Abstract
In January 1886, Alice Jackson, a teenaged domestic servant, gave birth at her employer’s farm near Radnor to a baby girl, also called Alice.1 Three weeks later, the baby was thriving and Jackson was told that she needed to go to her father’s a few miles away, having been lent a number of baby clothes and told by Diana Pritchard, her employer’s wife, ‘to come back any time she liked if she had not welcome at her father’s house’.2 The following day, Jackson returned to the farm with some of the clothes but without the child, claiming the baby had died suddenly on the way to her father’s cottage and that the body had been taken by its father and paternal grandmother for burial. When she tried to simultaneously register the girl’s birth and death on 15 February with the Radnor registrar, Albert Shewell, however, he was immediately suspicious ‘because she had no medical certificate, and her answers to my questions were not satisfactory to me’.3 Not least of these for Shewell was the question of how it would have been possible for Jackson to have already arranged for the burial of her daughter without holding an appropriate certificate from the registrar, since this would have been illegal. Shortly afterwards, Jackson secretly fled the town, and was arrested while trying to get to Cardiff.4
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Notes
- 1.
Different newspapers recorded her as being aged either 17 or 19. See Cardiff Times, 24 May 1886; Weekly Mail, 22 May 1886.
- 2.
The National Archives, Kew [TNA] ASSI 72/4. R. v. Jackson. Deposition of Diana Pritchard. From reading her testimony, Pritchard seems to have disliked Jackson herself but been very fond of her baby.
- 3.
TNA ASSI 72/4. R. v. Jackson. Deposition of Albert Shewell.
- 4.
Cardiff Times, 24 May 1886.
- 5.
TNA ASSI 72/4. R. v. Jackson. Deposition of Richard Harding.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Weekly Mail, 22 May 1886.
- 8.
Cardiff Times, 29 May 1886.
- 9.
D.J.R. Grey (2010) ‘Women’s Policy Networks and the Infanticide Act 1922’, Twentieth Century British History, 21:4, pp. 441–63. On the separate legal system of Scotland, see T. Siddons (2014) ‘Suspected New-born Child Murder and Concealment of Pregnancy in Scotland, c.1812–c.1930’ (University of Edinburgh, unpublished PhD thesis).
- 10.
On infanticide in Europe see variously E. Farrell (2013) ‘A Most Diabolical Deed’: Infanticide and Irish Society, 1850–1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press); K.E. Huber (2007) ‘Sex and its Consequences: Abortion, Infanticide, and Women’s Reproductive Decision-Making in France, 1901–1940’ (Ohio State University, unpublished PhD thesis); S.A. Kowalsky (2009) Deviant Women: Female Crime and Criminology in Revolutionary Russia, 1880–1930 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press), pp. 146–82; M. Rautelin (2013) ‘Female Serial Killers in the Early Modern Age? Recurrent Infanticide in Finland 1750–1896’, History of the Family, 18:3, pp. 349–70; J.S. Richter (1998) ‘Infanticide, Child Abandonment, and Abortion in Imperial Germany’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 28:4, pp. 511–51; W. Ruberg (2013) ‘Travelling Knowledge and Forensic Medicine: Infanticide, Body and Mind in the Netherlands 1811–1911’, Medical History, 57:3, pp. 359–76; S. Stewart-Steinberg (2007) The Pinocchio Debate: On Making Italians, 1860–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 184–228.
- 11.
See for example ‘Judicial Statistics of England and Wales, for 1899’, Parliamentary Papers [PP], 1901, Cd. 659, 705, Vol. 89, pp. 34–5. This potential ambiguity continues to present serious problems in assessing the ‘true figure’ of infanticides. See F. Brookman and J. Nolan (2006) ‘The Dark Figure of Infanticide in England and Wales: Complexities of Diagnosis’, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 21:7, pp. 869–89.
- 12.
D.J.R. Grey (2015) ‘Agonised Weeping: Representing Femininity, Emotion and Infanticide in Edwardian Newspapers’, Media History, 21:4, pp. 468–80.
- 13.
M.L. Arnot (2000) ‘Understanding Women Committing Newborn Child Murder in Victorian England’, in S. D’Cruze (ed.) Everyday Violence in Britain, 1850–1950: Gender & Class (London: Longman), pp. 55–69.
- 14.
A short paragraph in the Daily Mail described the initial hearing of Mary O’Donoghue, whose case is discussed later in this chapter, under ‘Mother’s Murder Charge’, but this was relatively unusual. See Daily Mail, 27 September 1927.
- 15.
M.L. Arnot (1994) ‘Gender in Focus: Infanticide in England 1840–1880’ (University of Essex, unpublished PhD thesis) and Farrell, ‘A Most Diabolical Deed’.
- 16.
J. Gregory (2012) Victorians against the Gallows: Capital Punishment and the Abolitionist Movement in Nineteenth Century Britain (London: I.B. Tauris), pp. 48, 99.
- 17.
This complaint continued to be echoed for some time: note its reiteration in F.W. Lowndes (1900) Reasons Why the Office of Coroner Should be Held by a Member of the Medical Profession, 3rd ed. (London: J. & A. Churchill).
- 18.
F.W. Lowndes (1876) ‘The Destruction of Infants Shortly After Birth. In What Manner May It Be Prevented?’ in Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (London: NAPSS), p. 590.
- 19.
D.J.R. Grey (2014) ‘“The Agony of Despair”: Pain and the Cultural Script of Infanticide in England and Wales, 1860–1960’, in Rob Boddice (ed.) Pain and Emotion in Modern History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 204–19.
- 20.
On working-class life in Britain during this period see especially S. Todd (2014) The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910–2010 (London: John Murray).
- 21.
Arnot, ‘Gender in Focus’; Farrell, ‘A Most Diabolical Deed’; D.J.R. Grey (2008) ‘Discourses of Infanticide in England, 1880–1922’ (Roehampton University, unpublished PhD thesis).
- 22.
R.E. Homrighaus (2003) ‘Baby Farming: The Care of Illegitimate Children in England, 1860–1943’ (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, unpublished PhD thesis).
- 23.
T. Romeyn Beck (1860 edn) Elements of Medical Jurisprudence, 2 vols (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott), pp. 427–590; K. Simpson (1952 edn) Forensic Medicine (London: Edward Arnold & Co.), pp. 151–63.
- 24.
M.A. Crowther and M.W. Dupree (2007) Medical Lives in the Age of Surgical Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); A. Digby (1999) The Evolution of British General Practice, 1850–1948 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
- 25.
The longevity of this problem actually represents a continuity stretching between the medieval and modern worlds, not merely across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. See K.D. Watson (2014) ‘Concluding Remarks’, in W.J. Turner and S.M. Butler (eds) Medicine and Law in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill), pp. 324–5.
- 26.
Grey, ‘Discourses’, pp. 176–95.
- 27.
It is worth noting that ‘concealment of birth’ remains a criminal offence in England and Wales in 2016, retaining its links with infanticide legislation.
- 28.
The Western Daily Mercury, 17 April 1880.
- 29.
R. Gard (2014) Rehabilitation and Probation in England and Wales, 1876–1962 (London: Bloomsbury).
- 30.
Farrell, ‘A Most Diabolical Deed’; Grey, ‘Discourses’.
- 31.
TNA ASSI 84/91. Since in these cases specific additional conditions were scribbled on the indictment by the clerk of the court without further explanation, it is impossible to generalise about what prompted particular decisions.
- 32.
Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 13 January 2016), August 1879, trial of JAMES DILLEY (41) MARY RAINBOW (28) (t18790805-698); TNA CRIM 4/906/102; TNA HO 144/40/83853; ‘Judicial Statistics 1879: England and Wales’, PP, 1880, C. 2726, Vol. 77, p. 34; Reynold’s Newspaper, 10 August 1879; G. Frost (2009) ‘“I Am Master Here”: Illegitimacy, Masculinity, and Violence in Victorian England’, in L. Delap, B. Griffin and A. Wills (eds) The Politics of Domestic Authority in Britain since 1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 31–2.
- 33.
M.L. Arnot (2002) ‘The Murder of Thomas Sandles: Meanings of a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Infanticide’, in M. Jackson (ed.) Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550–2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 149–67; T. Hager (2008) ‘Compassion and Indifference: The Attitude of the English Legal System toward Ellen Harper and Selina Wadge, Who Killed Their Offspring in the 1870s’, Journal of Family History, 33:2, pp. 173–94.
- 34.
Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 13 January 2016), November 1908, trial of HARDING, Ethel (21, servant) (t19081110-14); TNA CRIM 1/110/3; TNA HO 144/893/172080.
- 35.
Grey, ‘Women’s Policy Networks’, pp. 454–5.
- 36.
Grey, ‘Discourses’, pp. 429–79.
- 37.
TNA HO 144/893/172080. Letter from Richard Cox, 13 November 1908.
- 38.
Grey, ‘“The Agony of Despair”.
- 39.
D.J.R. Grey (2012) ‘“Almost Unknown amongst the Jews”: Jewish Women and Infanticide in London 1890–1918’, The London Journal, 37:2, pp. 122–35. It is difficult to systematically investigate the role of ethnicity in these trials, since researchers can face substantial difficulties tracing Black and Asian people in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain because of the ambiguities in records—including those of the criminal justice system—about recording ‘race’. See C. Bressey (2013) ‘Geographies of Belonging: White Women and Black History’, Women’s History Review, 22:4, pp. 541–58.
- 40.
T. Ward (2002) ‘Legislating for Human Nature: Legal Responses to Infanticide, 1860–1938’, in Jackson (ed.) Infanticide, pp. 249–69.
- 41.
Grey, ‘Discourses’, pp. 88–143.
- 42.
D.J.R. Grey (2014) ‘“Who’s Really Wicked and Immoral, Women or Men?”: Uneasy Classifications, Hindu Gender Roles and Infanticide in Late Nineteenth-Century India’, in V. Miller and J. Campbell (eds) Transnational Penal Cultures: New Perspectives on Discipline, Punishment and Desistance (New York: Routledge), pp. 36–50.
- 43.
R.D. Bhatnagar, R. Dube and R. Dube (2005) Female Infanticide in India: A Feminist Cultural History (Albany: State University of New York Press); M.T. King (2014) Between Birth and Death: Female Infanticide in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press); M. Stephens (2015) ‘Infanticide at Port Phillip: Protector William Thomas and the Witnessing of Things Unseen’, Aboriginal History Journal, 38, pp. 109–30.
- 44.
Grey, ‘“Who’s Really Wicked and Immoral …?”
- 45.
British commentators on criminal justice were remarkably ambivalent about this phenomenon: see N. Davie (2005) The Rise of Scientific Criminology in Britain, 1860–1918 (Oxford: Bardwell Press).
- 46.
A. Loughnan (2012) ‘The Strange Case of the Infanticide Doctrine’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 32:4, p. 700.
- 47.
1922 12 and 13 Geo. V c. 18.
- 48.
H. Marland (2012) ‘Under the Shadow of Maternity: Birth, Death and Puerperal Insanity in Victorian Britain’, History of Psychiatry, 23:1, pp. 78–90; P.M. Prior (2005) ‘Murder and Madness: Gender and the Insanity Defense in Nineteenth-Century Ireland’, New Hibernia Review, 9:4, pp. 19–36; Ruberg, ‘Travelling Knowledge’.
- 49.
Grey, ‘Women’s Policy Networks’, pp. 458–61.
- 50.
TNA HO 45/11053/178685.
- 51.
TNA MEPO 3/1630. Police report 27 September 1927. On the broader context for Irish women migrating to Britain when pregnant, see J. Redmond (2012) ‘In the Family Way and Away from the Family: Examining the Evidence for Irish Unmarried Mothers in Britain, 1920s–1940s’, in E. Farrell (ed.) ‘She Said She was in the Family Way’: Pregnancy and Infancy in the Irish Past (London: Institute of Historical Research), pp. 163–85.
- 52.
TNA CRIM 1/414. Statement under caution of Mary O’Donoghue, 24 September 1927.
- 53.
TNA HO 144/21214. Trial notes in R. v. O’Donoghue, before Mr. Justice Talbot at Central Criminal Court, 13 October 1927.
- 54.
TNA CRIM 4/1511/10; TNA CRIM 1/584/93.
- 55.
R. v. O’Donoghue (1927) 28 Cox 461; 44 TLR 51.
- 56.
The appeal cited this 1924 example as it was recorded in C.S. Kenny (1926) Outlines of Criminal Law, 12th edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 125, and F. Danford Thomas (1927) Jervis on Coroners, 7th edn (London: H. Sweet & Sons), p. 161.
- 57.
The Times, 22 November 1927.
- 58.
TNA ASSI 31/55, at 375. Unfortunately, depositions do not seem to have survived in the National Archives for this case.
- 59.
TNA ASSI 36/44. R. v. Whillock; TNA MEPO 3/815.
- 60.
TNA MEPO 3/815. Report from Divisional Detective Inspector E. Ockley to Superintendent Kentish Town police station, 13 November 1931.
- 61.
TNA MEPO 3/815. Letter from Albert Whillock to Detective Inspector E. Ockley, 15 December 1931.
- 62.
TNA ASSI 95/365/6.
- 63.
TNA CRIM 1/850; TNA CRIM 4/1617/18; TNA CRIM 4/1617/19; TNA DPP 2/357; The Times, 22 July 1936.
- 64.
TNA HO 45/19230; TNA LCO 2/1329.
- 65.
1938 1 and 2 Geo. 6, c. 36.
- 66.
TNA HO 45/25559. This internal Home Office review was prompted by a letter from an evidently well-connected female magistrate in early 1943, but as no defendant’s name (or even where the trial had been held) was ever given the civil service had extreme difficulty finding any information about the case in question.
- 67.
Ibid. Civil service note on file, 4 November 1943.
- 68.
A.-M. Kilday (2013) A History of Infanticide in Britain c.1600 to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 190–3.
- 69.
Frost, ‘I Am Master Here’, pp. 27–42; P. Guarnieri (2009) ‘Men Committing Female Crime: Infanticide, Family and Honor in Italy, 1890–1981’, Crime, History & Societies, 13:2, pp. 41–54; Grey, ‘Discourses’; C.B.A. Wilson (2012) ‘Mad, Sad, or Bad? Newspaper and Judicial Representations of Men Who Killed Children in Victorian England, 1860–1900’ (University of Essex, unpublished PhD thesis); J. Shepherd (2013) ‘“One of the Best Fathers Until He Went Out of His Mind”: Paternal Child-Murder, 1864–1900’, Journal of Victorian Culture, 18:1, pp. 17–35.
- 70.
J.V. Shepherd (2013) ‘Victorian Madmen: Broadmoor, Masculinity and the Experiences of the Criminally Insane, 1863–1900’ (University of London, unpublished PhD thesis), p. 174.
- 71.
On fatherhood in this period, see especially L. King (2015) Family Men: Fatherhood and Masculinity in Britain, 1914–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press); J.-M. Strange (2015) Fatherhood and the British Working Class, 1865–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
- 72.
Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.2, 13 January 2016), December 1910, trial of BOYLE, Ernest Arthur Martin (24, fishmonger) (t19101206-27); TNA CRIM 4/1308/18; TNA CRIM 4/1308/19. Note that while the Central Criminal Court Sessions Papers used ‘Boyle’, presumably as the result of the reporter mishearing the name, since his file at Kew used ‘Royle’ throughout I have used this spelling here.
- 73.
On venereal disease in Britain see G. Davies (2008) ‘The Cruel Madness of Love’: Sex, Syphilis and Psychiatry in Scotland 1880–1930 (Amsterdam: Rodopi); M.I. Romero Ruiz (2014) The London Lock Hospital in the Nineteenth Century: Gender, Sexuality and Social Reform (Bern: Peter Lang).
- 74.
TNA MEPO 3/334. Report of Sergeant Thompson, 12 July 1926. This is, unfortunately, the only surviving record that I have found relating to this case.
- 75.
Ibid.
- 76.
Ibid.
- 77.
Ibid.
- 78.
Grey, ‘“The Agony of Despair”.
- 79.
East Anglian Daily Times, 24 October 1940.
- 80.
TNA HO 144/21214. Letter from L.C. Barker, Governor of Aylesbury Prison, to Home Office, 28 November 1928.
- 81.
1922 12 and 13 Geo. V c. 18.
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Grey, D.J.R. (2017). Parenting, Infanticide and the State in England and Wales, 1870–1950. In: Barron, H., Siebrecht, C. (eds) Parenting and the State in Britain and Europe, c. 1870-1950. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34084-5_4
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