IT was shortly after 9am that Elizabeth Dew heard the tell-tale jangle of keys outside her cell for a warder to accompany her to the prison governor’s office.

She had once been condemned to death for the murder of her infant son until the Home Secretary Herbert Asquith acted on the jury’s verdict and her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Dew, still incensed that her former lover who had coerced her into killing the tot had been acquitted, had become resigned to her fate.

But that morning she was to receive the most unexpected but joyful news.

“You are being released,” he told her. “You are free to leave.”

Dew had stood trial at Hampshire Assizes in July, 1893, after the body of her three-week-old baby was discovered by a young schoolgirl on her way home in Totton.

In late February, Emily Garrett had been picking flowers with her sister Rose in a hedgerow in Rushington Lane when she saw a brown paper parcel tied up with string. She picked it up, undid the string and tore at the paper.

She let out a piercing scream when an arm flopped out of the package.

Leaving it alongside the hedge, they rushed to their mother and the police in the shape of Pc Albert Bradbury arrived at the scene already congregated by some 200 people. He gingerly picked up the parcel and slowly tearing away the paper, saw a head and the upper torso wrapped in a shawl.

At Totton police station he reported the finding to Sgt James Baker who had been informed of the discovery by a telegram sent to Lyndhurst.

“A piece of string was tied very tightly around the child’s neck,” he told the inquest opening. “The string was embedded in his neck. I carefully examined the paper and discovered a portion of the parcel post label which had come from Waltham Close, South East, London, with the date June 3, 92 and 10 1/2 on it.”

Dr Sheppard estimated the baby had been dead for about three days and had suffered no other violence. The corpse was that of a three week old child who had been suffocated.

Jurors then returned a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown.

But the press report naturally attracted public attention and detectives were to hear from a concerned landlady about a pregnant woman who had been staying with her called Dew and who she had known for some seven years. Mrs Hudson, wife of a Southampton postman, told them Dew had given birth to a healthy boy in the middle of February and at her request wrote to the father William Barnes who came to the house in Bevois Town the following day.

Dew left a fortnight later and within days she wrote two further letters to Barnes, warning him she was in great trouble and threatening to harm herself. However, she maintained Dew had doted on the child and treated him well.

Police then showed her the shawl which she identified the shawl as being Dew’s who within days was traced her to a house in Cadnam.

“I am making inquiries about the body found in Totton,” Pc Challis told her. “I intend to make a serious charge against you and must caution you.”

Dew without hesitation replied: “Yes, it is mine. and I did it.”

The officer took her to Lyndhurst where interviewed by Superintendent Foster she admitted she had tied the string around her son’s neck until he was dead, wrapped him in paper and then dumped him in Rushington Lane.

Sobbing, she implored the police chief: “Barnes told me he would marry me if I got rid of the baby. I told him I got rid of him but not how.”

Dew however was to plead not guilty to murder at her trial where jurors were told Barnes had originally been charged as an accessory but discharged through lack of evidence.

E U Bullen defended on the basis that she had such a troubled mind that the capital charge could not be maintained – but all to no avail with a guilty verdict being delivered in seconds but attached to a strong recommendation for mercy.

Donning the infamous black cap, Mr Justice Day regarded the crime as a wilful murder and he had to follow his duty in sentencing her to death.

“It is not my custom, indeed I have always abstained from saying anything to harrow the feelings of a person in your position but I will give you one piece of advice. You should be given time to reflect on the past and prepare yourself for the future. Every assistance will be given to you in prison to prepare to meet your Judge. You have been recommended to mercy and I shall pass it on to the proper authority.”

Dew was escorted from the dock, shouting, “It was Barnes who made me do it.”

Though she had killed her baby, the public were quite sympathetic towards her given that her agitator had been acquitted and not surprisingly within a fortnight the Home Secretary intervened, commuting and her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Dew spent nearly five years at Aylesbury Prison – until that dramatic meeting.