Background and Domestic Poverty in Bassaleg
Researched and written by guest contributor Monty Dart. The words used in this account come from contemporaneous reports of the trial.
Sarah Jones was described in The Times on the 24th of April 1827 as “this unfortunate victim to seduction.”
She was reported to have been about 26 years old and came to trial at Usk, Monmouthshire, for the murder of her newborn female child in October 1826.
Her mother, Mary Jones, was charged alongside her for aiding and abetting the crime.
The cottage in Bassaleg where Sarah lived with her mother Mary, her father Thomas, and her brother (also named Thomas) was a cramped, impoverished “one up, two down” dwelling.
The first witness in court was next-door neighbour Ann Jones, a servant at The Tredegar Arms public house in Bassaleg. Ann gave her testimony through an interpreter, as many of the local witnesses spoke Welsh as their first language:
“I observed an alteration in the size of Sarah Jones. I thought she was with child and told her so. She denied it. She was very large before 23rd (October 1826) and small afterwards. She told me she had the dropsy.”
Ann continued:
“I went to see her on Tuesday 24th, she was in bed. I saw nothing particular in the room, but there was a bad smell.”
The following day she visited Sarah again:
“she was then as thin as I am now. I had some talk with her and said she had better confess.”
Another neighbour confirmed that she had repeatedly confronted Sarah about her pregnancy, which Sarah had steadfastly denied, though admitting she was “not well.”
Discovery of the Bundle at Tredegar House
On Saturday the 28th of October 1826, Peter Potter, a gamekeeper employed on the estate of Sir Charles Morgan at Tredegar House, discovered a suspicious bundle tied inside a pocket handkerchief in a cart-house.
Inside the handkerchief was a coarse piece of sacking sewn shut with three large stitches. Upon opening it, Potter discovered the body of a newborn baby marked with streaks of blood.
Local suspicion immediately pointed toward the Jones household. Potter summoned estate labourer John Flook and showed him the parcel. Potter later testified:
“He took the parcel and we went together to the prisoner’s house and found the father and the two prisoners in a room downstairs. Flook laid it down on the chair and I said to the mother (Mary) ‘Do take it and let it be buried like a Christian and not like a dog’. She took up the parcel but seemed not to know what I meant. I said ‘Take it out and you’ll know what I mean.’ She felt it round before opening of it, and said, raising her hands, ‘I never knew nothing of it before.’ I said, ‘If you did not, your daughter did and she ought to be ashamed of herself.’”
The bundle was left upon the chair.
That evening, Sarah’s father and brother carried the parcel to the local churchyard, located only yards from their cottage, and buried it in secret.
Word of the clandestine burial reached the county coroner, who immediately ordered the exhumation of the infant.
The Medical Autopsy and Confession
Mr. Jehoida Brewer, a surgeon from Newport, performed the post-mortem examination upon the exhumed child:
“It appeared to have been dead four or five days. I found two cuts in its throat: one about three inches in length and an inch in depth. The jugular vein and carotid artery were nearly divided. The wounds were quite sufficient to produce death.
The child had come to maturity. I opened it; the lungs were perfectly inflated and of a florid red; the heart was completely exhausted of blood; the vessels were empty. If the child had not lived, the lungs would have not been that florid red colour.”
Surgeon Brewer’s final observation—that Sarah had recently given birth—sealed her fate and prompted her arrest by Police Constable Edmund Rees.
Neighbour Margaret Kenvin testified regarding a conversation with Sarah on Monday, 30 October:
“I said ‘You have done for yourself. You do say nobody knows of this but yourself.’ She answered me ‘Nobody knows indeed’. I said ‘Who cut its throat?’ She said ‘I did do it myself.’”
PC Rees recounted the arrest:
“I made her no promise or threat. I said ‘How did such an unhappy job as this happen with you?’ She said ‘The child was born dead.’ She stopped a moment and then said ‘It was him, he the villain that deceived me and persuaded me not to let anybody know of it, and to keep it secret. No good can ever come to him.’”
The Assize Trial at Usk
The trial took place at the Monmouthshire Spring Assizes held in Usk before Mr. Justice Bosanquet.
After retiring for half an hour, the jury acquitted the mother, Mary Jones, but convicted Sarah Jones of wilful murder.
Pronouncing the death sentence, Mr. Justice Bosanquet addressed the condemned woman:
“You stand before the court, and before your God, convicted of having violated the ties of nature, by putting to death a child, the offspring of your own body, and the fruit of your own crime. I cannot hold out the slightest hope of life to you.
This is an awful scene and an awful lesson to have brought young women into the same situation as you were brought into, but more awful to the individual to whom your destruction is owning. He will have to answer to his God, but whether here he will be answerable I cannot say. The law allows you but a very short interval. Let me earnestly and affectionately exhort you to implore, through the merits of your Redeemer, the mercy of that God whom you have offended.”
Condemned Cell and the Motive of Betrayal
Sarah was ordered to be hanged within three days, on Wednesday the 11th of April 1827.
During her final hours in Usk Gaol, she recounted the tragic sequence of events that led to the killing.
Having concealed her pregnancy, she discovered three months before her confinement that her lover and seducer, a man named Flook, had abandoned her and married another woman.
Distraught and desperate, she resolved to take revenge upon him by ending the child’s life.
On Monday the 23rd of October, while her mother was downstairs, Sarah went into labour in the bedroom, delivered the baby girl unassisted, and slit the infant’s throat.
She concealed the body between the mattress and straw sacking.
When Flook visited her on Friday, she confessed what she had done and begged him to provide a burial. Instead, Flook abandoned the parcel in Sir Charles Morgan’s cart-house, where the gamekeeper discovered it.
James Flook fled the district prior to the trial and was never brought to justice.
Public Execution at Usk Gaol
In the condemned cell, fellow inmate Sarah Bayley, a convicted thief, reported that Sarah had slept soundly, though:
“she had been disturbed by the vision of her coffin beside the bed and since her sentence could feel the sensation of the rope around her neck and often lifted her hand to remove it.”
After receiving the sacrament on the morning of Wednesday, 11 April 1827, Sarah was escorted to the gallows, walking with a steady and composed step.
She took leave of the prison officials and requested a final act of modesty:
“begged the executioner to draw her clothes tight around her. This he did with a handkerchief and the drop fell.”
Under the Murder Act of 1751, murderers were subject to post-mortem anatomical dissection, but the judge had formally remitted the dissection clause of her sentence. When informed that her body would not be sent to surgeons, Sarah expressed profound relief.
Following her execution under the short drop, she was buried in the precincts of the gaol.
Maternal infanticide cases were frequent under the harsh social conditions of the 19th century, with later prominent cases including Rebecca Smith in 1849—the last woman executed for infanticide in Britain—before the statutory reforms of the Infanticide Acts of 1922 and 1938.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Sarah Jones?
Sarah Jones was a 26-year-old unmarried woman from Bassaleg, Monmouthshire, who was convicted and executed at Usk Gaol in April 1827 for the infanticide of her newborn daughter.
How was the crime uncovered?
The infant’s body was discovered wrapped in sacking inside a handkerchief hidden in a cart-house at Tredegar House by a gamekeeper. Although her family attempted a secret burial, the coroner ordered an exhumation, and an autopsy proved the baby had breathed and died from deep throat wounds.
Why was Sarah Jones’s mother acquitted?
Mary Jones was charged with aiding and abetting her daughter, but the jury accepted that she had no foreknowledge of the clandestine birth or murder in the cottage, and was genuinely shocked when the dead child was shown to her.
What happened to the child’s father?
The father, a man named Flook who had seduced and deserted Sarah to marry another woman, abandoned the dead infant in a cart-house after Sarah gave it to him for burial. He fled the county before the trial and escaped legal prosecution.
Where and when was Sarah Jones executed?
She was hanged outside Usk Gaol in Monmouthshire on Wednesday, 11 April 1827.
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