Mother Of New-Born Baby, Threatened By Uncle With Knife

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 93, 30 May 1949, Page 4

Mother Of New-Born Baby, Threatened By Uncle With Knife

W T hile asleep, five hours after the birth of her baby, a woman awoke with a feeling of suffocation to find her uncle leaning over the bed with one hand over her mouth and in the other a knife which he was holding against her throat.

This was stated at Chelmsford Assizes when Leonard Wesley Harwood, aged 22, a painter and decorator, of Devonshire Road, Hornchurch, was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for the manslaughter of 58-year-old William Arthur Cove, of the same address. According to the prosecution, Harwood and Mrs Ivy Annie Taylor (who was referred to throughout the trial as Mrs Harwood) were living together in rooms at the house of the dead man, who was the woman’s uncle. There had been rows between the couple and Cove. The woman was expecting a baby, and Cove had said: “You won’t have it in my house. I’ll see to that.” The baby was born prematurely on the morning of December 4. Later that morning Harwood went out with the two-year-old son of Mrs Harwood by her real husband.

It was added that when Mrs Harwood saw her uncle by the bed she pushed his hands away. He then struck her across the shoulders with a stick.

Getting out of bed, she seized the baby and went outside the house just as Harwood returned. She told him her uncle had .tried to kill her.

Harwood said in evidence that he topk a gun—a broken air pistol which .could not be fired—and a. piece of wood from Cove.

When he returned to the room Cove threw a poker at him and lost his balance.

Harwood admitted that some of Cove’s injuries were caused by his, Har,wood’s fists, and some through Cove falling against a table and the wall. He denied that he kicked him deliberately.

The jury returned a verdict of “Guilty of manslaughter under extreme provocation.”