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
7 - Not the Usual Suspects: Married Women
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
Infanticide was considered to be a crime committed by single women, although archival evidence and popular literature show that married women were also guilty of this crime. In such cases pleas such as ‘temporary insanity’ meant they were often pardoned. An examination of motives reveals that married women killed infants as revenge on profligate or violent husbands, or because of religious differences. Maternal overlaying during breastfeeding was widely feared, thus constructing the breast as a place of death. Yet mothers who did not breastfeed were vilified, with those who employed wetnurses being described using language and imagery similar to that used in descriptions of single women who killed their infants.
Keywords: Breastfeeding and overlaying; Wives, murder and motive; Wives and conviction rates; Medea, wives and revenge
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn.
This chapter concerns the married women who were charged with infanticide. Like the communities and accomplices discussed in the previous chapter, they were not the usual suspects. As we have already seen, early modern legislators considered infanticide a crime of single women, despite the fact that one of western culture's most famous infanticides was Medea, a married woman. The ancient tale of her murder of her children is a reminder that, as well as different kinds of perpetrators of infanticide, there were also different circumstances and motives. For the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this has been masked by the weight of discussion about unmarried motherhood. In contrast, when a married woman killed her infant, her crime attracted pamphleteers who naturally found these dramatic and less frequent crimes more marketable. For those seeking to investigate infanticide in the early modern period, they open up the range of circumstances under which an infant might be murdered.
However, strong associations were made between married women and breastfeeding, whether they nursed the infant themselves or employed a wetnurse. As a result, some writers regarded wetnursing with such abhorrence that it was written of in similar terms to infanticide, as discussed below.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England , pp. 219 - 252Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019