Infanticide

by Mark Jackson (editor)

The history of infanticide from the 16th through to the late 20th century is the subject of this volume. Collectively, the contributions explore how the concealment of pregnancy, birth and death, particularly by unmarried women, became a central preoccupation of witnesses, doctors, courts and legislatures concerned with suspicious infant deaths. While the emphasis is upon Britain, original and stimulating accounts of infanticide accusations and trials in France, Germany, and South Africa provide compelling comparative analyses. Presenting a series of case studies, successive chapters expose striking continuities, across both time and space, in the social history of infanticide. Clearly written, focusing on a range of original cases and documents, and addressing critical historiographical questions, Infanticide will be invaluable to historians and students researching the social history of medicine, law, crime, and gender. In addition, it will appeal to lawyers, doctors, and others interested in understanding the historical roots of modern debates about infanticide.

308 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Mark Jackson is Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments and Health at the University of Exeter. After qualifying in immunology in 1982 and medicine in 1985, he pursued research on the social history of infanticide and the history of `feeble-mindedness’ at the Universities of Leeds and Manchester. More recently, he has been researching and writing on the history of allergies and stress in the modern world, from an international perspective. His major publications include New-Born Child Murder: Women, Illegitimacy and the Courts in Eighteenth-Century England (1996), The Borderland of Imbecility: Medicine, Society and the Fabrication of the Feeble Mind in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain (2000), Allergy: The History of a Modern Malady (2006), Asthma: The Biography (2009), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine (ed., 2011), The Age of Stress: Science and the Search for Stability (2013), The History of Medicine: A Beginners Guide (2014, shortlisted for the Dingle Prize), Stress in Post-War Britain, 1945-85 (ed., 2015), and The Routledge History of Disease (ed., 2016). He is currently writing a cultural history of the midlife crisis and health in middle age.

He has a strong interest in developing the undergraduate medical curriculum, creating opportunities for wider public engagement activities, and collaborating with health practitioners and policy-makers to enable health and well-being. He was Senior Academic Adviser (Medical Humanities) to the Wellcome Trust (2013-16), has served as Chair of the Wellcome Trust History of Medicine and Research Resources Funding Committees, (2003-13), and was a member of the History sub-panel for REF 2014. He is Chair of the WHO Europe Expert Advisory Group on the Cultural Contexts of Health and a member of the WHO European Advisory Committee on Health Research.

Reviews

[Red Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read at *all* due to the subject matter, but an absolutely fascinating and beautifully-referenced collection of perspectives on the only violent crime of which women have historically been far and away the main people convicted of; the underlying worries about unchained sexuality and poor rates this concealed, and even the elements of racial anxieties it involved in British colonial societies. Highly recommended.