Mummified baby buried in emotional ceremony
Last Updated: Friday, October 12, 2007 | 8:23 PM ET
CBC News
The remains of two abandoned babies, including a baby boy found wrapped in decades-old newspaper in the ceiling of a house, were laid to rest Friday during an emotional service north of Toronto.
Mourners gathered in a chapel in Richmond Hill's Elgin Mills Cemetery to bury Baby Kintyre. The infant's mummified remains were found in July, wrapped in a 1925 newspaper in the attic floorboards of a Toronto home.
The Ontario coroner's office determined the baby boy died shortly after birth, around 80 years ago, but couldn't say how he died.
The remains of a second child, named Baby Leif, were also laid to rest Friday. The newborn's decomposed remains were found in the woods near North Bay, Ont.
The executive director of the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness, the agency that organized the service, said she wanted to bring attention to the issue of abandonment of babies.
“We are grateful for all the support received. This first funeral service and the permanent memorial will provide dignity for these babies and will show that they matter and we care," Ellen Campbell said.
Bob Kinghorn, the home renovator who found the remains of Baby Kintyre, fought back tears through much of the service. After carrying the small casket to its grave, Kinghorn said the service brought closure to the matter.
"It … brings awareness to children that are being abused today," he said.
Health records show mental illness
Meanwhile, CBC News has uncovered more information surrounding the mysterious case of Baby Kintyre.
Mental health records obtained through a Freedom of Information request reveal that more than one of the home's occupants had mental health issues.
In 1925, the owners of the narrow, three-storey home on Toronto's Kintyre Avenue were Wesley and Della Russell. In 1934, almost nine years after the newspaper containing the baby was printed, Della was admitted to the Ontario Hospital in Toronto's west end.
Among the hospital's records are the jottings of nurses recording the mutterings of the 53-year-old patient. Four days after she arrived, she spent part of the afternoon repeating: “I’m a murderer but I can’t get away. I’m a murderer but I can’t get away.”
Della was later diagnosed with involutional melancholia, a depressive disorder that can occur later in life. She died in 1953 at Toronto's Queen St. Sanitarium.
In records from that hospital, Della's husband Wesley tells staff he suffered depression for three years, starting in 1925.
Don't trust ramblings: expert
Rita Rich, now 92, lived in the Kintyre Ave. home in 1925 and says her aunt Della was “too soft a woman” to be capable of killing the baby.
“She loved children and was like a mother to me,” Rich said.
Rich, who now lives in New York state, believes Della's younger sister Alla Mae Rutter likely gave birth to the child. Rutter was 32 and unmarried at the time the baby was born.
However, a psychiatric historian at the University of Toronto said the ravings of a person suffering from melancholia shouldn't be trusted.
“It is quite common in psychiatric illness for patients to make all kinds of hallucinatory delusional self-reproaches — 'I’m a terrible criminal. I’ve killed all the people in the city. I’ve done this terrible deed, or that terrible deed.' It’s a characteristic of psychotic depression," Dr. Edward Shorter said.
