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The Archetype of Infanticide in the Early Modern Period

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A History of Infanticide in Britain c. 1600 to the Present

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Abstract

On 13 April 1681 a servant woman called Ann Price was arraigned and then tried at the Old Bailey ‘for felloniously Murthering her Bastard Male-Infant in the Parish of St Margaret’s, Westminster’.2 The court heard Ann confess that she ‘was got with Child’ after having a relationship with a manservant. Ann might have been thought to be generous with the term ‘man’ as a newspaper report alleged that the father of the child was a boy of no more than 16 years of age.3 In any case, upon the discovery of her condition, Ann decided to conceal her pregnancy. It seems she did this ‘so cunningly’ that she managed to successfully deceive everyone in the household until after the child had been delivered.4 Ann then explained how, after the birth — which had been unaided, by her own admission — she wrapped the child in an apron and locked it up in her box before returning to her bed to recover.5

People of substance may sin without being exposed for their stolen pleasure; but servants and the poorer sort of women have seldom the opportunity of concealing a big belly, or at least the consequences of it.1

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Notes

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  113. For more on this kind of surveillance in the early modern period see Lonza (2002) ‘“Two Souls Lost”’, p. 93.

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  115. U. Rublack (1999) The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Clarendon), p. 167.

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  122. For further discussion see R. Mitchison and L. Lenman (1989) Sexuality and Social Control: Scotland 1660–1780 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).

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  123. Mitchison and Lenman (1989) Sexuality and Social Control, p. 9.

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  124. See, for instance, Mitchison and Lenman (1998) Girls in Trouble, pp. 1–2 and 72

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  125. and also Lenman and Mitchison (1998) Sin in the City, pp. 1 and 20.

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  127. For evidence to support this contention see T.C. Smout (1976) ‘Aspects of Sexual Behaviour in Nineteenth- Century Scotland’, in A.A. MacLaren (ed.) Social Class in Scotland: Past and Present (Edinburgh: John Donald), p. 80.

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  131. For more on the financial difficulties associated with illegitimacy at the parish level see T. Nutt (2005) ‘The Paradox and Problems of Illegitimate Paternity in Old Poor Law Essex’, in A. Levene, T. Nutt and S. Williams (eds.) Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700–1920 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 102–21.

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  137. See also Gowing (1997) ‘Secret Births’, p. 89.

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  141. and Rogers (1989) ‘Carnal Knowledge’, p. 358.

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  142. See respectively Hoffer and Hull (1984) Murdering Mothers, pp. 108–9

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  144. Ulbricht (1988) ‘Infanticide’, p. 111

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  145. Leboutte (1991) ‘Offense against Family Order’, p. 164

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  146. O. Hufton (1975) The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France 1750–1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 324

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  155. For further evidence of the predominance of servitude amongst female occupations in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries see P. Earle (1998) ‘The Female Labour Market in London in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in P. Sharpe (ed.) Women’s Work: The English Experience, 1650–1914 (London: Hodder Arnold), p. 132.

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  183. For more on the typical age of domestic servants in the early modern period see Sharpe (1983) Crime in Seventeenth- Century England, p. 135.

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  184. For more on the fear of poverty associated with illegitimate pregnancy among domestic servants see Rublack (1999) The Crimes of Women, pp. 188–91. The potential explanations for the actions of women involved in new- born child murder will be examined in Chapter 6 of this volume.

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  185. This pattern in the standard of evidence was clear from both the Scottish and the Welsh datasets used in this study. It is also recognised in Francus (1997) ‘Monstrous Mothers’, p. 133.

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  1. Oxford Brookes University, UK

    Anne-Marie Kilday (Professor of Criminal History and Pro Vice-Chancellor & Dean)

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Kilday, AM. (2013). The Archetype of Infanticide in the Early Modern Period. In: A History of Infanticide in Britain c. 1600 to the Present. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137349125_2

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