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
6 - Not the Usual Suspects: Communities and Accomplices
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
The women who committed infanticide did not live in isolation. Historical records and fictional accounts of the crime show that they were surrounded by neighbours, family and friends. They suggest that in some cases these communities enabled the crime to take place through their negligence or apathy, by not intervening when a single woman was obviously with child. In addition, sources show that shadowy accomplices such as family, friends or employers were frequently highly culpable, if not directly responsible, for the deaths of infants. In pamphlets, writers often added the devil to the list of real-life characters who encouraged women to kill. They show that attitudes to infanticide were complex and inconsistent, some women being described as animals or monsters, while others were treated with understanding and compassion.
Keywords: Murderous mothers; Murderous midwives; Unmarried pregnancy; Preventing newborn murder; Aiding and abetting
You might have hindred me from doing this.
Previous chapters have discussed infanticide in relation to liminality. Areas considered have been how unwed, pregnant women may have felt about themselves – neither maid, widow, nor wife – and how the loose laws related to marriage meant it could be unclear whether a couple were married or not, a situation which could easily lead to the abandonment of pregnant women. The whipping and penance which were the punishments meted out to bastard bearers called upon many aspects of rites of passage identified by Turner, with their elements of showing, doing and saying, and punishment continued with the proscriptions on providing work and lodging for unwed women who were pregnant or who had a child. The tropes of infanticide – pregnancy denial, the shame of speaking of what they had done, and concealing the increasingly obvious physical signs of pregnancy, creates the impression of women who were isolated. In part they were indeed isolated by their shame, fear, and in some cases doubtless their ignorance, as Peter C. Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull suggest.
Nevertheless, a woman who committed infanticide would have lived within a community some of whom constantly ignored various indications that this crime could be the climax of the trajectory upon which she was embarked. This is the area considered in the first part of this chapter.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England , pp. 191 - 218Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019