Harriet Stone and Charles Giles from Whiteparish, near Salisbury, had known each other for seven or eight years and had recently been ‘keeping company’. Almost inevitably, Harriet soon fell pregnant. Charles, however, was appalled at the idea of becoming a father and gave strict instructions to Harriet that she was to stifle the child as soon as it was born.
Harriet didn’t take him seriously, probably living in hope that Giles would change his mind once the baby was born. Meanwhile, he found her lodgings in Warminster, a suitable distance away from the wagging tongues of their home village, and insisted that she move there. Harriet spent the latter part of her pregnancy alone in her rented room and, when it was time for the baby to arrive, she gave birth with just a nurse in attendance.
However, days after the birth of his son in September 1830, Charles Giles unexpectedly appeared at the window of Harriet’s room. Still weak from a difficult confinement, when the nurse brought the baby to Harriet to feed, she promptly passed him to his father to hold. Giles was hardly a proud father. ‘What is to be done now the child is living?’ he asked Harriet, before disinterestedly handing his son back to her. ‘You may as well let me poison it.’
Harriet was understandably distressed at this callous remark, tearfully telling Giles, ‘You are not going to poison my child’. Ignoring her tears, Giles left abruptly, returning to Harriet’s lodgings within a short while. When she asked him where he had been, he told her that he had been to the top of Cop Heath in Warminster, although he would not say why.
Harriet didn’t see her boyfriend again for two weeks, but on 18 September he again knocked on the window of her room. It was about ten o’clock at night and Harriet had already retired to bed but, in response to his knocking, she got up and let him in through the window. Charles told Harriet that he had come to take her home, but Harriet didn’t want to leave without paying the nurse the money she was owed for attending the birth and caring for the baby.
Warminster. (Author’s collection)
The money due to the nurse was 3s 6d but Charles told Harriet that he had no small change. Giving her a sovereign, he insisted that she went out herself to get it changed, so she climbed out of the window and went to the house next door. As Harriet knocked on her neighbour’s door, she thought she heard her baby give a small, stifled cry. She immediately abandoned her efforts to change the sovereign and went back to her room, having been absent for two minutes at the most.
She had left her son asleep in bed but when she got back, she found Charles holding the infant in his arms. Harriet snatched the baby back and kissed it and as soon as she did, she felt an immediate burning sensation on her mouth. ‘Oh my God, Charles, you’ve poisoned my child,’ she shouted at him, but her boyfriend vehemently denied having done anything of the sort. He took his son from her and carefully climbed out of the window, telling Harriet again that he was taking her home and urging her to hurry up and come with him so that they could avoid meeting John Wadley, her landlord, and having to pay her outstanding rent.
Harriet obediently exited through the window and trotted after Charles Giles. When she caught up with him, she slipped her finger into the baby’s mouth, finding it to be dry and very hot, the tongue scorched. Harriet immediately sat down in the High Street and closely examined her baby, who had by now drawn his legs up to his stomach and gone limp. Again, she accused Giles of poisoning the child, telling him that the baby was dying, but he continued to deny it. Eventually he grabbed the baby from her, wrapped him in a pillowcase and put the child in the pocket of his smock. He told Harriet that he was going to bury the boy with his brother and that she mustn’t say anything to anybody – he then gave her two sovereigns and told her to go and stay with her sister, Mary Ann Rose, in Southampton.
In the event, Harriet initially went to a woman named Phoebe Blake, at whose home she spent the night. The relationship between Harriet and Phoebe is not made clear in the newspapers of the time, although Harriet seems to have told Phoebe that she was a married woman. On the following morning, Harriet got up at five o’clock and set off to travel to her sister’s house, first by coach and then on foot.
She arrived at her sister’s house in a sorry state. When Mary Ann asked her what the matter was, the story of the death of her baby boy spilled out, in spite of her promises to Charles that she would say nothing. Mary Ann was incensed and persuaded her sister to go with her to see the Mayor of Southampton to lodge a complaint. The mayor directed the two women to the home of a local magistrate but, finding him out when they called, they instead went to the police and demanded that Charles Giles be arrested for the wilful murder of his child.
As a result of the complaint made by Harriet and her sister, Constable Joseph Pizer visited Charles Giles at his home in Whiteparish. Giles initially denied all knowledge of the child but, when his neighbours were questioned, it emerged that he had been seen walking towards a nearby chalk pit with a spade over his shoulder. Pizer went straight to the chalk pit, where he discovered the body of a baby boy buried in a shallow grave.
He immediately took the dead infant to George Nunn, a local surgeon. Nunn conducted a post-mortem examination and noticed that the baby’s clothes were ‘corroded’ in places, as if they had been splashed by acid. The child’s lips and left cheek were scorched and, on removing the little boy’s clothes, the surgeon found several acid burns on his body.
The baby’s stomach contained a quantity of dark liquid, which was so corrosive that it had practically dissolved his stomach and small intestine. When Mr Nunn analysed the fluid, he found it to be sulphuric acid. Since it was impossible for any natural disease to produce sulphuric acid, Nunn concluded that the child had been murdered by the administration of poison.
Charles Giles was committed for trial at the Lent Assizes in Salisbury for the wilful murder of his son. The proceedings opened on 11 March 1831, presided over by Mr Justice Park. Giles pleaded ‘Not Guilty’.
The first witness for the prosecution was Harriet Stone, who tearfully related the events of 18 September and also identified the clothes that her baby was dressed in when she last saw him. She wept bitterly as the baby’s nightgown, cap, shawl and flannel napkin were produced in court, along with the pillowcase that she had given to Giles to wrap the baby in, which had then become its shroud. Egbert Moon, who had witnessed the opening of the child’s makeshift grave by Constable Pizer and the exhumation of the tiny body, testified that they were the clothes that the baby had been wearing when it was found.
Harriet was cross-examined extensively by the counsel for the defence, Mr Dampier, who seemed determined to prove to the court that Harriet and Charles had acted together in killing their illegitimate baby. Dampier asked why Harriet had not told anyone of her boyfriend’s insistence that the child should be stifled at birth at the time the threat was made, to which Harriet replied that she had not taken him seriously.
Dampier then called Mary Wadley, the wife of Harriet’s landlord, to the stand. Mary had been concerned before the baby’s birth that Harriet seemed ill prepared for its arrival. She had suggested that she should buy more baby clothes, to which Mary swore that Harriet had responded, ‘Stop and see whether it lives or not, before I get more linen’. Harriet completely denied ever having said anything of the kind. She told the court that she had plenty of things prepared for her baby and that she had been very fond of it and had taken good care of it.
Mrs Wadley also told the court that the child wouldn’t suckle, while her husband informed the court that Harriet had escaped through the window of her room to avoid paying her outstanding rent. From his living room, it was possible to hear everything that happened in Harriet’s room and, on the night that she had left, he had not heard the baby make any noise at all. Phoebe Blake, with whom Harriet had spent that night, said that, at the time, Harriet did not appear to be in her right mind.
James Dickens, the driver of the coach in which Harriet had travelled to Southampton, testified that Harriet had been carrying a bundle with her throughout the journey and that she had told him that it was a ‘bastard child’. According to Dickens, she had pretended to suckle the bundle during the journey, although he had not heard any cries or sounds, nor seen any movement that might have been made by a living child. Dampier pointed out that the implications behind Dickens’s testimony were that, although she knew full well that the baby was already dead, Harriet had tried to dupe people into thinking that she was taking her son to Southampton on Monday morning, alive and well.
Dampier also told the court that the baby’s nurse had fed it a teaspoonful of poppy syrup about two hours before he died. Harriet argued that the nurse had given the baby poppy oil every night and it had never done him any harm.
Having summoned several witnesses in a vain attempt to blacken Harriet’s character, Dampier then produced several more who were prepared to swear to the hitherto unblemished character of Charles Giles. In fact, even the witnesses for the prosecution gave him an excellent character reference, many specifically stating that he had always demonstrated a remarkable fondness for children.
After the judge had summed up the case, the jury retired for only a few minutes before returning with a verdict of ‘Guilty of wilful murder’ against Charles Giles, although they also made a strong recommendation for mercy, given the prisoner’s previous good character and conduct. The judge informed them that, in so atrocious a case, he did not feel inclined to be merciful, then put on his black cap and addressed the prisoner.
He told Giles that he believed that his excellent character was the motive behind what he referred to as ‘this most unnatural and inhuman deed’. Mindful of his standing in the local community, Giles had moved Harriet Stone some distance away from her home for her confinement and, once the child was born, had killed it for fear that his reputation would be ‘blasted’. It was unthinkable that Harriet should return to their village with an illegitimate babe in arms, since that would destroy Giles’ spotless character. Not only that, but Giles had then compounded the offence by trying to insinuate something against Harriet and, furthermore, by trying to make out that she was insane.
‘I am innocent’, Giles interrupted, but the judge would have none of it.
‘Under these circumstances, I dare not, as I tender my duty to God, attend to the kind recommendation of the jury,’ he continued, sentencing Giles to be executed and ordering his body to be given to the surgeons for dissection.
Giles promptly burst into tears and ‘appeared in great agony of mind’. He was removed from the court, still protesting his innocence, but his protests fell on deaf ears and he was executed at Salisbury on 14 March 1831. After hanging for the customary period of one hour, his body was cut down and, according to the judge’s instructions, presented to the surgeons.