Mounting debts led mum to drown son

A single mother drowned her 11-year-old son in the bath and then attempted to kill herself after becoming “severely depressed” by her mounting debts, a court heard yesterday.

The body of James Taylor was discovered by police officers called to the home they shared in Knights Croft, New Ash Green, near Dartford, Kent, on December 2 last year.

Jennifer Taylor, 45, denied murdering her son at a hearing in March, but later pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at a hearing in June. She appeared at Maidstone Crown Court yesterday for a two-day sentencing where a judge was told three separate psychiatric reports had concluded that Ms Taylor was suffering from a serious depressive illness when James died.

Outlining the case, Eleanor Laws said: “It is accepted by the Crown that Ms Taylor adored her son and had tried to take good care of him throughout his life but she struggled financially as a single mother and fell deeply into debt. This proved to be the key to her depression and it’s during this depression that she drowned her son and attempted to take her own life.”