Aristocrat 'kept baby in Lidl bag'

Tragic tot 'dumped like rubbish'

- TOM PETTIFOR

A BABY girl whose body was found dumped "like refuse" in a shed had been carried in a Lidl bag-for-life by her parents, a court heard.

Aristocrat Constance Marten, 36, and her lover Mark Gordon, 49, are accused of going off-grid in mid-winter in a bid to stop the authorities from taking their fifth child, like the other four, into care.

They left the baby, who was to be called Victoria, in a disused allotment shed in the bag covered in rubbish, a jury at the Old Bailey heard.

Prosecutor Tom Little KC said their "selfish desire" to keep the baby led to her "entirely avoidable" death.

He said the child "would still be alive if it was not for the reckless, utterly selfish, callous, cruel, arrogant and ultimately grossly negligent conduct of the two defendants on trial".