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
9 - Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950
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 changes to laws on infanticide, and changing attitudes toward children, similar patterns of the crime can be seen in the period 1700 to 1950 to those of preceding centuries. These patterns included uncertainties about the border between life and death, a focus on the mental state of women, and an association between women, infant death and water. In addition, archives and literary sources show that men often killed infants during this period. Infanticide continued to attract the interest of creative writers including Wordsworth, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Dickens, as well as lesser-known dramatists who portrayed maternal neglect and abject poverty as among the underlying reasons for the crime.
Keywords: Changes in infanticide law; Literary accounts of infant murder; Foundlings
Some say, if to the pond you go,
And fix on it a steady view,
The shadow of a babe you trace,
A baby and a baby's face,
And that it looks at you.
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.
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- Information
- Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England , pp. 283 - 294Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019