Briton gives birth in New York city street

Polly McCourt, 39, who is originally from Oxfordshire, gave 
birth at the junction of East 68th Street and 3rd Avenue, the BBC said. She hailed the cab with the help of the doorman to her apartment block in the city’s Upper East Side after she realised she was going into labour.

Speaking from her hospital bed she told reporters: “He was trying desperately to hail a cab and a lady walked out five metres in front and hailed a cab and got into it.

“And I went, ‘No, that’s my cab, I want that cab’.”

Her husband, Cian McCourt, 40, who works for a New York law firm, was stuck in traffic when he received the call and arrived just after his wife gave birth to their daughter in the street during rush hour – a scene caught on camera by a passing news crew.

He said: “I knew instantly that it was Polly, but then I feared the worst. You think, ‘She’s been knocked down’.”

Passers-by helped deliver the little girl, who was named Ila and weighed 7lb 6oz, and kept the pair warm with coats and scarves until an ambulance arrived and took them to Lennox Hill Hospital.

Ms McCourt was so grateful to one of them she gave her daughter her middle name, Isabelle.