The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been the subject of many dedicated investigations into infanticide, such as the historical studies by Mark Jackson, Lionel Rose and Anne-Marie Kilday, and Josephine Mc- Donagh's work on the motifs of child murder in literature. The purpose of this short interlude is not to reiterate their discussions, but briefly to highlight some of the principal social changes which took place during this period and to demonstrate that, during the 250 years bringing us to the mid-twentieth century, literature continued to associate infanticide with the liminal.

The abundance of archival material for this period demonstrates that the crime remained complex and its circumstances individual. It also reveals a continuation of the motives recurring throughout this study. Poverty, fear, shame, abandonment, and reputation remain constants against a background of changing laws, dramatic industrial development, and new perceptions of children and childhood. After the 1803 repeal of the 1624 Infanticide Act women were assumed innocent unless proven otherwise, with evidence required that the child was fully born and existing independently of the mother when it died. Dana Y. Rabin writes that eighteenth century juries became reluctant to find defendants guilty and that, rather than the woman's body being an essential part of the evidence in infanticide cases, increasing attention was paid to her mental state.