Homicide
In 1827, a slave named Ambrose escaped from his owner Berryman Burger. Like most runaways, Ambrose did not make the dangerous trek north but remained in the area, a practice called ‘lying out.’ In most cases, such slaves kept a low profile, living off the land or from scraps gleaned from friends and compatriots in the quarter. Ambrose, however, took a different path, waging guerrilla war against slavery and local slaveholders. Over the course of more than a year he broke into barns, slaughtered hogs and poultry, pillaged smokehouses, burned outbuildings, destroyed cotton, and generally behaved like a local Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and returning to his fellow slaves. Within months, Ambrose had induced other runaways to join him, and he was regarded by local planters as a “desperate character ... capable of any act of villainy” who should be killed on sight.
Early in the morning of September 24, 1828, a local white man, Kirkland Harmon, surprised Ambrose in his camp and gunned him down as he rose. Ambrose winced as the buckshot “enter[ed] his back loins & hips,” and he bled out on the ground. His one-man rebellion was effectively over. Without the coroner’s inquest convened over his body, however, we would know nothing of his rebellion; the record of his death is the only record we have of his life. How many Ambroses were there? It is hard to know. To its credit, Ambrose’s band picked up his mantle and continued to operate in the area as a plague to local planters.
I was not surprised to learn that such local resistance was quashed and that slaves like Ambrose were routinely murdered. I was surprised to learn how often the coroner responded. In her WPA interview, the former slave Mittie Freeman remembered the coroner as “that fellow that comes running fast when somebody gets killed,” and the coroner is mentioned in quite a few of the most famous slave narratives, including those by Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. The coroner was often the only magistrate mentioned because he was the only ‘outside’ law the slaves ever saw. We will never know precisely how many enslavers murdered their slaves and effortlessly covered it up. But in cases where the murderer was someone other than the enslaver, or where the enslaver failed to cover it up, there usually was an investigation, at the very least because property had been destroyed, and someone expected compensation.
Reflecting on the South he was forced to flee because of his Unionism, John Aughey noted: “Of course the laws which exist in every state against the murder or torturing of slaves are about as well observed as might be laws enacted by wolves against sheep-murder.” But in the coroners’ inquest there was actually a subtle game of community standards going on. Standing over the body of a slave and surveying the grim damage, a coroner’s jury was often perfectly comfortable recommending that a white be indicted. And at coroner’s inquests slaves were allowed to testify. The actual jury nullification came later, in the courtroom, when the mangled body was not actually present and the murderer was let off. But by then he had been held up to public scrutiny; his judgment and decency had been questioned publicly and legally. It is less than justice, but it is not nothing, a fact which slaves themselves recognized. When the coroner came a-runnin’, many slaves thought he might bring justice with him from some far off, saner place. And in his own Narrative, Frederick Douglass tells the story of an unnamed slave girl whose mistress “pounded in her skull” with a piece of firewood because she allowed a baby to cry uncontrollably and wake the household. “I will not say that this murder most foul produced no sensation. It did produce a sensation. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Mrs. Hicks, but incredible to tell, for some reason or other, that warrant was never served, and she not only escaped condign punishment, but the pain and mortification as well of being arraigned before a court of justice.” It is hard to believe that for all he’d seen of the institution of slavery, Douglass still thought it capable of any justice at all.
What does not make it into many of the slave narratives, including Douglass’s, is the violence that existed within the slave community. Enslavement does not magically transform all who endure it into savvy, self-sustaining freedom-fighters. If we are going to grant the enslaved their full humanity we must grant that, like any other group of people, they occasionally fought, fornicated, and got into petty disputes that sometimes took a murderous turn. To be sure, as historian Steven Hahn has noted, the slave quarter produced one of the most radical and transformative politics ever seen in America, a politics that produced Nat Turner and Frederick Douglass and finally brought down a $3.5 billion dollar interest. But in coroners reports we get a glimpse of the violence that existed within the slave community that we knew had to be there. Thus did the enslaved of the Haile plantation turn their children over to Tamer, the enslaved nurse, on their way out to the fields, little knowing that she liked to punish the children by tying them too close to a fire, a practice that was only discovered when she finally cooked one of them to death. Or take the case of an enslaved man named Dick who became so jealous that he pulled a log from a fire and murdered the man who was staying in the cabin of a woman he wanted to sleep with.
Today, the typical homicide in the United States involves one man shooting another, and this is equally true in the CSI:Dixie database. Comparatively speaking, the CSI:D sample has a higher percentage of male victims and a lower percentage of gun use. Today firearms are used in 68% of American homicides; in the CSI:D sample guns are used 52% of the time. Today 77% of homicide victims are male; in the CSI:D sample 88% are male (and virtually all of the perpetrators are men). Put bluntly, in the nineteenth century south, violent death was a more exclusively male province, and Death had more faces.
Interestingly, though, in the CSI:D database virtually none of the gun-related homicides are related to robbery. Most are the product of the highly combustible combination of anger and alcohol. The last words of J. Edward Sims were typical: “Shoot you damed cowardly son of a Bitch.” Or take this poignant exchange:
Tom Rutland (firing): “I will kill you, you son of a bitch.”
William Padgett (bleeding): “You have already.”
In the strange alchemy of the male brain, friends became mortal enemies in an instant, often over trivialities. “How in the hell did you Gap up My ax?” Gus Settler demanded to know of Allen Holmes in March 1882. I hardly know what a gapped-up axe looks like, but I do know that returning a borrowed tool in less than satisfactory condition is no grounds for murder. Settler disagreed and shot Holmes dead.
Infanticide
Life in the Faulknerian world of CSI:D was especially cheap for children. Catherine Berry, a domestic in the R. C. Poole household, was told that she would be terminated if she was indeed pregnant. In an awful feat of endurance, she continued with her chores until, doubled over with pain, she snuck away to give birth in the potato shed. Reeling from the loss of blood, she still managed to strangle the baby and fling it into the Pacolet River, where it washed up at the feet of some fishermen. When Peggy Bedenbaugh felt her first contractions, she went out to a corner of the yard, gave birth in a hole, and covered the baby over with dirt. Luly Collins threw her baby down a well. Nancy Owens swept hers under a brush pile. All had denied for months that they were in the “family way”; all had killed the evidence; all were indicted for murder.
Or take the case of Jane Arnold. On September 7, 1857, Brazeal Cox and his wife found sixteen-year-old Jane Arnold stretched out on the ground with a baby beside her, bleeding from its umbilical cord. When Arnold became aware of the couple she called out to Mrs. Cox, who wrapped the dying infant in Arnold’s apron and took it into the Arnold home. Mrs. Cox then returned and asked the girl why she hadn’t given birth indoors. Because her daddy was “doging” her, she said, and had cast her from the house. “She seemed to be grieving,” Cox told the coroner in a model of understatement, “but [I] don’t know what for, whether on the part of her dead child or the abuse of her father.”
Three years later, at four in the morning, a shivering Jane Arnold knocked at the door of a neighboring farm. She was cold and unkempt, but she couldn’t make up her mind to stay. Instead she returned to the abandoned schoolhouse where she had taken her latest baby, born in the middle of the road, to die of exposure.
The coroners’ office reveals a world where men force women into sex and women pay the price for it, in embarrassing pregnancies, social stigma, and the occasionally desperate attempt to cover up the evidence. In 1829 a fire in Thomas Welsh’s smoke-house revealed a small cubby in which a full term child had been secreted in a jar of lime. It is impossible to know whether this was an infanticide or a child who had been stillborn. Regardless the mother was covering up something. Occasionally that something was an interracial liaison. More often it was simply a pregnancy out-of-wedlock. Many of the cases reveal that the women had been trying for some time to induce an abortion. ‘Home remedies’ for pregnancy mentioned in the CSI:D sample include savin powder mixed with turpentine, red bark bay tea, and the ashes of dried corn cobs. In this sense some of the infanticides might be considered extremely late-term abortions. One unnamed mother, for instance, gave birth to a stillborn child who bore unmistakable marks of abuse en utero. M. Lipscomb was found doubled over a fence having apparently bled out in a botched, self-induced abortion.
Almost sadder is the number of women who were held to account for the ‘murder’ of infants who had most likely died of crib death or SIDS. Often sent back to the cotton field within days of giving birth, enslaved mothers were understandably exhausted, and they often slept with their infants so they could breast feed in a haze and go back to sleep. When they occasionally awoke to dead babies, they were unfortunately as susceptible as their doctors and enslavers to believe that they had smothered their children in their sleep, a phenomenon which only enhanced their reputation as uncaring and unnatural mothers.
NEXT: Suicide
Murder Cases Tried in South Carolina, 1887-1900
Year | Number of Homicides Tried | Not Guilty Verdicts | Guilty Verdicts | Cases Dismissed or Continued | Percentage Found Guilty |
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1887 | 79 | 54 | 11 | 14 | 13.9% |
1888 | 117 | 61 | 36 | 20 | 30.1% |
1889 | 120 | 69 | 30 | 21 | 25.0% |
1890 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1891 | 151 | 76 | 46 | 29 | 30.0% |
1892 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1893 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1894 | incomplete returns | - | - | - | - |
1895 | 210 | 112 | 67 | 31 | 31.9% |
1896 | 201 | 110 | 67 | 24 | 33.3% |
1897 | 215 | 120 | 64 | 31 | 29.7% |
1898 | 248 | 105 | 96 | 47 | 44.0% |
1899 | 205 | 83 | 97 | 35 | 47.3% |
1900 | 224 | 127 | 71 | 26 | 31.7% |
Credit: John Hammond Moore, Carnival of Blood: Dueling, Lynching, and Murder in South Carolina, 1880-1920 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 130-131, taken from Reports and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina
Homicide Inquests
Name | Deceased Description | Date | Inquest Location | Death Method | Inquest Finding |
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Hayes Brown | May 11, 1935 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC | pistol |
upon their oaths do say that Hayes Brown received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by a pistol in the hands of Lum Ross on the 5th day of May 1935, and that from such mortal wound deceased died in Wadesboro on May 6th 1935. |
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Haywood Barksdale | May 11, 1893 | near A.H. Martin's, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that he came to his death in Laurens Counrt on the 10th day of May 1893 from strangulation by being hung by the neck, by parties unknown to the jury. |
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Henry | male slave | July 15, 1858 | at Edgefield C.H., Edgefield County, SC | hickory stick |
upon their oaths do say that the said male salve, came to his death from a blow upon the left side of the head, from a hickory stick in the hands of a negro slave name Elbert (said to be the property of Evans Permenter[?]) |
Henry | slave | July 8, 1856 | at the house of Wm M. Hawkins, Greenville County, SC | hoe |
upon their oaths do say that the said Slave Henry was killed by Jr.[?] a slave of the said Wm M. Hawkins . . . with a hoe held by the said slave Jr.[?] [?] in self defense |
Henry | freemen formerly the slave | October 30, 1865 | at or near Dr. Bery F. Few's, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Henry was killed and homicideed by some person or persons by the discharge of a gun to the jurors unknown |
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Henry Blakeny | June 6, 1893 | at Ana Deason, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Henry Blakeney came to his death by a Pistol ball in the heands of Thos ingram at the residence of Ana Deason on the 6th June A.D. 1893. |
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Henry Blassingham | July 10, 1880 | at Greenville, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . .the said Henry Blassingham came to his death from the effects of a gun shot wound. The gun being in the hands of Frank Nelson. The ball entering the body to the left and a little above the left nipple and ranging[?] upwards |
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Henry Burt | June 21, 1895 | at Henry Burts, Edgefield County, SC | knife |
Upon their oaths do say that Henry Burt came to his death from a knife wound n the hands of Jim Chamberlain |
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Henry Dennis | August 22, 1876 | at the residence of Laurens County's Jefferson Abercrombie, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the aforesaid Henry Dennis in manner and form aforesaid on the night of the 20 isnt was shot by some person or persons unknown. |
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Henry Heavener | March 5, 1853 | at Thomas Lynch's, Spartanburg County, SC | axe |
upon their oaths do say that to the satisfaction of the jury he came to his death by violence. . .by some person or persons to the jurors unknown, by, the jurors suppose, an axe |
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Henry Little | October 9, 1911 | at Henry Little's near Pageland, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: that the Said Henry Little came to his death By goon Shot wounds in the hands of Parties unknown to the Jury |
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Henry Long | January 7, 1834 | Union County, SC | pistol |
do say upon their oaths that one Saml P Bailey of Said District not having the fear of God Before his Eyes But moved by the instigation of the Devil did . . .in the House or Store of James R. Nathens . . .with a Pistol wound & Kill the said Henry Long |
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Henry Mobley | December 11, 1899 | at Johnston, Edgefield County, SC | pistol |
upon their Oaths, do Say: That Henry Mobley came to his death . . . by a pistol shot. . . fired by the hands of Mark Clark |
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Henry Padget | freedman | November 14, 1866 | at Wm Padgets premises on Clouds Creek, Edgefield County, SC |
upon there oaths do say that. . .he came to his death by a Gun shot wound . . . in the hands of Job McGee |
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Henry Parks | September 14, 1895 | at Parksville, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say That Henry Parks came to his death. . . by a gun shot wound in the hands of Perrin Wells |
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Henry Purse | September 23, 1838 | at Camden, on the corner of Market & York Streets, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say we found upon examination that the Boddy is that of H. W. Purse who came to his death by the discharging fo a gun supposed to be loaded with shot by Franklin Ray. The wound inflicted was mortal, the load having passed into the right breast. |
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Henry Turner | September 24, 1878 | at Johnstons, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oath do say that the said Henry Turner came to his death by a pistol or gun shot from the hands of Cato[?] Butler |
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Henry Woolbright | October 26, 1843 | at Wm. C. Brown's near Howell's Ferry, Union County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said Henry Woolbright died in consequence of [?] abuse recd from his Father Tom Woolbright & from neglect at Various times by especially from the abuse recd . . .by certain strokes & blows inflicted by Thomas Woolbright at their own house |
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Herman Tadlock | December 24, 1932 | at Cross Roads, Chesterfield County, SC |
Herman Tadlock came to his death by a gunshot wound in ride of face from the hands of Sam McCray on Wednesday December 21st, 1932. |
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Hezekiah Robbins | November 5, 1865 | at the house of Hezekiah Robbins, Spartanburg County, SC | knife |
upon there [sic] oaths do say that they are satisfied he came to her death. . . by a stab from a knife in the left thigh in the hand of Hubbard Cash |
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Holman Smith | May 28, 1855 | at the late residence of Holman Smith, Spartanburg County, SC | ax |
upon their oaths do say [deceased] was wilfully, maliciously, & feloniously murdered at his own residence. . .by Phillis and John, slaves of the deceased, by beating him with an Axe and a stick. . .and that Charley, a slave of dec's'd, was accessory to the murder being present and making no effort to prevent the murder |
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Hon. Joseph Crews | September 14, 1875 | at Laurens C.H., Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say, that the said Joseph Crews came to his Death by means certain gun shot wounds inflicted by person or persons to the jurors unknown |
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Houston Taylor | October 6, 1915 | at G. F. Erasmo, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do say: That the aforesaid Houston Taylor came to his death as the result of pistol shot rounds at the hands of Dr. R. L. McManus, a justifiable homicide |
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Howard Braxton | April 20, 1943 | at Cheraw, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Howard Braxton received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by 38 Pistol in the hands of Wallace Turner |
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Howard E. Fields | September 24, 1948 | at Chesterfield, S. C., Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that Howard E. Fields received in Chesterfield County a mortal wound by_______ in the hands of Lee Freeman & Garland Smith |
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Howel | slave | October 3, 1835 | at the house of [?] Polk[?], Union County, SC | ||
Huey A Stevenson | Fairfield County, SC | pistol |
We the Jury [?] to hold an inquisition over the body of Huey A Stevenson find that the deceased came to his death form a pistol shot wound inflicted by Johnson Cameron[.] |
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Hugh Barkley | September 20, 1836 | in the house of Hugh Barkley, Fairfield County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that according to the evidence adduced to them the said Hugh Barkley came to his death by a wound inflicted on him with a dirk or knife by Baby Flemming on the left side above the Pubis which we suppose cut the spermatic[?] artery & caused the effusion of blood into the scrotum |
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Ineed Madden | Daughter of Perry & Della Madden | July 12, 1897 | at Buford Burns plantation, Laurens County, SC |
upon their oaths do say Ineed Madden infant of Perry & Della Madden came to her death by Gun shot wound inflicted by the hand of Ause Simpson Col on the 11th day of July 1897 at the House of Rudy Barksdale on B.C. Burns plantation. |
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infant | July 28, 1836 | at the palntation of Mr. Richard Shotford[?], Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that Nancy Owens of. . .district is living at the house of sd district is the mother and murderer of sd. Child which they have examined but how killed they could not tell. |
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infant | infant | March 24, 1892 | at Pinksville, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths do say said Infant came to its death by the hands of Jane Gilchrist |
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infant | April 14, 1869 | at Capt. J.D. Jakell's plantation, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said male infant child was killed by its mother Peggy Bedenbaugh [and] after she was delivered of it ... that she buried it about thirty yards back of the house in which she resides on Capt. J.D. Jakell's plantation |
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infant | June 12, 1872 | Anderson County, SC | |||
infant | March 29, 1842 | at Tabitha Laird's, Kershaw County, SC |
upon their oaths do say according to evidence taken before us at this inquest do believe that the Tabitha Laird. . .did destroy her infant child against the peace and dignity of said state have no proof how the infant came to its death |
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infant | September 12, 1882 | at Chester Scruggs well, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said infant was murdered by being thrown into an unused well by some person or persons to the jurors unknown |
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infant | infant | January 10, 1898 | at Johnston, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their oaths, do Say: That the said Infant was killed and murdered by Some person or persons to the Jurors unknown |
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infant | April 6, 1865 | near Hobbysville, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that after a most careful investigation of the whole matter ... that the said child, we are satisfied, came to its death by having the posterior part of its head crushed, wilfully and violently, by the hands of Martha Robinson, the mother of said child, or Elizabeth Robinson, the grandmother of said child, later in the evening of Tuesday the 4th day of April |
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infant | March 6, 1884 | in the City of Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that ... the said child . . .came to its death from injuries received at the hands of Mary McKeys, Lizzie Mills, Paul Mills, and Alexander Mills, all of whom we deem cognizant of and accessory to the death |
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infant | June 15, 1884 | at Gaffney City, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said male infant child name unknown was killed and murdered by some person, or persons, or by some means, either by crushing of th head with some instrument unknown by drowning or both |
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infant | March 10, 1865 | at Anderson Court House, Anderson County, SC |
do say that it came to its death ^at the house of Wm Shanachans[?] in the town of Anderson^ by violence inflicted by its mother Adelia C. Parker |
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infant | November 28, 1829 | in Camden on the lot on which Mr. Thomas Welsh[?] resided, Kershaw County, SC |
do say upon their oaths that the remains of an infant born at "full time" were found in a smoke house, suspiciuosly concealed in a jar with lime on the lot on which Mr. Thomas Welch[?] resided; but how, or when the infant came to its death we know not. |
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infant | August 23, 1888 | at Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that the said unknown child came to his death by being killed and murdered by some person or persons to the jurors unknown |
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infant | January 8, 1815 | at the plantation of James Leatherwood, Spartanburg County, SC | |||
infant | March 16, 1870 | at Isaac Young's on Pacolet River, Spartanburg County, SC |
upon their oath do say that the said child came to its death by some means to the jurors unknown against the peace and dignity of the same state aforesaid |
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infant | July 16, 1868 | in the town of Camden, Camden, S.C., Kershaw County, SC |
the jury ... were lead to believe that Lula Collins (alias Deas) was the mother of the dead child, and that Louisa Deas in trying to conceal the body of said child in the well leads the jury to suspect that she had knowledge of the manner by which it came there. How the child come to its death, the jury are unable to determine. |
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infant | September 19, 1833 | at the home of William Griffin, Spartanburg County, SC |
do say upon their oaths. . .that the infant was put to death by violence of Harriet Bagood |
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Infant Brown | September 26, 1932 | near Angelus, Chesterfield County, SC |
upon their oaths aforesaid, do say, that the aforesaid Infant Brown We, the Jury of Inquest find, according to evidence produced, that the infant came to its death by Neelie Brown, its Mother. |
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infant child | infant child | July 21, 1851 | at the residence of Mrs. Elizabeth Campbell, Greenville County, SC |
upon their oaths do say that . . . said infant cause to its death by misfortune or accident either in the act of being born or short time after its birth |
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infant Child | infant Child | August 22, 1842 | at or near Mrs Marium Kershaw plantation, Union County, SC |
do say that the bones shown to them at the Stump was the bones of an infant [?] Child and it appeared that they had been put there for the purpose of Consealing them [??] they war put thare in the flesh or cleand of flesh is to us unknown |
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infant child | infant child | December 14, 1877 | at Dr. K N Hudsons plantation, Edgefield County, SC |
upon their Oaths do say that. . .Ella Talbert did murder her own child with some instrument unknown then burned it |