Newborn baby died of exposure after being thrown on rubbish tip

The drama of a Preston woman being sentenced to hang began on the first Thursday of March 1898 when the Preston police were altered to the discover of a body of a newly born male child on the Corporation Tip off London Road.

- with Keith Johnson

Enquiries revealed that the baby was the child of unmarried Phyllis Rosbottom, 22, who was living at Pleasant Bank Place, Oxford Street, with her widowed mother Isabella Cookson at the time.

The cries of the newly born had been heard by a neighbour who testified they heard the daughter pleading with her mother not to harm the child and a that a few minutes later they heard someone leave the house in the direction of the tip. Lily Forshaw testified that she had seen the accused going in the direction of the tip at nine o'clock in the morning carrying something bulky under her cape.

Within days Isabella Cookson appeared at a crowded Preston Police court accused of killing the child, a charge she denied before the magistrates. At that time her daughter was stated to be in the Preston Royal Infirmary recovering from her traumatic ordeal.