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“A little tattered street match seller named Patrick Knowles whose head just reached the dock rails and whose age is 10, appeared before the Stockton-on-Tees magistrates on Monday morning, charged with the wilful murder of a 15-month-old baby named Frederick Hughes. The little one was decoyed from its home on Saturday, and its body was found the following day buried in some loose sand on the site of an old ironworks on the outskirts of the town. According to medical evidence given at the inquest, death was due to asphyxia. The police applied for a remand in order to communicate with the Treasury and put in a confession made by the young prisoner on Sunday after he had been caught taking another baby named Fanny Lynass, aged 19 months, to the same place where the body of the other child was found, and in which it was stated he intended to drown it.

Originally reported in the Worcester Journal June 1903