Introduction

A 26–year old, unmarried woman became pregnant but found other reasons for her weight gain and was confused and shocked when she went into labour. She gave birth alone at night, without calling for help from her parents with whom she lived, and when the baby seemed to have been born dead, she wrapped it in the things she had been wearing and took it to a nearby river where, she later said, she placed it on the water and watched it floating away. These events took place near Stratford-upon-Avon in 2006, though their resemblance to what we know of early modern cases is self-evident.

During this research it seemed that accounts of recent infanticide, newspaper articles debating the point at which life begins, and descriptions of brutal child cruelty, appeared almost daily. It became impossible to ignore the extent to which the subjects I was investigating were being echoed in the present by documented cases. It also became clear that these topics continue to inspire today's creative writers and artists. Playwright Mark Ravenhill describes James Bulger's murder in 1993 as a ‘tear in the fabric’, a phrase which reverberates at many levels.