The Otago Daily Times December 7, 1870, edition reported Keziah Bolton faced a trial in the Supreme Court for disinterring the body of a child belonging to Annie King from the Drybread Cemetery on October 15.
"The case has excited great public interest, from the extraordinary nature of the circumstances - indeed Mr Justice Chapman, alluding to the case in his charge to the grand jury, said he did not recollect 'anything at all like it'," the newspaper reported.
"The prosecution sought to establish that the defendant, who is a miner's wife, disinterred the body of a child which had been buried for six weeks in the Drybread cemetery, and strove to pass it off as that of a child of which she had just been delivered.
"It turned out, however, that there was not a tittle of evidence to show how she became possessed of the corpse; but the proof of the attempted fraud was as clear as noonsday.
No motive for the act was assigned or could even be guessed at, and it seems past belief that a woman should have imagined she could pass off upon her husband, neighbours and even medical men, a decomposed corpse as the body of a new-born infant, more especially when she had previously exhibited no external signs of being in the family way.
"Mr Barton set up a defence of temporary insanity but the jury returned a verdict of guilty and the defendant was sentenced to three months' imprisonment."
The newspaper reported Annie King had also died suddenly, in suspicious circumstances, about the same time.
