Whilst researching the Fagg family, there was a mention of the murder of a young child, Lydia in 1737.I tracked down some details in the book, Freshest Advices: Early Provincial Newspapers in England By Roy McKeen Wiles (Held at Newbold College) . Details:
There was no lack of intimations of immorality from all parts of the country. Two illustrations picked out of hundreds will serve to show how such matters were treated in country newspapers. The final paragraph of news in the Sherborne Mercury, number 16 (7 June 1737), reached the editor through his London correspondent, who, on June 4, communicated to him a two-hundred-and-eighty-word report dated at Canterbury on June 1, It told of the arrest and confession of Margaret Wickes, a single woman about twenty-two years of age, who had been “committed to his Majesty’s Gaol of St. Dunstan’s,” near Canterbury, on suspicion of having murdered Lydia Fagg, eighteen-month-old daughter of her employer, a gentleman of Dover.
This Maid Servant got up from the Bed where she lay with the Infant, at her Master’s House in Dover, about four of the Clock on Saturday Morning last, and before she went out of the House, as she now says, she went up and kiss’d the Child three several Times, and at last took the Child from the Bed, and carry’d her asleep to the Sea-side; when a great Wave wash’d the Child out of her Arms; that she saw the Child struggle several Times, and went into the Sea after it to save it, but could not. But ’tis confidently reported by strong Circumstances, that she flung the Child into the Sea, to be reveng’d of her Mistress.
She can give no Reason for carrying the Child so early in the Morning to the Sea-side. This hard hearted Creature afterwards, instead of going Home, rambled about three Miles to St. Margaret’s, where she was found, conceal’d in one of the Cliffs about ten o’clock the same Morning; and the Child about the same time was taken up in one of the Fishermens Nets.
A twentieth-century reader of this account, finding him-self thinking of a folk ballad or of an incident in a Hardy or a George Eliot novel, is moved to wonder what distress of mind prompted Margaret Wickes to her strange action.
