Margaret Sancho - Drowned

DEATH BY DROWNING
On Saturday afternoon last, (July 20, 1895) Mr. C. B. Kryenhoff, J.P., and a jury, sat at the vigilance Court House, and enquired into the death of the infant Margaret Sancho, who was drowned at Friendship, on Thursday last (July 18, 1895). Sarah Pieters, mother of the child, on being examined said: I knew Margaret Sancho; she was my child. I left her in my room with her little brother and went to the shop to buy food. This was about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. On returning from the shop I saw her in the trench. She was not dead. I took her out and put her on the dam alongside the trench. She died on the dam. I then carried the body into the yard, and reported the matter to the police. Dr. Egan examined the body on the 19th. My house was about 18 roods from the shop, and one and a half roods from the trench into which the child fell. There is a plant across the trench about one foot wide. The two children were shut up in the room before I went out. When I returned, I found the door open. I presume the bigger child opened the door. It was not locked, only closed. The trench was full of water. By a Juror: this was the first occasion I left the children together. After I took the child from the trench, Mrs. Willis came and rolled it on the ground. It died whilst being rolled. I never allowed both children to play together in the trench. Julia Willis and Elizabeth Fitzgerald having given evidence, the jury returned a verdict of accidental drowning.
Death by Drowning - the Daily Chronicle, Thursday, July 25, 1895: Page 3 Column 4.