Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Author’s notes
- 1 Losses, Lacunae and Liminality
- 2 European and Medieval Contexts of Infanticide
- 3 The Liminal child and mother
- 4 Love, Law and Liminality
- 5 Constructing Outsiders, Constructing Killers
- 6 Not the Usual Suspects: Communities and Accomplices
- 7 Not the Usual Suspects: Married Women
- 8 Not the Usual Suspects: Men
- 9 Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950
- 10 Epilogue: Echoes of the Past
- Appendix 1 The 1624 Infanticide Act
- Appendix 2 Note on Sussex Coroners’ inquests
- Appendix 3 Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatural, Unexplained Infant Death 1547–1686
- Appendix 4 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Water
- Appendix 5 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Throwing
- Appendix 6 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Bloodshed or Extreme Violence
- Appendix 7 Sussex Infant Deaths Showing Direct Involvement of Men
- Index
10 - Epilogue: Echoes of the Past
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Author’s notes
- 1 Losses, Lacunae and Liminality
- 2 European and Medieval Contexts of Infanticide
- 3 The Liminal child and mother
- 4 Love, Law and Liminality
- 5 Constructing Outsiders, Constructing Killers
- 6 Not the Usual Suspects: Communities and Accomplices
- 7 Not the Usual Suspects: Married Women
- 8 Not the Usual Suspects: Men
- 9 Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950
- 10 Epilogue: Echoes of the Past
- Appendix 1 The 1624 Infanticide Act
- Appendix 2 Note on Sussex Coroners’ inquests
- Appendix 3 Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatural, Unexplained Infant Death 1547–1686
- Appendix 4 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Water
- Appendix 5 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Throwing
- Appendix 6 Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Bloodshed or Extreme Violence
- Appendix 7 Sussex Infant Deaths Showing Direct Involvement of Men
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Despite social changes resulting in unwed pregnancy no longer being shameful, and a welfare system designed to protect people from the worst effects of poverty, infanticide continued to be committed in 20th century England and on into the 21st century. Killings may be carried out by single women, or couples working together, and often involve substance abuse, though post-partum confusion is also sometimes an apsect of these killings. Married women and men also murder their children, with revenge and punishment is often cited as a motive. Creative writers still include infanticide in their works, drawing on real-life cases or using fictional examples. This on-going interest in the subject appears to be part of a social need to understand violent infant death and to negotiate our feelings toward this complex crime and its perpetrators.
Keywords: Recent infanticide cases; Contemporary literary representations; Modern Medeas; Reasons for interest in infanticide
[Suddenly and violently flinging the doll to the ground.] I’ll bash its brains out. I’ll kill it. I don't want his baby […] I don’t want to be a mother.
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.
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- Information
- Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England , pp. 295 - 326Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019