Elkin, Oct. 10—The finding of a newly-born baby girl in a backyard privy at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Diamond Swaim on “Factory Hill” here Thursday afternoon and its rescue alive from the pit caused much excitement here and gave Elkin such a “thrill” as near tragedy only can give.
Thelma Ashley, 19-year-old daughter of Sant Ashley, first denied being the mother of the child but when Dr. H. C. Salmons was summoned by her father, who was at the Swaim home when Chief of Police W. G. Church got there, her denials could hold out no farther. Her apparent great physical suffering as she stood upon her feet and denied the birth of the illegitimate child caused her father and Chief Church to hastily summon the physician to attend her.
The child was found in the privy by Mrs. Swain and she called to a negro, Charles Harris, who broke the outside concrete walls of the place. The child was warmed before a fire hastily built and was apparently none the worse for its frightful experience.
Mrs. Swain said she saw something moving the waste paper in the privy pit and then a little hand showed. She herself became a mother of a child some weeks ago and the Ashley girl, who is a non-licensed nurse by profession, has been there waiting upon her. No one had suspected the Ashley girl of being an expectant mother.
When Chief Church and her father started for the physician, Chief Church said the Ashley girl broke down as she went to her bed and cried, “Oh, I wish I would die before the sun goes down.”
Up to a late hour today, it is learned, no statement has been made by the Ashley girl. Mrs. Swaim’s belief was that she went to the privy and there gave birth to the child. According to Dr. Salmons, who gave her treatment, the child’s navel, where the umbilical cord of the fetus is attached to the abdomen showed that the cord was apparently torn and not cut, as is the professional and usual method. The infant was unusually large and well developed, he said.
From page 4 of the Concord Daily Tribune, Oct. 11, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073201/1926-10-11/ed-1/seq-4/
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