Wealhtheow’s Reviews > Midwives and Medical Men: A History of the Struggle for the Control of Childbirth > Status Update

dehumanizing, assembly line procedures of delivering a hospital, where, instead of being the central figure in a family drama, supported by husband and friends who can share in her great achievement, the woman is stripped of personal possessions and placed in stark, unfamiliar surroundings, to undergo among strangers what is usually a painful experience of at least several hours' duration...the rack-like delivery bed

The Midwives Act of 1902 was considered a victory by most midwives and a loss by most physicians, but 'it put midwives in a uniquely disadvantaged position among the professions.' The Act subjected midwives to the same local supervision otherwise associated with tradesmen, not medicine. Midwives could be erased from the register for any misconduct (no other registration act dealt with private lives of practictioners)

The Obstetrical Society's view had always been that the registered midwife should only attend the poor...[because poor women], being stronger, had less need of skilled assistance. Moreover, registration would have the merit of putting midwives in their proper place--doing the hard, tedious, ill-paid work appropriate for women....'women will have their fair and natural share of...midwifery work, whilst medical men

Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, 1869: require prostitutes in garrison towns and seaports to undergo medical examinations (and if infected, detention in hospital) and had established a special corps of non-uniformed police to administer them.

Increasing industrialization and growing wealth of society worsens women's economic and social position relative to men. 'Industrialization had brought new independence to the women who worked in the factories, but had made it harder for mothers of young children to earn money. For middle-class women who had to support themselves the loss of opportunities for work was equally, if not more, serious.

1850s England:"40 years before, in 1817, the family of an old Norwich midwife, Mrs. Phoebe Crewe, had proudly recorded on her gravestone her 40 years' work in this calling. Now the word 'midwife' itself was hardly respectable, and [Dickens's character] Sairey [Gamp]'s continued celebrity was to eclipse all.

By 1850s, last midwifery work published by a midwife was Martha Mears's Pupil of Nature in 1797. Midwives rarely educated or respectable, women shouldn't seek self-advancement, the subject of midwifery could not be mentioned in polite female society.

While France, Prussia, etc provide state schools for midwives, in 19th century England "midwife" has become unspeakable in polite society, indecent for husbands to be in lying-in room, women don't have the moral courage or skill with mechanical operations ("which midwifery is") to be midwifes. Genteel women, no matter how poor&in need of employment, would therefore not become or be employed as a midwife.

Vast majority of lying-in hospitals in England only serve married women, although 2 serve single women pregnant with their 1st child. All women must be of "good character", "cleanly clad and free of vermin and contagious disease." Given the high mortality rate (not least from septic infections) in lying-in hospitals, this is ironic to me.

When the man-midwife Jules Clement attended the Dauphine in 1682, he bled her at regular intervals during the 30 hours of the labor...[after, to promote recovery] the Dauphine was wrapped in a newly-flayed sheep-skin which had just been taken off the live animal in the lying-in chamber. Then, since to allow the mother to sleep immediately after a difficult birth was considered dangerous, she was forcibly kept awake