The Suitcase Baby

In the early hours of Saturday morning, 17 November 1923, a suitcase was found washed up on the shore of a small beach in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Mosman. What it contained - and why - would prove to be explosive. The discovery of 'the suitcase baby', and the revelations that followed, generated unprecedented newspaper coverage and public interest. The murdered baby, a little girl, was one of many dead infants who were turning up in the harbour, on trains and in other public places. These innocent victims, born from unmarried mothers, were a devastating symptom of the clash between public morality, private passions and unrelenting poverty in a fast-growing metropolis with little capacity for public welfare. Police tracked down Sarah Boyd, the mother of the suitcase baby, and the murder trial of Sarah and her friend Jean Olliver became a media sensation.