Sarah
Hawkins Genealogy Site
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The Central Somerset Gazette and The Western Counties' Advertiser. Friday 17 Jul 1914
Page 8 Column 4
CHILD NEGLECT AT TAUNTON.
A Taunton labourer, named Henry Thomas ROWSWELL, and his wife Ellen ROWSWELL, were charged at the local Police-court on Wednesday with having wilfully neglected their grandchild, Dorothy ROWSWELL, aged 8 years.
Both the defendants pleaded guilty.
Mr. T. BROMHEAD, who prosecuted on behalf of the N.S.P.C.C., said the male defendant semed <sic> to be a hard-working man who had been in the same employment for 20 years, but he (Mr. BROMHEAD) was afraid that the woman was addicted to drink, and that that was the cause of the trouble in the present case. The child was the illegitimate offspring of the daughter of the defendants.
Dr. A. E. JOSCELYNE said he accompanied Inspector PEARCE to the defendants' house, where he found the child, whose body and clothes were in a very verminious <sic> condition, lying on the floor in a squatting position just like a rabbit lay. The grandmother and child slept on a old sofa which was destitute of upholstery and of bedclothing. The house was dirty and uncared for.
Inspector PEARCE said the daughter of the defendants was a weak-minded girl, who had had two illegitimate children in her parents' home and had now been sent away. The other ilegitimate <sic> child had been sent to Cardiff, and the defendants' own child, aged fourteen, remained at home with the grandchild, who was the subject of the present charge.
The male defendant was fined £1 and costs, and the woman was sent to prison for three months. In the meantime the child was to be cared for in the Workhouse.
<NOTES: Henry Thomas or Thomas
ROWSWELL son of Henry ROWSWELL and Mary MALE, married Ellen S. GREEDY
or CREEDY
Ellen S. GREEDY or CREEDY daughter of Matthew GREEDY and
Mary LYDDON, married Henry Thomas or Thomas ROWSWELL>