ill and retired to bed early. Although her condition seemed to improve, on the Wednesday a surgeon had been called to the house to examine her. Suspicious that she had either given birth to a child or had a miscarriage, he searched the room and found a dead female child in a box. On examining the child's body, the surgeon concluded that death had been caused by strangulation but was not prepared to confirm that the child had 'ever had a separate existence from the mother'. In her defence, it was established that Harriet 'had always borne a kind and humane character' and that she had 'made clothes for the child', thereby dispelling prosecution claims that she had harboured any intent to kill it. On the balance of the evidence, the trial jury acquitted her of murder but found her guilty of concealment of birth. Harriet was sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment with hard labour. 2
