Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England 9789048538164

Citation preview

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England

Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World Series editors: James Daybell (Chair), Victoria E. Burke, Svante Norrhem, and Merry Wiesner-Hanks This series provides a forum for studies that investigate women, gender, and/ or sexuality in the late medieval and early modern world. The editors invite proposals for book-length studies of an interdisciplinary nature, including, but not exclusively, from the fields of history, literature, art and architectural history, and visual and material culture. Consideration will be given to both monographs and collections of essays. Chronologically, we welcome studies that look at the period between 1400 and 1700, with a focus on any part of the world, as well as comparative and global works. We invite proposals including, but not limited to, the following broad themes: methodologies, theories and meanings of gender; gender, power and political culture; monarchs, courts and power; constructions of femininity and masculinity; gift-giving, diplomacy and the politics of exchange; gender and the politics of early modern archives; gender and architectural spaces (courts, salons, household); consumption and material culture; objects and gendered power; women’s writing; gendered patronage and power; gendered activities, behaviours, rituals and fashions.

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England

Josephine Billingham

Amsterdam University Press

Cover image: Detail from Lucas Cranach the Elder, Melancholia (reproduced by permission of Bridgeman Art Library) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6298 679 4 e-isbn 978 90 4853 816 4 doi 10.5117/9789462986794 nur 617 | 684 © J. Billingham / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Contents

Acknowledgments

11

Author’s notes

13

1 Losses, Lacunae and Liminality 15 Investigating the invisible 15 Historiography17 The age of an infant 23 Primary sources: a dual approach 26 29 Archival sources Literary sources 35 Secondary sources: the role of liminality 39 2 European and Medieval Contexts of Infanticide Infanticide in medieval Europe Infanticide in early modern Europe Representations of infanticide in Europe Infanticide in medieval England Representations of infanticide in medieval England

51 52 56 62 65 69

3 The Liminal Child and Mother 77 Beliefs and attitudes toward new lives 78 Death and the unwelcome infant 86 Killing and caring 91 Throwing93 The liminal world of childbirth 98 102 Unmarried women and pregnancy 4 Love, Law and Liminality The ‘betwixt and between’ of betrothal and marriage Liminal marital states in literature Bastard bearing, punishment and liminality Social seclusion and separation Literary death The rituals of socially inclusive punishments Self-imposed punishment and liminality Avoiding the shame of pregnancy: ‘A dose of the Doctor’

113 114 118 121 122 125 127 132 135

5 Constructing Outsiders, Constructing Killers 151 Lack of money 156 Mirth and misery: single pregnancy in literature 159 167 Seeking marriage and security Wandering172 Prostitution175 177 Constructing killers 6 Not the Usual Suspects: Communities and Accomplices 191 Communities192 Accomplices: ‘feloniously aiding and abetting’ 205 Devilish influences 210 7 Not the Usual Suspects: Married Women Vengeful women Death and the maternal breast Choosing not to nurse

219 225 234 238

8 Not the Usual Suspects: Men The sins of the fathers The unborn child Newborn and very young infants Aiding and abetting Money and motive Sexual shame and motive Infant murder and monarchy More violent than liminal

253 253 255 259 261 263 266 274 278

9 Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950 The liminal mother The liminal child Liminal places: water Not the usual suspects

283 284 285 287 288

10 Epilogue: Echoes of the Past 295 Introduction295 Reality and fiction 297 Killers, communities and accomplices 299 Liminality and marginality today 308 Performing modern Medeas 312

The language of monstrosity 315 Why?316 Finally319 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

327 328 329 338 342 342 344

List of Illustrations Image 1 Image 2 Image 3 Image 4 Image 5 Image 6 Image 7 Image 8

The Age and Life of Man described and depicted in Peter Fancy’s ballad (1650–1665?). 26 Woodcut from The Mourning Conquest (1674–1679).38 The ages of man schemes showing infants not yet on the stairway of life. Cornelis Anthonisz, Die neun Lebensalter des Mannes.82 Woodcut from the title page A Pittilesse Mother (1616). 212 Hidden crime: detail of title page of The Wicked Midwife (1640).214 Woodcut from Bloody Newes from Dover (1646). 230 Woodcut from The Unnatural Father (1621). 265 Paula Rego: Down the Well I (2009). 307

Index347

’Twill vex thy soul to hear what I shall speak; For I must talk of murders, rapes and massacres, Acts of black night, abominable deeds, Complots of mischief, treason, villanies Ruthful to hear, yet piteously perform’d. Titus Andronicus, V.i.63

Acknowledgments This book began with a feeling of unease. When researching early modern childhood, on the one hand I was reading texts which confidently asserted that in early modern England infanticide was committed by unwed women to protect their reputations and to avoid punishment. On the other hand, I was studying coroners’ inquests which revealed that there were other kinds of perpetrators and motives. Even when those suspected were indeed single women, their actions lacked the logic of straightforward motivation. I wanted to know more, to see whether there was another way of looking at this crime, and whether there were different possible explanations. And, I wanted to bring those other perpetrators out from the shadows and shine a spotlight on them. Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England is the result of my research. Taking a cue from Benjamin Disraeli’s reputed comment that ‘If I want to read a novel, I write one’, it is the book I couldn’t find when I wanted to know more about early modern infanticide. It examines the questions I had at the time, and looks afresh at this tragic crime. Many people have helped me along the road from that initial unease which told me that I must examine this subject, to the finished publication and to all of them I owe my sincere thanks. Between the thought and the book there was a PhD thesis. It was supervised by Helen Hackett at UCL, who always showed a generous amount of interest my research, and our rewarding discussions constantly led me to think more deeply and to consolidate my ideas. That the experience was so enjoyable and rewarding was largely due to her continuing encouragement and the warmth of her personality. The UCL experience was further enhanced by the friendship of my fellow students Yasmin Arshad and Emma Whipday, with whom I enjoyed many stimulating discussions about our respective projects. Beyond UCL, librarians and archivists at a number of organisations have facilitated my research by pointing me in the right direction and helping me to unravel some of the mysteries of what I was studying. They include staff at The Wellcome Library, The British Library, West Sussex Record Office, The National Archives, and The Shakespeare Institute. I would also like to thank Simon Pulleyn for his help with translations of legal Latin, and Sue MacLaine for her frank and open comments about the play she is currently refining. Chris Laoutaris is also due my gratitude for his encouragement and very kind comments about my research. The process of publication has been made pleasant and stress-free by Erika Gaffney at Amsterdam University Press who guided the book – and me – through the various stages of getting it into print.

12 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Finally, my husband, Norman Billingham, has shown unflinching patience during my numerous panics with the technology, referencing, indexing and the many other challenges of publication. He has tolerated living in the company of a woman with an excessive interest in dead infants and the people who kill them, and has been to more productions of Medea than anyone has the right to expect. He has always encouraged me toward the final goal and that I have been able to commit to my various projects at all is largely down to him. I thank him from my heart.



Author’s notes

– Italic in primary texts has been converted to Roman unless its original use causes inflection to fall on a particular word. – Original spellings of primary texts have been maintained unless cited from a secondary text. – Early modern typesetters were extremely inconsistent in their use of capitalization; for consistency, modern conventions have been adopted for main titles. – When citing early modern texts: • u has been transcribed as v and v as w, as appropriate. • vv has been transcribed as w. • I has been transcribed as J, as appropriate (e.g. Iohn becomes John). – Place of publication for all pre-1700 works is London unless otherwise specified. – Citations from Shakespeare are from The Complete Works, ed. Gary Taylor and Stanley Wells, (Oxford: OUP, 1998) unless otherwise stated. – When citing Coroners’ and Assize records, case numbers are included after the page number. For example: Hunnisett, R.F. ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1558–1603 (Kew: PRO Publications, 1996), (104 #417) – Dates are variously taken directly from the English Short Title Catalogue, Early English Books On-line, the English Broadside Ballad Archive, and archival translations / transcriptions cited, with the exception of Middlesex County Records which uses regnal years. These have been converted to calendar years. – In bibliographical references, EBBA refers to the English Broadside Ballad Archive: http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/. All ballads are from the Pepys collection unless otherwise stated. – In bibliographical references, ESTC refers to the English Short Title Catalogue: http://estc.bl.uk. – References to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) are from the online version as at April 2014: http://www.oed.com/. – References to the Bible are to the Oxford World Classics edition of the Authorised King James version, ed. Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett (Oxford: OUP, 2008), unless otherwise stated.

1

Losses, Lacunae and Liminality Abstract The actions of women who killed their infants often seem brutal, incomprehensible or illogical. Combining primary sources from different disciplines (archival, literary) and examining them from a range of secondary sources including those related to theology, medicine and the law, allows us to gain a fuller understanding of the cultural, emotional, and intellectual landscape of those who killed infants (using the early modern definition of up to the age of seven years). Theories concerning liminality and marginality are particularly illuminating about women’s actions and motives. Focussing principally on records from a limited geographical area (the county of Sussex) reveals that, in addition to the single women who were most commonly accused of the crime, married women and men were frequently culpable. Keywords: Age of an infant; Broadside ballads and pamphlets; Frequency of infanticide; Coroners’ inquests

Investigating the invisible Among surviving seventeenth-century ballads is a copy of a 1640 work about an infanticide said to have taken place in Lancashire.1 Where the narrative draws to its close, the paper is worn and eroded on the right-hand side of the sheet. The ballad is reduced to incomplete lines which deteriorate into disjointed words and letters which no longer convey the writer’s meaning, though the shadow of sense remains: The Midwife fearin … Because she kill’d the … Into a Well her sel … Where she lay lo … 1 Anon, Wicked Midwife.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch01

16 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Too many such … Before out … And th … As …

The page could serve as a metaphor for the study of infanticide. Some material survives allowing a partial picture to be seen, but there are gaps, missing details and uncertain outcomes, so that investigating the subject is frequently a study of voids. Perhaps it is these voids, and the tendency for hazy pictures to develop within them, which have drawn authors across time to create works about the crime, and drawn academics to study it. From Greek tragedy to the Bible, through the Middle Ages to the early modern period and on to the present, the murder of children is a recurring literary subject. Alongside these mainly elite written representations, with their parallels in the visual arts, are the folkloric tales of dead infants, whose origins are lost in time. While literary writers created dramatic narratives and investigated the range of emotions and events which could lead to infanticide, clerks recorded the all-too-routine facts of the infant murders which took place in society, though not all such cases were recorded for reasons the following pages will show. Poised between these two – the literary and the historical – were the pamphlets and ballads which became popular in the early modern period. These cheap, throw-away publications, which are described in more detail below, might be part court report, part news, and part complete fiction, and they frequently described exceptional and sensational instances of infanticide. As detailed in the historiography below, the range of sources which dealt with infanticide in society has contributed to the crime being part of many academic discourses, sometimes as a mere aside in a broader discussion and sometimes as a dedicated study. Writers on history, the law, the family, the social role of women, and the female body often dedicate a few pages to the subject. Those who make concentrated studies either take an historical approach or focus on the creative literature of the time, often in relation to other crimes committed by women, particularly mariticide. Other studies have focussed on the law and, with the advent of new historicism, debates concerning poverty and the role and status of women. A recurrent trait in these discussions has been the focus on what historical archives tell us: the perpetrators were most frequently unmarried women. It is therefore assumed that they committed the crime because they feared being shamed as bastard bearers, because of the stringent punishments which were meted out to those found guilty of this crime, and because of the difficulties of

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

17

surviving as an unwed mother due to the legal and social practices of the time. The present study does not refute this assumption, but it does re-examine infanticide from the basis of a number of beliefs. The first is that this causeand-effect paradigm seems too tidy an explanation for infant murder. Instead of accepting this broad conclusion, this study examines the possible impact of the cultural, psychological, emotional, and intellectual landscape surrounding infanticide, and its perpetrators, to try to gain a fuller understanding of the crime. The second belief is that the focus on one kind of perpetrator has led to others who were responsible for the crime, or directly involved in it, being almost entirely omitted from examination. A third belief is that the gaps and lingering questions which both began this chapter and haunt the study of infanticide, are a frustration; we want to know the ‘truth’, but we have lacunae. Mary E. Fissell’s reference to ‘interpretative space’ which allows many ‘different models’ to be applied aptly describes these gaps.2 In this research I want to treat the lacunae as an opportunity to examine infanticide through the lenses of a range of disciplines and to show how they aid our understanding of the crime, not in an attempt to uncover that ever-elusive ‘truth’, but to help our understanding of it.

Historiography Infanticide has invited discussion as part of many discourses. Those who make concentrated studies frequently take an historical approach, including attempts at quantitative analyses, which can arrive at conflicting conclusions.3 For example, in their early and extensive study, Peter C. Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull state that infanticide was ‘not rare’ but conclude that it is ‘impossible’ to arrive at a true crime rate, while acknowledging that there were enough cases ‘to keep the crime before the eyes of the authorities’. 4 J.S. Cockburn writes that it was ‘relatively uncommon’ as does Keith Wrightson, whose study of court records suggests that it was ‘surprisingly rare’.5 Barbara Hanawalt states it was non-existent in the middle ages, an opinion which contests Richard H. Helmholz’s slightly earlier findings.6 A few 2 Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, p. 1. 3 Kilday, Infanticide, p. 27. 4 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, pp. xviii, 21. 5 Cockburn, ‘Nature and Incidence’, p. 58; Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in European’, p. 8. 6 Hanawalt, ‘Childrearing’; Helmholz, ‘Infanticide’.

18 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

years on, Catherine Damme wrote that its existence was incontrovertible.7 Other writers examine conviction rates, again arriving at diverse opinions. Hoffer and Hull f ind that the rate of the crime was high after the 1624 Infanticide Act (Appendix 1) and James A. Sharpe writes that ‘more women were executed for infanticide than for witchcraft’8 while Garthine Walker writes that infanticide was the ‘only form of homicide for which women regularly received pardons’.9 While the patchy survival of records, and the ease with which the crime could be concealed, means that the frequency of infanticide is always to be open to debate, other aspects of the crime appear to be irrefutable. There seems to be no doubt that it was most commonly committed by unmarried women and, by extrapolation, it is probable that they were driven by a combination of shame, fear for their reputations and the difficulties of their surviving as a lone woman with a child. Awareness of this goes back to Lawrence Stone’s early research into the history of the family in which he identifies the lack of strong economic incentive for the rich to practise infanticide by negligence, such as the reputed custom of placing an infant with a wetnurse who was unlikely to care for it. The idea seems to pick up from Philippe Ariès’ much-criticised Centuries of Childhood which has been widely, and incorrectly, interpreted as suggesting that parental affection for children did not start to develop until the seventeenth century.10 Social historians Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt extrapolate the idea of infanticide and unwed mothers. They write: Amongst a class where food was never very plentiful and at a time when individual life was not so highly regarded and the death of an infant no very remarkable thing, the temptation for a woman to escape ostracism and the penalties of the law and rid herself of a responsibility which, without a husband’s support, might prove an impossible burden, was not always to be resisted in either town or country.11

Sharpe later wrote: ‘The typical infanticidal mother was an unmarried servant girl, and her motives were usually a desire to avoid the shame and 7 Damme, ‘Infanticide’. 8 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 25; Sharpe, Crime, p. 158. 9 Walker, Crime, Gender, p. 150; ———, ‘Just stories’. 10 Ariès, Centuries of Childhood. For criticisms of Aries’ research see, for example Hendrick, ‘Children’. 11 Pinchbeck and Hewitt, Children in English Society, p. 210.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

19

consequent loss of position which unmarried motherhood would bring’.12 More recently Linda Pollock added: Those who were charged with killing their babies were invariably isolated women who lacked support networks. [They] committed infanticide to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy: the possible rejection of friends and family, the prospect of losing their livelihoods, and the incurring of church and state penalties.13

Certainly, the texts I have studied support the theory that most cases of infanticide concerned single women who were accused of killing their newborns, and it can reasonably be assumed that shame and fear of punishment were contributory factors. However, Phyllis Rackin has written that some historical research is not necessarily inaccurate but ‘it is incomplete’.14 The present research picks up on this statement. My study of all the surviving coroners’ inquests from a limited geographical area (described below) suggested a more complex picture of who killed infants, why they did it, and the manner of the killings. Viewing the subject from the perspective of these historical accounts suggested that if you ask different questions, and call on a range of disciplines in the search for an answer, you may gain new insights. This book, of course, calls on the research of the many commentators who have made highly individual observations about infanticide. Some of these are outlined below, to give an overview of discourses on the subject, while other, more specific, comments will be introduced at the relevant points in the text. Hoffer and Hull look beyond the demographics of the culprits and place the crime in a wider social context. They write that infanticide was the result of ‘violent emotions in a violent age’ affected by ‘economic conditions and indifference to moral codes’ but conclude that ‘motivation is as varied as the personalities of the men and women who attempted it and the situations in which they found themselves’.15 R.W. Malcolmson moves the crime away from something planned and carried out by calculating women and instead captures the unpremeditated nature of the crime. Writing of women who concealed pregnancy, he states that some of them 12 Sharpe, Crime, p. 158. 13 Pollock, ‘Parent-Child Relations’, p. 218. 14 Rackin, Shakespeare, p. 9. 15 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, pp. 132, 157.

20 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

were ‘probably prompted more by confusion and panic, or perhaps the hope for a fortunate miscarriage, and involved no definite notion of what would be done’ but hoped that ‘some sort of deliverance would occur’.16 This suggests pregnancy denial, which could easily culminate in infanticide. This complex subject is considered in more detail in Chapter 5. A unifying theme throughout these discussions is that they consider infanticide in terms of single women. Frances E. Dolan is one of the few who deal at any length with non-stereotypical killers. She suggests that when an unmarried woman killed her child, it was an act of self-preservation.17 She writes that married women were more likely to be judged ‘insane’ and describes such killings as destruction of part of the self, whereas infanticide by men was ‘social suicide’. These two types of perpetrator are discussed in Chapters 7 and 8. While most writers construct women as social and legal victims, occasional voices stress their strength. Walker suggests that when the 1624 Act ‘to prevent the destroying and murthering of bastard children’ (Appendix 1) was passed, it provided opportunities for mitigation which did not exist in murder law, such as lack of signs of violence on the infant body. This made infanticide the only homicide for which women were likely to be pardoned.18 She finds that courts applied ‘normal’ standards of proof and that, unlike other female homicides, some suspects were granted pardons. Walker also shows that pregnant women deserted by their lovers asserted their rights against men in bastardy cases to ‘access a concept of honesty that could eclipse the shadow of their sexual activity’.19 Malcolmson also comments on women’s strength. He suggests women who killed their infants may have been of formerly excellent reputation, who used their strength of will and determination to salvage what they could of their lives.20 In the broadside ballads which I consider in the current research, similar women are portrayed as tricking and seducing innocents to manipulate their way into the safety of marriage.21 Another perspective from which infanticide has been discussed is in relation to the female body, pregnancy and childbirth, areas which were differently understood in the early modern period and which directly impact infanticide.22 Medical beliefs about the female body were changing at this 16 Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide’, p. 193. 17 Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, pp. 132, 142. See also Kilday, Infanticide, p. 64. 18 Walker, Crime, Gender, p. 152. 19 ibid., p. 232. 20 Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide’, p. 205. 21 Anon, Norfolk Lass; ———, Countrey Farmer. 22 Eccles, Obstetrics.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

21

time, but briefly, women were thought to be imperfect men with genitals like those of men. The essential difference was that with women they were held inside the body because women were cooler than men, though excessive exertion could cause them to descend. The three dominant beliefs about menstruation, as outlined by Michael Stolberg, were that it was to remove bad matter from the body, was the result of an excess of blood, or was caused by an imbalance in the four humours whose correct balance was considered essential for a healthy body.23 Failure to menstruate could lead to frenzy, melancholy, madness and hysterical fits and the condition was treated by bleeding.24 Essential to the study of infanticide is that not menstruating was considered only one of a number of possible indications of pregnancy, and was not believed to be a particularly indicative one.25 Equally important to the study of infanticide is that, according to early modern medical beliefs, both the man and the woman produced a ‘seed’, and these had to combine for conception to take place. As it was thought that these seeds were only released when both the man and the woman had an orgasm, many women were presumably lulled into a false sense of security. The lack of accurate and helpful physiological knowledge would have been compounded by the fact that, as Gowing points out, there were social taboos on discussing the body.26 Gowing also demonstrates that the female body was private, but that suspicion of unmarried pregnancy meant it could become the subject of public contention and physical examination by strangers.27 She shows that rather than being a sisterhood, other women became a threat. A similar point is made by Linda Pollock in her work on the shared experience of childbirth.28 Her article suggests that unmarried women could become constructed as outsiders who were given only grudging help during labour. In addition, rape and unmarried pregnancy could not be spoken of, which underlines Malcolmson’s comment that some women pinned their hopes on an undefined fortuitous rescue – a situation which could lead to infanticide. Infanticide took place within communities and in a world beset by other issues. In part, the subject is bound up with an early modern desire to control women’s sexuality and concerns about bastard bearing because an unmarried mother and her infant were a potential draw on poor relief. With this in mind, it is surprising that there was no early modern vocabulary 23 24 25 26 27 28

Stolberg, ‘Menstruation’. Healy, ‘Dangerous Blood’. The complex business of diagnosing pregnancy is considered further in Chapter 5 Gowing, ‘Bodies and Stories’. ———, ‘Secret Births’. Pollock, ‘Childbearing’.

22 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

with which to discuss the subject. There was no term for unwed mothers so ‘bastard bearer’ or, more damningly, ‘strumpet’ or ‘whore’, were commonly used. Neither was there any term for the fathers of these infants, though they are occasionally referred to as ‘bastard-begetters’. They were usually defined by their action: ‘begetting a bastard on the body of’ thus removing the focus from the man’s error to the teeming female body.29 Nor was there any word for the parents jointly, a lack which strangely forces a separation between a man and woman who had created something as tangible as a child. Even if the couple was betrothed but not married the condemnation did not cease and they could be charged with such offences as ‘carnall copulation before marriage’, as discussed in Chapter 4. The word ‘infanticide’ did exist, but it did not refer to the crime. Partially this was because killing an infant was not seen as different to any other form of murder until 1624 when an Act, which has become known as England’s first infanticide law, came into being. Instead, ‘infanticide’ referred to the killer. Only a generation later, Thomas Blount’s Glossographia (1656) does define the word as applying to the crime. He writes: ‘Infanticide (infanticidium) a slaying or killing of infantes, child-murthering; such was that of Herod’.30 Lacking vocabulary, when writing about the killers, the authors of street literature resorted to (or perhaps relished in) attaching adjectives such as monstrous, bloody or unnatural, to the term ‘mother’ thus emphasising the corruption of the maternal role. This was reinforced by the phrases used in place of the word infanticide. A mother might be described as having ‘made away with the fruit of her own wombe’ or having ‘stopt the breath’ and infants were ‘made away by their owne Mother’.31 Religion naturally had a part to play in infanticide. Wrightson suggests that the almost simultaneous laws against infanticide across Europe (considered in the next chapter) were because the early Christian church associated the crime with the paganism which it was so keen to abolish. He suggests that attitudes toward infanticide were seen as a central differentiation between the two.32 Across societies infanticide was seen as what we today might call a ‘horror crime’, and considered on a par with witchcraft and sodomy, all crimes which were proscribed in the bible and which doubtless 29 An apocryphal account of new-born murder suggests how hard it is to assess the frequency of infanticide. It states ‘How common it is for the Bastard-getter and Bastard-bearer, to consent together to murder their Children, will be better known at the day of Judgement’. Bunyan, ‘Life and Death’, p. 86. 30 Blount, Glossographia, p. X5v. 31 Anon, Deeds Against Nature, p. 1; Brewer, Bloudy Mother, p. B; Anon, Pittilesse Mother, p. A3v. 32 Wrightson, ’Infanticide in European’, p. 4.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

23

seemed to threaten the stability of society. However, the crime took place within families and small communities, and it could reverberate through them; Gowing describes it as a ‘collective trauma’.33 The findings of decades of academic research circulating mainly around single women motivated by shame and the fear of economic hardship, result in lingering questions. Is there more to it than this? What about other kinds of perpetrators? What are we missing? These are the questions which this book examines. Taking a thematic approach, it will show that infanticide and child killing in early modern England cannot be fully understood by simple explanations. As described more fully below, it opens up the subject in a number of ways. Firstly, while the majority of the examples discussed concern newborn or very young infants, I also consider older children, prompted by the fact that ‘infanticide’ was not a defined crime at this time. Secondly, it uses a range of primary sources. The principal historical accounts are a discrete group of surviving Coroners’ inquests, a source which has particular benefits when studying infanticide. Alongside these, the research considers the ballads and pamphlets of street literature and the drama of the public stage, including works which do not directly refer to infanticide but imply or approach it in the subtext or imagery. These primary sources, and the rationale for combining them in this study, are set out below. Thirdly, the research uses a range of secondary sources, including those which refer to early modern beliefs about the body, religion and folklore as well as current ideas about perinatal psychology. Theories about liminality, marginality and rites of passage, which have their roots in anthropology, have proved particularly helpful for understanding infanticide more fully. By applying the expertise of writers from a number of disciplines to representations of infanticide, my aim is to reveal the complexity of the crime.

The age of an infant Researchers into historical periods frequently base their def inition of infanticide on current English law which defines the crime as the killing of an infant under a year old by its mother, with the murder of newborns and children under one month defined as neonaticide.34 Such a stipulation did not apply in the early modern period. The 1624 Act uses the term ‘child’ 33 Gowing, ’Secret Births’, p. 115. 34 Ministry of Justice, Murder, manslaughter.

24 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

or ‘children’ throughout, yet it implies newborns (See Appendix 1). It has become known as England’s first infanticide act, yet what early modern people understood by ‘infant’ is far from clear. The Latin infans – without language – creates a flexible division between infancy and childhood as speech is acquired at various ages, and it raises the question of whether uttering ‘mama’ constitutes having language. Shakespeare used the term ‘infant’ in the sense of ‘a child during the earliest period of life’, as in ‘like the froward infant still’d with dandling’,35 and also in the sense of ‘in its earliest stage, newly existing, ungrown, undeveloped’ as in ‘Old woes, not infant sorrows’.36 Herod was, as we have seen, named in Blount’s definition of infanticide. As the biblical king specified the killing of children aged up to two, this provides another feasible definition.37 All such divisions are arbitrary, but some parameters are required for this research. I will therefore take ‘infant’ to be up to the age of seven and, by extension, the killing of children up to this time as ‘infanticide’.38 This decision is based on ‘Ages of Man’ schemes, a concept best known today from Jaques’ speech in As You Like It (III.iii.143) and which would have been familiar to Shakespeare’s audiences. Since antiquity, scholars had sought to define the span of man’s life in schematic terms, inspired by different philosophies. They created life stages of varying lengths, from the simple three of youth, maturity, and old age, to Thomas Tusser’s twelve seven-year apprenticeships described in his poem ‘Mans Age divided’.39 The systems and philosophies supporting the schemes are described by Samuel C. Chew and J.A. Burrow who show that they could be related to the seasons, the apostles, bodily humours, or the five senses, with other schemes providing cycles of six, through to twelve. 40 Thomas Fortescue summarised the schemes in The Foreste (1571), outlining patterns of three, four, six and seven. He concludes: ‘But here considering these variable 35 Venus and Adonis (line 562). 36 Rape of Lucrece (line 1096). 37 Matthew 2.16; Inconsistencies about the definition of infant are still with us. The OED states ‘a child during the earliest period of life (or still unborn); now most usually applied to a child in arms, a babe; but often extended to include any child under seven years of age’. However, it also states ‘a person under (legal) age; a minor. In common law, one who has not completed his or her twenty-first year’. 38 Ascertaining the age of children named in the inquests is not straightforward. Although most are described as newborn, in other instances the age is ambiguous such as ‘infant’ or ‘child’. Occasionally information such as the child being a servant or one of a family of murdered children, gives some indication of age. Any assumptions about age made here will be clarified. 39 Tusser, Five Hundreth, p. 56v. 40 Chew, Pilgrimage of Life; Burrow, Ages of Man.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

25

opinions, I know not where, moste safely to arrest my selfe, neither may any man give assured determination’. 41 As Burrow states: ‘Anyone who goes to medieval discussion of the ages of man with the intention of ascertaining at what age youth was thought to end, or old age to begin, will find no easy answers’.42 Burrow believes that most people in the Middle Ages explained life’s stages in terms of four or seven, and that the Tudors and Stuarts followed similar authorities. 43 The reach of the systems was wide. Chew shows that they were familiar from depictions in stained glass windows, engravings and murals. Within the early modern period they were known through writing including translations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses – ‘See’st thou not how that the year, as representing plain / The age of man, depicts itself in quarters four?’ – and Edmund Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calendar. 44 This research, as stated above, concentrates on infants up to the age of seven. Writing of the Middle Ages, Shulamith Shahar notes that infantia was defined as up to this age. Seven was considered a suitable age for schooling and vocational training. 45 For the early modern period, seven complies with Jaques’ sequence, which suggests that ‘infant’ covers the years from ‘mewling and puking’ to the schoolboy ‘creeping like snail unwillingly to school’. It is also the first of Tusser’s divisions: ‘The first vii years bring up as a childe’. 46 Fortescue shows that a number of early thinkers also put the division at this age, including the sixth-century scholar Isadore of Seville who called this stage infans because ‘when the teeth are not yet well set in place he cannot express himself properly’. 47 At the opposite end of the cultural spectrum, seven is the age described and illustrated in Peter Fancy’s ballad The Age and Life of Man. He writes: ‘The first seven years in a Cradle / To stand or go he is not able’. 48 At seven, boys were breeched and children could be sent away to work. 49 Tudor homicide trials defined an infant as eight years old or less.50 Clearly, there was a change 41 Fortescue, The Foreste, p. 48v. 42 Burrow, Ages of Man, p. 34. 43 ibid., pp. 38, 57. 44 Ovid, Metamorphoses. Book XV, line 222; Spenser, The Shepheardes Calendar.XII: December 45 Shahar, Childhood, pp. 23–26. 46 Tusser, Five Hundreth, p. fol. 56v. 47 Cited in Burrow, Ages of Man, p. 83. 48 Fancy, Age and Life. 49 Crawford, Parents, pp. 113, 137, 157. 50 Clark, Women and Crime, pp. 34, n.32. Griffiths’ survey of age citations of the accused in archives for Norwich and London shows that ‘infant’ is used to the age of three, but that most in this group were referred to as ‘child’, as were those up to eight. After this, gender specific language – lad, maid, boy, girl – was adopted. Griffiths, Youth and Authority, p. 25.

26 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Image 1: The Age and Life of Man described and depicted in Peter Fancy’s ballad (1650-1665?) (reproduced by permission of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections).

in attitudes and beliefs about young people around the age of seven when young lives appear to have moved from infant to child. For the study of infanticide, extending the age range under discussion offers several advantages. It enables us to see the murder of neonates (the group most commonly discussed) and young infants in a wider social context and the extent to which the violent death of the very young was prominent in early modern society. It also raises questions about attitudes to young children and shows that they sometimes became the vulnerable centre of family dynamics. These intentional infant deaths, taken alongside the many accidental deaths of children recorded in the archives, some of which are mentioned below, reveal the vulnerability of infant life and show that written and visual images of child harm and death permeated the early modern world.

Primary sources: a dual approach This research calls on two groups of primary sources: historical archives and the literatures of stage and street, an approach which can cause consternation in some disciplines. Defending the practice of combining resources

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

27

from different disciplines, Ralph Hanna III states that the division goes back to Aristotle’s Poetics, and Plato’s objection to poetry because it was a mere imitation of reality.51 Sharpe, who includes pamphlets in his study of domestic homicide, clarifies the problem after a vehement attack on the sloppy practice of some historians: Imaginative literature is imaginative literature: it can be used to illustrate past attitudes or preoccupations, but it should not be confused with historical fact.52

Even where historians adhere to their discipline’s traditional sources, it is possible to find examples of their injudicious use, such as G.R. Quaife’s examination of Somerset archives, a work which has been widely criticised, including by Paul Griffiths who describes it as representing a society in which people ‘frolicked whenever opportunity beckoned’.53 Even if researchers are strict in their choice of archival examples they do, as Dolan and other historians have pointed out, have to deal with the fact that these are stories which have been constructed and shaped, just as other fictions have been.54 Despite their ‘factual’ nature, archival sources contain fictions. Historian Malcolm Gaskill’s study of depositions suggests that they confirmed community convictions about guilt, and conformed to conventions of storytelling.55 He notes that they share motifs with their fictional counterparts and that evidence was often manufactured. On the other hand, literary scholars’ use of history to contextualise their criticism and place their discussion within the historical moment avoids anachronistic interpretations and appears to be widely accepted. In addition, literature has its own unique role to play in revealing the past. Michael Neill points out that literature can reveal aspects of history which might otherwise be concealed. He writes: these texts are dense with […] information about the society and culture to which they belonged – information that may sometimes be directly related to conscious authorial intention but that often found its way more or less unconsciously into the work because it was integral to the world the writers inhabited, inscribed in the very language by which 51 Hanna III, ‘Brewing Trouble’. 52 Sharpe, Crime, p. 13. 53 Quaife, Wanton Wenches; Griffiths, Youth and Authority, p. 237. 54 Dolan, True Relations; Walker, ‘Just stories’. 55 Gaskill, ‘Reporting Murder’. See also Davis, Fiction.

28 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

they knew it. It is this that makes literary texts […] among the richest historical repositories that we possess […] because they are unfailingly sensitive registers of social attitudes and assumptions, fears and desires.56

Neill’s comment echoes that of lawyer and scholar John Selden (1584–1654) who wrote: ‘More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well as ballads and libels’.57 For the purpose of this study, the richer the range of sources, the clearer our understanding can become, particularly as much information was never recorded or is lost. Although history and literature – archives and creative writing – have become divided, both grew out of the same culture and, despite their different aims, attempted to record it. As a result, they share many characteristics. Both the literary and the historical sources are narrative and largely formulaic in construction, and sometimes they described the same events. The coroner’s inquest concerning Ralph Mepham’s murder of his wife was more fully described in a pamphlet the following year, after Mepham’s trial and hanging.58 This fuller account provides such additional details as his attempt to set light to his home (presumably to hide the evidence of his crime), and the neighbours’ rescue of his five year old son. So, while this is not a story of infant murder, Mepham does appear to have been willing to sacrifice his child. His son, we are told, acts as a witness, as do Mepham’s co-workers, and when he still does not admit his wrong, he is put in the stocks after which he is tried at ‘Greenested’ and sentenced to death. Clearly, the pamphlet provides not only fuller information than the historical account, but also different kinds of information, though there is a danger that this was embellished and dramatised to suit the readers’ tastes. Therefore, while street literature cannot be taken as truth, it does give a sense of the wider context of crimes – in this case the community in which the murder took place, the role of the neighbours, and the importance of depositions. Even if these details are complete fabrications, they reveal the kind of information readers wanted and enjoyed. Dolan, who examines the relationship between fact and fiction in historical research argues for ‘an interdisciplinary approach, one that aspires to create historical knowledge through literary analysis of a wide and various textual field’.59 This is the basis on which my examination of infanticide is constructed. 56 Neill, Putting History, p. 3. 57 Selden, Table-talk, p. 93. 58 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 118 #477; Anon, Most Horrible. 59 Dolan, True Relations, p. 151.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

29

Archival sources The main archival sources for this research are the Coroners’ inquests from Sussex.60 These reports were chosen, despite their brevity, because they were the accounts which were made closest to the actual event, because there are benefits in drawing on a limited number of cases, and because aspects of the county of Sussex make it both typical and atypical. Coroners had several duties, but the most important was investigating all violent, unnatural, or unexplained deaths encompassing murder, suicide and accidents, a role which they undertook both conscientiously and expeditiously.61 Normally inquests were held after viewing the body, and within days of it being found, so there was less time for those giving evidence to have retold their stories, forgotten details, or to have been influenced by others although, as Walker points out, the events would have been told to others before and may have acquired coherence through retelling. Carrie Smith believes they may be more reliable than other records because inquests were held within the community and dealt with people who knew each other.62 Yet she also warns: ‘Those concerning the deaths of children should perhaps be treated with particular caution’ because of the diff iculty of differentiating accident and intent.63 Hunnisett also believes that inquests can ‘seldom be taken at their face value’ and refers to their ‘haphazard mixture of fact, fiction, and error’.64 He points out that inquests contain information which could not have been provided by the jurors, that inaccuracies were caused by copying, and that they had a highly stylized form. Importantly, he states: ‘in many inquisitions the facts were made to f it into stereotyped patterns’. Nevertheless, as the accounts originally made closest to the death, they should be more reliable than other records. From the perspective of the current research, the inquests also give a more accurate picture of the extent of, and attitudes toward, infanticide in the communities considered, as the research includes many cases which went no further, perhaps because the suspect had fled, or the case was dismissed. The 60 The Sussex inquests are collected in three volumes which have been widely used in this research. See Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1485–1558; ———, ed. Inquests 1558–1603; ———, ed. Inquests 1603–1688. For further information on this source see Appendix 2. 61 ———, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. xi. For a full account of the development and decline of the Coroner’s role see ———, The Medieval Coroner. 62 Smith, ‘Medieval Coroners’ Rolls’, p. 115. 63 ibid., p. 108. 64 Hunnisett, ‘Reliability’, pp. 206, 227.

30 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Coroners’ records therefore give a closer, more intimate, accurate and complete picture of infanticide and attitudes toward it than Assize courts alone would. Despite a statute from 1487 introducing a system for the records’ permanent preservation, Coroners’ courts appear to have been ‘erratic’ in handling them and many no longer exist,65 although 1,367 Sussex hearings on unexpected deaths from 1485 to 1688 have survived. In addition, Sussex Assize court records contain information for some cases for which inquest records have not survived. Neither set of records contains the documents about Mercy Gould, a Sussex servant suspected of killing her newborn, a case discussed in detail by David Cressy and now housed with the King’s Bench.66 Nor is there any archival record of the killing of several infants by Jane Hattersley which was described in a pamphlet of 1609 and is discussed in Chapters 6 and 8.67 When these two cases are combined with those from the Coroners’ records and the Assize Courts, including multiple deaths which were dealt with together by the authorities, the total number of cases of apparent killing of infants in Sussex between 1485 and 1688 is approximately one hundred. This number includes two which are beyond the remit set out above. For example, in November 1555 six-year-old Agnes Kente’s parents sent her to look after a flock of sheep. The inquest tells us that ‘She was […] there all that night and died of the cold she then took, through her parents’ negligence in that they took no care of her’.68 This was classified as ‘a natural death’. Also, there was the sadly-named Fortune Luck, a nine-year-old maidservant. She was sent on an errand by her master’s wife and ‘having the heel and toes of one foot putrefied, she rested in the road and, seized with the cold, died a natural death there’.69 These cases have been included in the total because these two girls whose short lives are recorded in these inquests deserve to have their stories known, and because today such events would almost certainly be seen as manslaughter by gross negligence. Inquest accounts begin with the date and place of the hearing, the Coroner’s name and a list of jurors, generally about fifteen men of standing in the immediate neighbourhood.70 The part of the inquest dealing with an infant death typically reads: 65 ———, ed. Inquests 1485–1558, p. xiii. 66 Cressy, Agnes Bowker’s Cat, pp. 51-72. 67 Brewer, Bloudy Mother. 68 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1485–1558, p. 57 #204. 69 ———, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 25 #111. 70 ibid., pp. xl, xlv.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

31

On 29 November ‘Bennet’ Davis late of Maresfield, ‘spynster’, murdered a female child, to which she had given birth alive at Maresfield, stopping her breathing with both hands and suffocating her.71

Coroners were required to measure wounds and to state the f inancial value of the item which caused them, as anything which led to a death was ‘deodand’, originally a gift to God to expiate the item’s sin by its dedication to the Church, though in time it became crown property and a source of royal revenue.72 Clerks also recorded the accused’s possessions which, in infanticide cases was typically a variation of ‘no goods, chattels, lands or tenements’. After the hearing, documents related to homicide were passed to the Assize or Sessions courts and are maintained at the National Archive in Kew. As Sharpe points out: ‘What is in many ways the most fascinating source is the one which has been most often destroyed […] the deposition’.73 However, where information about the trial’s subsequent progress survives, R.F. Hunnisett has appended a summary in his volumes of transcriptions (see Appendix 2). In Bennet Davis’ case this shows that she was not kept in custody but that a cloth worker and a joiner both entered into bonds for £10 for her appearance at the Assizes. Robert Payne of Maresfield, a yeoman, also entered a bond for £10 to give evidence against her. We do not know why the joiner and cloth worker were sure she would attend the hearing rather than abscond, or why Robert Payne was willing to give evidence against her. We do know that she pleaded not guilty and was acquitted, the child being said to have been born dead. Even in this briefest of accounts there is the sense of the moral courage of the woman who had appeared before a jury of men (thirteen were recorded in this instance, plus the Coroner), and would have to be examined again before another jury of about the same number in the knowledge that a yeoman was prepared to speak against her. Other important historical sources used in this research are Churchwardens’ Presentments for Sussex, as transcribed by Hilda Johnstone.74 These do not deal with deaths, but they do provide an insight into peoples’ lives in early modern Sussex, and in particular their sex lives. Any actions which offended the right-thinking of the church, whether it was drunkenness, 71 ibid., p. 119 #483. 72 ———, The Medieval Coroner, pp. 20, 32. 73 Sharpe, Crime, p. 35. For a study of surviving depositions see Gaskill, ‘Reporting Murder’. 74 Johnstone, ed. Presentments. For churchwarden’s role see ibid. xxi-xl and Wilson, Ritual, p. 20.

32 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

failing to attend services, abusing neighbours, or working on Sunday, was reported. Particularly popular for scrutiny were the men and women guilty of, or suspected of, some form of sexual wrongdoing, including cohabiting before marriage, or not cohabiting after marriage. Women suspected to be with child are frequent characters in these pages. Anyone considered guilty of sexual wrongs could be referred to the Correction or Archdeaconry Court or a higher ecclesiastical court which could culminate in being required to carry out a Penance. Both the public nature of the punishment, which is discussed in Chapter 5, and the impression the Presentments give of oppressively vigilant communities, suggest how easily sexual indiscretion could be the beginning of a sequence following the well-worn path of unwanted pregnancy, concealment, secret birth and, ultimately, infanticide. Thus, while these records suggest the prurience of many inhabitants of rural villages, the fact that they reported on circumstances which might lead to unmarried pregnancy, or let it be known that a woman was with child, could equally have lessened the possibility of such a tragic outcome. As well as the advantage of being recorded close to the event and within the communities where the crime took place, looking at a discrete number of examples of infanticide from a limited geographical area removes the temptation to select the vivid, exceptional and dramatic stories. Instead it allows emphasis on the apparent mundaneness of the accounts, as seen in the Bennet Davis case cited above. Limiting the number makes it possible to study cases individually, as small groups and as a whole, and to examine them closely, thus avoiding the broad-brush approach that is often taken. Anthropologist Mary Douglas has stated that ‘whatever we perceive is organised into patterns for which we, the perceivers, are largely responsible’.75 This, she states, is our ‘strongest mental habit’. She continues: As perceivers we select from all the stimuli falling on our senses only those which interest us, and our interests are governed by a patternmaking tendency […] In perceiving we are building, taking some cues and rejecting others. The most acceptable cues are those which fit most easily into the pattern that is being built up. Ambiguous ones tend to be treated as if they harmonised with the rest of the pattern. Discordant ones tend to be rejected.

The Sussex cases make it possible to benefit from these pattern-making tendencies by encouraging the examination of those which do not fit with 75 Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 36.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

33

the broad patterns, which can lead us into a deeper understanding of infanticide. The records confirm the national pattern in that the majority of those accused or suspected of infant murder were unmarried and the infants were newborn. However, they also reveal micro-patterns, such as the frequency of deaths involving water and that infant corpses were often described as thrown. It is also clear that men were more frequently involved in the crime than current discourses show. What the records do not do is indicate the frequency of infanticide in early modern Sussex. This is partially because many of the records are missing, sometimes for part of the county and sometimes for the whole county.76 As Hunnisett writes: ‘Infanticide must have been much more common than the inquests suggest; compassionate neighbours may well have helped to conceal it from the authorities’,77 an action which would have provided a ‘shield’ between a crime and its being brought to court.78 Sympathy for the guilty, and the need to pay the Coroner, were other disincentives to reporting crimes.79 Concealing infant murder was also aided by the ease of disposing of an infant body. One Sussex inquest shows the unfolding of events when such concealment was discovered.80 Without physical evidence it was rare for Coroners to pursue a case, although again there is one such case recorded for Sussex.81 Such cases reveal the community tension, mystery and confusion surrounding infanticide and reinforce statements made by historians such as Sharpe, and Hoffer and Hull, who write of the ‘dark figure’ of unrecorded crime.82 As the principal historical sources for this study are from Sussex, it is worth making some brief observations about the county to give an impression of the extent to which it should be thought of as likely to be typical of the rest of England.83 The county stretched for 75 miles (120km) along the south coast, and extended up to 25 miles (40km) northward. Travel within this area was notoriously difficult and dangerous especially as the wet roads were destroyed annually. This may have contributed to the preference of moving goods by water, which resulted in the growth of port towns such 76 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1485–1558, p. xiii; ———, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. xi; ———, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. xi; Kilday, Infanticide, pp. 27,42. 77 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1485–1558, p. xxxix. 78 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 45. 79 Smith, ‘Medieval Coroners’ Rolls’, p. 100.; Kilday, Infanticide, p. 42. 80 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 112 #438. 81 ibid., p. 122 #475. 82 Sharpe, Crime, p. 61; Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 6. 83 The facts cited are largely taken from Herrup, The Common Peace.

34 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

as Shoreham, Rye and Hastings. Within its 1461 square miles (3783 square km) area, Sussex encompassed three separate topographical areas; the Weald in the north, marshlands to the south east and the Downs to the south. Each had different natural resources, leading to three economic areas which each carried out a different form of agriculture. The Weald also developed small manufacturing industries such as textiles, bricks, tanned leather, and crafted wood. Overall, the county’s resources meant that people had modest prosperity which, rather than leading to happy and contented communities, resulted in a population of which others had a generally low opinion. The people of Sussex were considered ruder and more wilful than others. (The county’s informal motto is still ‘We won’t be druv’, meaning we won’t be driven). Cynthia B. Herrup, in her study of the county’s crimes during the seventeenth century, found that the people of Sussex committed more homicides than those from Essex, and they were more brutal being ‘exceptionally fond of knives and blunt instruments’.84 The fact that movement was difficult in the county meant that administratively it was divided into East and West Sussex, each with its own County Court. Coroners were appointed for both the areas but there were a number of other appointed Coroners, and some acting ex officio, including for Chichester and the Cinque Ports. The result was, as Hunnisett points out, ‘administrative complexity’ which doubtless did not assist the consistent survival of records. How typical was Sussex? In comprising principally rural communities, the importance of agriculture to the economy, and the range of small industries, Sussex was similar to other parts of the country. Yet the relative prosperity, proximity to London, and the dominance of a few long-established families made it different to many other areas. However, unwanted pregnancy (whether the woman with child was married or not), was a personal, private problem and how women felt about it, and how they dealt with it, was likely to be fairly uniform across the country. Perhaps the sea made it easier for reluctant fathers to abscond, perhaps the sometimes-impassable roads made it more diff icult. Perhaps there were more infant deaths because there were more murders overall than elsewhere, perhaps there were fewer because of the county’s comparative wealth. Whichever was the case, the hundred infant deaths which we know of and which were considered suspicious enough for the Coroner to be called, are worthy of investigation.

84 ibid., p. 29.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

35

Literary sources As well as historical sources, this research examines representations of infanticide in early modern literature, specifically drama and broadside ballads and pamphlets which, Fissell says, should be read ‘with as much care and sophistication as […] other texts’.85 The format and traditions of early modern drama are familiar, but ballads and pamphlets may need some introduction. Ballads – short songs, cheaply printed on a single page – dealt with subjects as diverse as politics, thwarted love, ‘prodigies’ and other purported news. As they were often clandestine in production many were not registered, and as they were ephemeral in nature many have not survived. Therefore, we cannot know how many titles existed, though Tessa Watt estimates somewhere between six hundred thousand and three to four million copies may have been printed.86 Their tunes were used repeatedly, and their rough woodcuts were similarly recycled. The genre crossed class boundaries. Ballads were sold at markets, sung by minstrels at great houses, and bought by servants and apprentices, yeomen, husbandmen, and tradespeople. Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) was among the collectors. His library had examples not only from his own time but from the previous century, after he took over the collection of John Selden probably in the 1680s.87 Watt states that theoretically every man, woman and child would have had access to ballads, at least in oral form.88 Pamphlets were often ‘ephemeral, occasional and frivolous’ publications,89 comprising ‘one or more printed sheets, stabbed or sewn together’.90 Their subject matter and readership was similar to that of ballads, but their greater length, prolonged argument and more overt didacticism demanded greater literary skill. Many were serious and moralistic or religious. Some dealt with recent court cases91 and were written by prison chaplains who had the profitable right to publish accounts of the life and crimes of the condemned (as in the case of Robert Foulkes, discussed in Chapter 8).92 Rather than 85 Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, p. 9. A few publications do not fall into these categories. They are used to support other literary texts and mentioned only briefly. 86 Watt, Cheap Print, p. 12. 87 ‘English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA)’. 88 ———, Cheap Print, p. 37. 89 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 145. 90 Suarez and Woudhuysen, eds., Oxford Companion, p. 997. 91 Crime pamphlets as a genre are discussed in Clark, Women and Crime, pp. 1–32. 92 ‘A True and Perfect’; Foulkes, Alarme.

36 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

describing ballads and pamphlets as vernacular, popular, or cheap literature, which emphasise language, the readers and cost respectively, I will refer to them collectively as ‘street literature’, following the examples of Sandra Clark and Joy Wiltenburg.93 As well as the street being one of the principal places of sale the term emphasises ideas of social mingling, exchange, display, and performance, which are an aspect of many of these works. Street literature and drama shared many characteristics. They often featured the same casts of characters – the traders, farmers, yeomen, doctors, craftworkers, middling sort and servants of street literature often appeared in drama. These were the people who thronged the streets of early modern London.94 In 1642 Henry Peacham wrote of: The Citie, whether all sorts reside, Noble and simple rich and poore yong and old, from all places and Countries either for pleasure […] or for profit, as Lawyers to the Tearmes, Country-men and women to Smithfield and the Markets or for necessity, as poore yong men and maids to seeke services and places, serving-men Masters, and some others all manner of imploiment.95

As the sorts of people who appear in street literature did not have many representations of themselves, the works had the potential to influence actions and attitudes. Clark writes that they ‘constituted a resource on which they could draw in the construction of social and cultural identities’.96 For women in particular, plays and street literature offered a central role, voice, and agency. She points out that in ballads women’s voices stand alone and are not counteracted.97 But ballads also depicted women as voraciously sexual and made them scapegoats for bawdy humour. Northern, ‘westerne’ and country lasses who are seduced by city gents often sing of their plight in ballads. While their woes may have warned others about seducers, many ballads suggest that unmarried, pregnant women would be rescued by enamoured gallants, or that they would be able to dupe an innocent into marriage. Such optimistic narratives may have helped to make women easy sexual prey and may ultimately have contributed to infanticide. Yet alongside these unrealistically optimistic representations of the fate of unmarried women with child, were other works whose aim seems to be to 93 Clark, Women and Crime; Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women. 94 Howard, Theater of a City, pp. 8, 40. 95 Peacham, Art, p. A1v. 96 Clark, Women and Crime, p. xi. 97 ibid., p. 77.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

37

warn of pregnant women who seduced unsuspecting men into marrying them and thus paying to support another man’s infant. Plays and ballads shared many characteristics. Both combined verse, prose and music, and presented their narratives visually, both in theatre and street performances and in the simple woodcuts which adorned and helped to sell ballads. Both forms traversed oral and written culture and they mingled in the theatre and the street. Ballads were sold at playhouse entrances,98 built on themes in successful plays, and advertised plays to ballad audiences.99 Play characters sang and sold ballads on stage with Autolycus in The Winters Tale and Nightingale in Bartholomew Fair among the performers, while in 1 Henry IV the fretful Falstaff asks Bardolph to ‘Come, sing me a bawdy song’ (III.iii.12). Ballads and plays, though not pamphlets, shared a similar relationship with their audiences. Their performative nature and direct contact encouraged interaction and participation.100 They could invite discussion of touchy subjects such as the influence of the devil, the role of women, or social infiltrators such as beggars and aliens. Both secular theatre and cheap print were new forms and their relatively low price – both ballads and playhouse entry cost one penny – made them accessible and popular.101 Naturally, reformers objected to both forms of entertainment. Clark cites William Lambarde’s reference to ‘pamphletes, Poesies, ditties, songes’ as ‘unprofittable and hurtfull Inglishe bookes’, and Philip Barrough’s writing of ‘ridiculous toyes and absurd pamphlets’.102 Such objections were doubtless fuelled by the fact that ballads were pasted on the walls of houses and taverns and that their illustrations were open to interpretation.103 Images such as that in The Mourning Conquest or The Pittilesse Mother, could appear in the home amongst the everyday, implying that seduction and infant murder were quotidian rather than extraordinary.104 Theatre was similarly vilified and criticised by writers such as John Northbrooke, Phillip Stubbes and Stephen Gosson who variously argued that

98 ———, ‘Economics’, p. 119. 99 Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, p. 32. 100 Watt, Cheap Print, p. 329; Clark, ‘Economics’, p. 119; Waage, ‘Social Themes’, p. 735. 101 Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, p. 30; Clark, Women and Crime, p. 21. 102 ———, Women and Crime, pp. 4–6. 103 Fumerton, ‘Mocking’. 104 The sacrifice of Isaac, with Abraham halted at the moment of execution, appeared frequently in early modern homes. Hamling writes that it ‘occurs more often than any other biblical image; it can be found in all decorative media across most geographical areas and in houses of varying status’. Hamling, Decorating, p. 240.

38 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Image 2: Woodcut from The Mourning Conquest (1674-1679). It shows the shock of images, particularly as removal of the hat was considered carnally suggestive. The illustration appeared in several ballads with banderoles of varying ribaldry. Here the wording implies rape or seduction, but the ballad actually describes male impotence, constructing the man as an object of scorn and emphasising women’s sexual desire. (reproduced by permission of Magdalene College Pepys Library)

it encouraged idleness, challenged ideas about social place, thwarted beliefs about correct apparel, and was not truthful.105 In 1580 Anthony Munday wrote: Al[l] other evils pollute the doers onlie, not the beholders, or the hearers. […] Onlie the filthines of plaies and spectacles is such as maketh both the actors & beholders giltie alike.106

Plays received contempt in their written form as well as in performance. Thomas Bodley banned them from his new Oxford library, categorising them with other ephemera and dismissing them as ‘idle bookes & riffe raffes’.107 Of course, there were also differences between street literature and theatre. Unlike commercial theatre, ballads could be performed by women.108 They continued to thrive during the Commonwealth in printed form, though performance was forbidden.109 Also unlike plays, pamphlets 105 Howard, Stage and Social, pp. 22–46. 106 Munday, Second and third, p. 3. 107 Wheeler, ed. Letters, p. 219. 108 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 77. 109 Rollins, ed. Pepysian Garland, p. ix.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

39

and ballads categorically claimed ‘truth’ though, as Clark points out, this is often dubious.110 Yet, beyond the dominance of the narrative, street literature shows how people lived from day to day, with incidental detail revealing aspects of marriage, women as workers, and neighbourly relationships. Among this everyday detail were tales of murdered infants. They were not great in number, but as Wrightson suggests, we should not expect a correlation between the crime’s frequency and concern about it. Dolan writes of the paucity of representations that it was ‘as if there is not much of a story in it’.111 Clark also notes that ‘only unusual crimes were saleable commodities, and writes that infanticide by single women was ‘all too mundane’. She later adds ‘the indigent unmarried mother who kills her newborn infant […] seems at this time to have no story to be told’.112 Yet each of these women would have had her own tale, perhaps encompassing seduction, rape, or the untimely death of an intended spouse – a story of denial, coping, surviving, unfulfilled promises of help. Instead of tales of unmarried women, writers – who needed their works to sell – were drawn to the more unusual tales of infant murder, such as killings by men or by married women, although in the latter case the death is often merely a starting point for writing of other social wrongs. Narratives of unmarried women committing infanticide do exist in the pamphlets concerning Jane Hattersley, Martha Scambler, and in the ballad No Naturall Mother, as the following chapters will show, but they are rare.113 This lack of narratives is remarkable – another lacuna in the study of infanticide. This research also discusses works in which the narratives approach the subject of infanticide. They include direct threats to infants, as in The Winter’s Tale and Titus Andronicus, and ballads such as The Witty Westerne Lasse in which a woman describes the life she intends to lead after giving birth, but does not mention the fate of her child. In other texts, infanticide exists as a reference or in the imagery so that infant death hovers in the air, beyond the text.

Secondary sources: the role of liminality Some of my secondary sources might be anticipated. These include those related to the law (on marriage, bastardy, punishment), to medicine (the 110 Clark, Women and Crime, p. ix. 111 Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, p. 132. 112 Clark, Women and Crime, pp. ix, 36, 182. 113 Anon, Deeds Against Nature; Brewer, Bloudy Mother; Parker, No Naturall Mother.

40 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

female body, contraception, pregnancy), and to religious beliefs (birthrelated customs, prejudices, ensoulment). The specifics will be discussed at the appropriate point. A less expected source, perhaps, is anthropology, particularly theories of ritual and liminality. These ideas, I believe, can help our understanding of the actions described in historical sources and provide a new perspective on literary sources concerning infanticide. The concept of liminality began to be defined a century ago with the work of social anthropologist Arnold van Gennep.114 Studying small-scale, pre-literate societies he recognised that communities, places and individuals have edges or limits and that the passage from one to another, such as crossing a geographic border or progressing from puberty to adulthood, is frequently marked by ceremony or rites. He identified such rites as acts of separation from a previous world (preliminal rites); rites conducted during a transitional stage (liminal or threshold rites) and ceremonies of incorporation into the new world (postliminal rites). After the publication of his theories, van Gennep’s work fell into obscurity for half a century but was rediscovered by another social anthropologist, Victor Turner, who, like van Gennep, saw liminality as one step in a process.115 Turner considered liminality as any ‘betwixt and between’ situation and as a state, place or condition worthy of study for its own value. Both researchers’ studies of small-scale communities concluded that liminality has defined points of entry and exit; it also has a ‘master of ceremonies’ – a figure who has been through the ritual and can guide the liminal person through it. Turner also ‘tentatively suggested that a liminal state may become “fixed”’.116 In a publication marking the centenary of van Gennep’s far-reaching research, Bjørn Thomassen writes: Turner realised that ‘liminality’ served not only to identify the importance of in-between periods, but also to understand the human reactions to liminal experiences: the way in which personality was shaped by liminality, the sudden foregrounding of agency, and the sometimes dramatic tying together of thought and experience.117

Turner related his findings in small-scale communities to those with large scale structures including Hebrew, Christian, Swiss and court cultures, thus demonstrating the viability of applying the concept of liminality to areas beyond his original focus.118 Introducing the 1977 edition of The Ritual 114 van Gennep, Rites of Passage. 115 Turner, Ritual Process. 116 Thomassen, ‘Uses and Meanings’, p. 15. 117 Ibid., p. 14. 118 Turner, Forest, p. 93.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

41

Process, Turner summarised criticisms of his work for its ‘overgeneralising’ and ‘misapplying concepts’ because concepts found in preliterate societies had ‘limited use in explaining sociocultural systems of much greater scale and complexity’. He stated: This book has been cited repeatedly by scholars in such diverse fields as history, the history of religions, English literature, political science, theology, and drama, as well as in anthropological and sociological books and articles concerned with ritual and semiotics.119

Arpad Szakolczai re-articulates this: The applicability of the term is wide, potentially ‘unlimited’. A claim recently voiced by anthropologists that it should be restricted to the narrow horizon of small-scale tribal societies where it was originally developed is not acceptable. Concepts are tools for research; they cannot be copyrighted by the discipline in which they were developed.120

My research also draws, to a lesser extent, on ideas related to marginality, a separate concept sometimes treated as synonymous with liminality. According to Szakolczai, Michel Foucault ‘was interested in marginality in so far as marginal situations were at one and the same time liminal’.121 Turner treats marginal and liminal as similar.122 Although, the concepts have become clearly distinguished, some inconsistency lingers. Manuel Aguirre et al. write: Although these terms seem to be similar and have on occasion been used interchangeably, ‘liminality’ designates a concept which, unlike ‘marginality’ or ‘marginalisation’, necessarily suggests the existence of a second territory on the other side. A limen is a threshold between two spaces. If a border is viewed as the line, imaginary or real, which separates these two spaces, then the threshold is the opening which permits passage from one space to the other.123

119 ———, Ritual Process, p. vi. 120 Szakolczai, ‘Liminality’, p. 165. For an account of applications and criticisms of Turner’s theories see St. John, ed. Victor Turner. For recent applications of his theories to literature, see Ashley, Victor Turner; Grimes, Readings. 121 Szakolczai, Reflexive, p. 187. 122 Turner, Ritual Process, p. 110. 123 Aguirre, Quance, and Sutton, eds., Margins, p. 6.

42 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

The many aspects of liminality and marginality which are relevant to infanticide in the early modern period will be discussed throughout this book. Sometimes, certain elements of these concepts are not relevant, or apply only in an adapted form. For example, liminality may not be part of a required progression, but a place (mental, physical or social) in which a person can find themselves, and the liminality discussed here may not always have defined entry and exit points. There will sometimes be the ‘master of ceremonies’ who acts as a guide. We also meet ‘trickster’ figures who Szakolczai describes as ‘universal and very archaic’ who ‘can suddenly become dangerous and take over’, in liminal situations. He writes: ‘where certainties are lost, imitative behaviour escalates’ so that these figures ‘can be mistaken for charismatic leaders’.124 We meet them in the shadowy people who appear to encourage or enable infanticide. In summary, this book examines infanticide in early modern England, taking that period’s definition of infant as being up to the age of seven. Using the surviving Coroners’ inquests from a limited geographical area, it identifies micropatterns within the broader demographics of infant killers, and examines what these suggest about the cultural, emotional, and intellectual landscape of those who killed infants. In addition, the research draws on the ballads, pamphlets and plays which were available to people of all social levels and occupations. These two types of source – the historical and the literary – are studied from the perspective of a range of secondary sources including those related to theology, medicine and the and the law, with particular reference to ideas related to liminality and marginality, as described above. Studying the subject in this way has highlighted several points. Firstly, that the actions of the women who killed, which often seem brutal or incomprehensible, can be better understood using these primary and secondary sources. Secondly, that the emphasis on single women as perpetrators of infanticide has disguised the extent to which married women and men were also infant killers. Thirdly, it shows the extent to which others, who may be as substantial as family or as vague as ‘the devil’ were often involved, or believed to have been involved, in the killing of infants. Chapter 2 contextualises infanticide in a brief look at how the crime was treated in continental Europe during the Middle Ages and the early modern period as well as in England during the Middle Ages. It reveals that, while the crime had been committed in diverse societies for centuries, as Christianity took hold in Europe infanticide became regarded with increasing abhorrence, and perpetrators were subjected to appalling punishments. 124 Szakolczai, ‘Liminality’, p. 154.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

43

Chapter 3 draws on works by theologians, lawyers and medical practitioners, supported by archives, drama and popular literature. It demonstrates the effect of the uncertainty about when an infant should be regarded as being part of this world. It continues by showing that practices related to women with child, which included special diets, seclusion, special exercise regimes and ultimately retreat to the company of women, constructed pregnant women as liminal. This was a world from which those who were unwed and secretly pregnant were excluded. The chapter shows that both the newborn infant and its mother were socially constructed to be in a state of liminality or otherness. Chapter 4 shows that changes to marriage laws and confusions about matrimonial customs could place couples in a ‘betwixt and between’ situation so that the woman was neither maid, widow nor wife. The laws which made unmarried women vulnerable to desertion if they became pregnant could easily lead to infanticide. The punishments for ‘fornication’ or bastardy, which included public penance and whipping, both have strong parallels with the rites of passage described by anthropologists and were a public demonstration of the woman’s liminality. As, given the nature of the punishments women would have sought every possible means to avoid pregnancy during courtship, the chapter also examines the extent to which women could hide their liminal state by using contraception and / or abortion, and the availability and effectiveness of the practices available. Chapter 5 demonstrates that laws and customs emphasised the liminality of women who could not be categorised as maids, widows or wives. Fines for those who helped unwed pregnant women, unwilling or hostile attendance in the birth chamber, and the ability to deny birth-related customs such as baptism and churching, reinforced women’s outsider status. One possibility was brazening it out. Women duping unsuspecting men into marriage are frequently represented in diverting ballads. Life as a bastard bearer continued with difficulties as the provision of housing and most work was forbidden. This made prostitution a real possibility. Infanticide thus became one of the options for managing a desperate situation. Pamphlet narratives of women who followed this route described them as monsters and related them to devils, beings who are related to liminal worlds. The next three chapters look beyond the unmarried women who were most commonly accused of infanticide and consider other kinds of perpetrator. Chapter 6 shows that historical records, the accounts in pamphlets, and the fictional narratives in ballads, suggest that communities, through negligence or apathy, enabled the crime to take place. In addition, sources show that

44 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

shadowy accomplices such as family, friends or employers were frequently highly culpable, if not directly responsible, for the deaths of infants. Chapter 7 examines those cases in which married women committed infanticide. The chapter examines their motives, and includes a discussion of the early modern arguments surrounding the rights and wrongs of maternal breastfeeding. It shows that the language and imagery used to describe those who employed wetnurses was similar to that used of women who committed infanticide. Chapter 8 looks at men who killed infants, who are often largely excluded from academic discourse. Sussex archival records include eighteen cases in which men killed infants, or had direct involvement in their deaths. The chapter shows that the archival records, and literary accounts, suggest that when men killed infants they did so violently and bloodily. Chapter 9 is a short Interlude examining infanticide in English literature and culture between 1700 and 1950 and the extent to which the themes in earlier chapters are still evident. Chapter 10 concludes the study by relating the themes of the past to recent years. During this research it became clear the topics discussed in this study still appear in the news, and that they continue to inspire creative writers, such as Edward Bond, Mark Ravenhill and Martin McDonagh, and artists such as Paula Rego. This final chapter therefore concentrates on the idea of continuity by considering newspaper accounts and literary representations from the mid-twentieth century to the present. It shows that, despite the very different social circumstances, religious beliefs and medical knowledge in modern England, the actions and patterns of infant killers, and their representation, remain remarkably similar to those of the early modern period.

Bibliography Primary sources Anon, The Countrey Farmer; Or, The Buxome Virgin (1672–1696) (ESTC R22700033; EBBA 30548; Roxburghe 2.77). ———, The Crost Couple (1674–1679) (ESTC R228173; EBBA 30561; Roxburghe 2.94–95). ———, Deeds Against Nature and Monsters by Kinde (1614) (ESTC S115346). ———, The Knight and the Beggar-Wench (1678–1680) (ESTC R179502; 3.222). ———, Loves Captivity and Liberty (1674–1679) (ESTC R180331; EBBA 21672; 4.5).

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

45

———, A Most Horrible & Detestable Murther (1595) (ESTC 17748). ———, The Norfolk Lass: or, The Maid that was Blown With-Child (1672–1696) (ESTC R227371; EBBA 30804; Roxburghe 2.366). ———, A Pittilesse Mother (1616) (ESTC 24757). ———, The Ranting Whore’s Resolution (1672) (ESTC R182357; EBBA 21149; 3.138). ———, The Wicked Midwife (1640) (ESTC 17915.7). B.S., The Mourning Conquest (1674–1679) (ESTC R172536; EBBA 21151; Pepys 3.139). Blount, Thomas, Glossographia, 1656. Brewer, Thomas, The Bloudy Mother (1609) (ESTC S124650). Bunyan, John, ‘The Life and Death of Mr. Badman’, (1680). Fancy, Peter, The Age and Life of Man (1650–1665?) (ESTC R234250; EBBA 31654; Euing 11). Fortescue, Thomas, The Foreste, 1571. Foulkes, Robert, An alarme for sinners (1679) (ESTC R14395). Hunnisett, R.F., ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1485–1558. Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1985. ———, ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1558–1603. Kew: PRO Publications, 1996. ———, ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1603–1688. Kew: PRO Publications, 1998. Johnstone, Hilda, ed. Churchwarden’s Presentments (17th century) Part 1: Archdeaconry of Chichester. Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1947 / 1948. Ministry of Justice. ‘Murder, manslaughter and infanticide: proposals for reform of the law, Consultation Paper CP19 / 08’. edited by Ministry of Justice, 2008. Munday, Anthony, A second and third blast or retrait from plaies and Theaters, 1580. Ovid, Metamorphoses. Translated by Arthur Golding. Edited by Madeleine Forey. London: Penguin, 2002. Parker, Martin, No Naturall Mother, but a Monster (1634) (ESTC S94604). Peacham, Henry, The Art of Living in London, 1642. Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. A Pepysian Garland: Black-letter Broadside Ballads of the Years 1595–1639. Cambridge: CUP, 1922. Selden, John, Table-talk, being discourses of John Selden Esq 1696. Spenser, Edmund, The Shepheardes Calendar, 1579. Tusser, Thomas, Five Hundreth points of good husbandry, 1573. Wheeler, G.W., ed. Letters of Sir Thomas Bodley to Thomas James, First Keeper of the Bodleian Library. Oxford: Clarendon, 1926.

Secondary sources Aguirre, Manuel, Quance, Roberta, and Sutton, Philip, eds. Margins and Thresholds: An Enquiry into the Concept of Liminality in Text Studies. Madrid: Gateway, 2000. Ariès, Phillippe, Centuries of Childhood. Middlesex: Penguin, 1962.

46 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Ashley, Kathleen M., Victor Turner and the Structure of Literary Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1990. Burrow, J.A., The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. Chew, Samuel C., The Pilgrimage of Life. New Haven: Yale University, 1962. Clark, Sandra, ‘The Economics of Marriage in the Broadside Ballad’, Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 1 (2002), pp. 119–133. ———, Women and Crime in the Street Literature of Early Modern England. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. Cockburn, J.S., ‘The Nature and Incidence of Crime in England 1559–1625’, In Crime in England 1550–1800, edited by J.S. Cockburn, pp. 49–71. London: Methuen, 1997. Crawford, Patricia, Parents of Poor Children in England, 1580–1800. Oxford: OUP, 2010. Cressy, David, Agnes Bowker’s Cat: Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford: OUP, 2009. Damme, Catherine, ‘Infanticide: The worth of an infant under law’, Medical History 22 (1978), pp. 1–24. Davis, Natalie Zemon, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. Dolan, Frances E., Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550–1700. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1994. ———, True Relations: Reading, Literature, and Evidence in Seventeenth-Century England. Philadelphia: PENN, 2013. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Ark, 1966. Eccles, Audrey, Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Croom Helm, 1982. Fissell, Mary E., Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Gaskill, Malcolm, ‘Reporting Murder: Fiction in the Archives in Early Modern England’, Social History 23, no. 1 (1998), pp. 1–30. Gowing, Laura, ‘Bodies and Stories’, In Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women, edited by Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seef, pp. 317–332. London: University of Delaware Press, 2003. ———, ‘Secret Births and Infanticide in Seventeenth-Century England’, Past & Present 156 (1997), pp. 87–115. Griffiths, Paul, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England 1560–1640. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. Grimes, Roland L., Readings in Ritual Studies. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996. Hamling, Tara, Decorating the ‘Godly’ Household: Religious Art in Post-Reformation Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

47

Hanawalt, Barbara, ‘Childrearing among the Lower Classes of Late Medieval England’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8, no. 1 (1977), pp. 1–22. Hanna III, Ralph, ‘Brewing Trouble: On Literature and History – and Alewives’, In Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in FifteenthCentury England, edited by Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace, pp. 1–17. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Healy, Margaret, ‘Dangerous Blood: Menstruation, Medicine and Myth in Early Modern England’, In Flowers, Poisons and Men: Menstruation in Medieval Western Europe, edited by Andrew Shail and Gillian Howie, pp. 83–92. London: UCL Press, 2004. Helmholz, Richard H., ‘Infanticide in the Province of Canterbury During the Fifteenth Century’, History of Childhood Quarterly 8, no. 1 (1975), pp. 379–390. Hendrick, Harry, ‘Children and Childhood’, Recent Findings of Research in Economic & Social History 15 (1992), pp. 1–4. Herrup, Cynthia B., The Common Peace: Participation and the Criminal Law in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: CUP, 1987. Hoffer, Peter C., and Hull, N.E.H., Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England 1558–1803. New York: New York University Press, 1981. Howard, Jean E., The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 1994. ———, Theater of a City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Hunnisett, R.F., The Medieval Coroner. Cambridge: CUP, 1961. ———, ‘The Reliability of Inquisitions as Historical Evidence’, In The Study of Medieval Records, edited by D.A. Bullough and R.L. Storey, pp. 206–234. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971. Kilday, Anne-Marie, A History of Infanticide in Britain, c.1600 to the Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. Malcolmson, R.W., ‘Infanticide in the Eighteenth Century’, In Crime in England 1550–1800, edited by J.S. Cockburn, pp. 187–209. London: Methuen, 1977. Neill, Michael, Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics and Society in English Renaissance Drama. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Pinchbeck, Ivy, and Hewitt, Margaret, Children in English Society From Tudor Times to the Eighteenth Century. 2 vols. Vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. Pollock, Linda A., ‘Childbearing and Female Bonding in Early Modern England’, Social History 22, no. 3 (1997), pp. 286–306. ———, ‘Parent-Child Relations’, In The History of the European Family, edited by David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, pp. 191–220. New Haven: Yale University, 2001. Quaife, G.R., Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives: Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth-Century England. London: Croom Helm, 1979.

48 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Rackin, Phyllis, Shakespeare and Women. Oxford: OUP, 2005. Shahar, Shulamith, Childhood in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 1990. Sharpe, James A., Crime in Early Modern England 1550–1750. London: Longman, 1999. Smith, Carrie, ‘Medieval Coroners’ Rolls: Legal Fiction or Historical Fact?’, In Courts, Counties and The Capital in the Later Middle Ages, edited by Diana E.S. Dunn, pp. 93–115. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996. St. John, Graham, ed. Victor Turner and Contemporary Cultural Perfomance. New York: Berghahn, 2008. Stolberg, Michael, ‘Menstruation and Sexual Difference in Early Modern Medicine’, In Menstruation: A Cultural History, edited by Andrew Shail and Gillian Howie, pp. 90–101. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005. Suarez, Michael F., and Woudhuysen, H.R., eds. Oxford Companion to the Book. Oxford: OUP, 2010. Szakolczai, Arpad, ‘Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009), pp. 141–172. ———, Reflexive Historical Sociology. London: Routledge, 2000. Thomassen, Bjørn, ‘The Uses and Meanings of Liminality’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009), pp. 5–27. Turner, Victor W., The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1970. ———, The Ritual Process. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1977. ———, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. New York: Aldine, 1969. van Gennep, Arnold, The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: Chicago University, 1960. Waage, Frederick O., ‘Social Themes in Urban Broadsides of Renaissance England’, Journal of Popular Culture 11 (1977), pp. 730–742. Walker, Garthine, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. ———, ‘Just Stories: Telling Tales of Infant Death in Early Modern England’, In Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women, edited by Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seef, pp. 98–115. London: University of Delaware Press, 2003. Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640. Cambridge: CUP, 1991. Wilson, Adrian, Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Wiltenburg, Joy, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany. London: University of Virginia Press, 1992. Wrightson, Keith, ‘Infanticide in European History’, Criminal Justice History 3 (1982), pp. 1–20.

Losses, L acunae and Liminalit y

49

On-line sources ‘A true and perfect Relation Of the Tryal and Condemnation, Execution and last Speech of that unfortunate Gentleman Mr. Robert Foulks (1679)’. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ [Accessed 1 July 2014]. ‘English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA)’. ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/pepys [Accessed 20 September 2014]. Fumerton, Patricia. ‘Mocking Aristocratic Place: The Perspective of the Streets’, http://emc.eserver.org/1–7/fumerton.html [Accessed 1 July 2014].

2

European and Medieval Contexts of Infanticide Abstract Infanticide had been committed in diverse societies for centuries with attitudes toward it ranging from tolerance to condemnation and sensational punishments. An edict of 1532 made the crime a capital offence and prompted laws which led to some uniformity across European nations. This criminalisation of infanticide resulted in more reporting, giving the impression of increased frequency, though the hidden nature of the crime means its prevalence cannot be known. In the arts, infanticide was represented in oral traditions of storytelling, classical texts, and the biblical story of the massacre of the innocents, including its performance in churches. Increased awareness of domestic infanticide provided a riveting subject for popular literature and was described in German and English ballads, and occasionell in France. Keywords: Frequency of infant murder; Overlaying and infant death; Laws regarding infanticide; Punishment; Literary representations

Hast thou also by hyre I-layn, And so by-twene you the chylde I-slayn?1

Infanticide in England did not take place in a temporal or geographical vacuum but was connected to laws and developments in other times and other countries. This chapter therefore looks back at other centuries, and beyond at other places, to put the crime in context. It sets out attitudes in continental Europe in both the Middle Ages and the early modern period and looks at the crime in medieval England. A chapter which touches on locations as northern as Iceland and as southern as Rome, and a 2000–year 1

Peacock, ed. Myrc’s Instructions.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch02

52 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

period of history, inevitably can only skim the surface. However, it does give an indication of the variations and commonalities in attitudes toward infanticide.

Infanticide in medieval Europe In medieval Europe, the church and civil authorities avoided unwanted intrusion into family control, including the ways in which married couples sought to manage the size of their families.2 They felt able to accept the idea that some women avoided childbirth by abortion, a subject which is closely linked to infanticide, although the topic was debated. Arguments revolved around questions of when the unborn foetus became a person, its ability to survive outside the womb, the existence of the soul, when it first moved, and the number of days since conception – all questions which continued to be asked in the early modern period and are considered in more detail in Chapter 3. In Germanic and Celtic countries, as well as England, abortion was regarded as a form of theft so that, while there was compensation if a miscarriage was caused by a third person, a woman could abort herself as she was only robbing herself. As a practice which left little evidence, it is hard to assess the extent to which people used this method of controlling family size although John Riddle, who has studied the subject in detail, writes that its use was the reason for small family sizes in antiquity and the medieval world.3 Infanticide was more severely judged, although Margaret Brannan Lewis writes that if it was committed immediately after birth it was, like other means of family limitation, considered a family matter. 4 Yet there were, unquestionably, also strong objections. Keith Wrightson’s research into infanticide in Europe reveals that between 315 and 451 CE Christian emperors condemned it in eleven edicts.5 Similarly, René Leboutte, whose research focuses principally on Belgium, writes that in western Europe from the end of the fourth century, the Catholic church ‘supported societal disapproval’ and required the death penalty for those found guilty of the crime.6 Penalties for infant murder were included in Germanic and Hispanic 2 Lewis, Infanticide, p. 17. 3 Riddle, Eve’s Herbs, p. 18. 4 Lewis, Infanticide. Lewis is citing Müller, Criminalization. 5 Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in European’. 6 Leboutte, ‘Offense’.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

53

law codes during the sixth and seventh centuries as well as in Salic law, and were the result, Wrightson suggests, of the determination of the early Christian church to stamp out elements of ‘tenacious paganism’.7 This is a viewpoint investigated by Juha Pentikäinen, who studies the changing attitudes to infant abandonment in Nordic countries as evidence of the advancement of Christianity around the year 1000. He reports some staggering findings.8 For example, in Iceland, where infant abandonment was accepted, the law which enforced conversion to Christianity and baptism allowed it to continue, along with the eating of horsemeat. Both decisions were reversed within a generation. Across the Nordic countries there were naturally national variations in approach but broadly, infanticide by abandonment appears to have been condoned in the cases of female or sickly infants. In the case of ‘deformed’ infants, in Norway there were detailed descriptions of the deformities and the right to survive. The schedule included the statement: If the child is born covered with hair and it has no human head and no human voice the priest should be allowed to baptize it if he wants and a grave should be dug in the church yard and the child put there and a gravestone on top, carefully so that dogs or ravens cannot get there. And let no earth be dropped (into the grave) before the child has died, and let it live as long as it is able.9

In contrast, in Iceland it was stated that a child must be baptized if born with eyes in its head while in Sweden and Denmark the law (1350s) states that every child must be fed. Those to be abandoned were to be carried to the church and left in front of the church door or in the churchyard. No violence against the child was allowed. Across Scandinavia, acceptance of an infant into society by naming, baptism and breastfeeding could all move infanticide from an accepted practice to murder.10 In an area where attitudes to new life were clearly ambivalent, punishments were correspondingly mild and included fines, confiscation of property and, interestingly, forfeiture of ‘peace’. Later Swedish common laws from the mid-twelfth century state that ‘If a man or woman kills or murders on purpose his or her child, pagan or 7 Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in European’. 8 Pentikäinen, ‘Child Abandonment’. It has been pointed out that while abandonment might not equate with infanticide in southern climates, an infant would have been less likely to survive in the harsh conditions of the north. Wicker, ‘Selective Female Infanticide’. 9 Cited in Pentikäinen, Nordic Dead Child, p. 80. 10 ———, ‘Child Abandonment’, p. 79.

54 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Christian […] the man must be broken on the wheel and the woman stoned when all has been revealed’.11 As Nancy L. Wicker states: ‘The Scandinavian written sources reflect a hybrid world where a veneer of moralizing teachings of the church met long-standing local tradition head-on’.12 It seems probable that Scandinavia was not the only area where this occurred. Therefore, while early edicts and laws stipulated one attitude toward infanticide, another may have been practised and, rather than being rare as some scholars suggest, the crime may simply not have been recorded. The extremes of poverty and scarcity in some areas of Europe, and the ease with which both the crime and the incriminating evidence could be concealed, make this a real possibility. Claims such as stillbirth, or death by overlaying – falling asleep when nursing the child and smothering it – were easily made. Parents could also make a more determined effort to dispose of an unwanted child by sending it to a wetnurse who was suspected of being unlikely to care for it. Yet the likelihood of this has been questioned by writers such as Shulamith Shahar who points out that, as rearing healthy children was the wetnurse’s livelihood, she would have been unlikely to want them to die.13 Some medieval customs and folkloric beliefs also appear to be disguised infanticide, such as placing a feverish child on the roof or in a pit in the ground. If the parents suspected that their infant was a changeling – and one possible sign of this was its incessant crying – it needed to be tormented, in a manner which sounds close to torture, with beating, scalding or near burning to encourage the fairies to take it away. Alternatively, infants might be abandoned at the estuary of three rivers or a place where three roads crossed, with the mother returning to it when it began to cry, hoping it had been exchanged with a human child. Shahar states that these, and other methods, would ‘almost without exception, lead to the death of the child’.14 Some cases of infanticide in medieval Europe did, however, reach the attention of the authorities. Leboutte, for example, writes of a woman in Namur, Belgium, who was sentenced for the crime,15 and other cases have been discovered by Natalie Zemon Davis during her examination of fourteenth and fifteenth century appellants to the Parlement of Paris. Davis finds that some women admitted to killing their infants and stated that 11 ———, Nordic Dead Child, p. 95. 12 Wicker, ‘Selective Female Infanticide’, p. 208. 13 Shahar, Childhood. 14 ibid. 15 Leboutte, ‘Offense’.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

55

they had done it because they were afraid of the consequences of giving birth while unmarried.16 They were pardoned after expressing sorrow and repentance and asserting that the infants had been baptized. Other support for the existence of infanticide comes from discrepancies in the male / female ratio in baptismal records. These indicate that peasant families practiced ‘selective infanticide’, a pattern which becomes clearer as the registration of births became more effective. Further, Shahar suggests that the opening of foundling homes, which began in the seventh and eighth centuries, is also an indication that infanticide did exist because the purpose of the homes was to reduce it. This was said to have been the reason for the setting up of the Hospital of Santo Spirito, the twelfth century foundling home which was built after Pope Innocent III was said to have been moved by the fact that: ‘Roman children were being killed and then tossed into the Tiber by their mothers’.17 Although the hospital was in fact set up as a ‘multifunctional charitable institution’, its fresco cycle (1476–1478) depicts infanticides in Rome and includes an image of infants’ swaddled bodies, weighted with stone, being thrown into the Tiber. The image, and another of an infant with its brains being dashed out, reflects the horror which was felt toward infanticide. While there were inevitably national and regional variations, insofar as it is possible to identify a pattern which can be applied throughout medieval Europe, it appears that both direct and indirect infanticide existed, aided by folkloric beliefs, local customs, high infant mortality from natural causes, and the ease with which a child could be overlain. Although the church disapproved, and sought to deal with it both by preventative measures and harsh punitive measures for those who did kill their infants, the laity recognised that killing a newborn could be a pragmatic way to avoid personal or financial tragedy and could save a family from starvation. The observation made by Peter C. Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull about Tudor and Stuart England, must apply equally to medieval Europe: Poverty was endemic […] and the resulting exhaustion, starvation and exposure were real threats to adult as well as child life […] For the overburdened cottager family with perhaps one too many offspring already, infanticide might have seemed a matter of survival.18

16 Davis, Fiction, p. 85. 17 Damme, ‘Infanticide’; Presciutti, ‘Dead Infants’. 18 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 115.

56 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Infanticide in early modern Europe A significant change across much of Europe came with the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina (1532), the law code of the Holy Roman Empire, which sought to unify laws in the Empire’s various nation states, and which declared that infanticide and abortion were capital offences. As a capital offence, the punishment for infanticide was not just death, but a terrible one, reflecting the abhorrence that was felt toward the crime after the edict. The guilty could be buried alive, then dug up to be impaled, torn with burning pincers and then drowned.19 Joy Wiltenburg, who discusses ballad representations of some particularly shocking cases of infanticide (considered below), writes that the guilty women received punishments which were ‘as ghastly as their crimes’, such as having both breasts torn with pincers, and having both hands cut off.20 Similarly, Manon van der Heijden, writing of crime in early modern Holland, states that the usual punishment for infanticide was garrotting, but in some Dutch towns the perpetrator also had one of their hands cut off.21 If the death penalty was demanded but not carried out, the woman could be put on display under the gallows with a noose around her neck, or she might be exhibited holding a doll as a reference to her crime. In the Venetian Republic which, like other Italian states, was not part of the Holy Roman Empire, the punishment was death or exile although, as Joanne M. Ferraro writes, the sentences were rarely carried out, possibly because hiding the evidence of unwed pregnancy and infanticide was tangled with ideas of female and family honour.22 However, even before the Carolina, when infanticide was thought to be rare, the punishments were horrific. The Namur woman mentioned above was burned alive outside the city and Adriano Prosperi cites cases of guilty women being forced to wear the infant corpse, or an effigy of it, around their neck as they walked to the scaffold.23 The sentence suggests that the newborns did not deserve the ritual and respect of an older child, and may be an indication that the infants had not been baptized, yet it strangely links the mother and her child in this fearsome walk of death. The treatment of those found guilty of infanticide was clearly brutal. The physically and emotionally sadistic nature of the punishments suggests that courts were not only punishing the women, but 19 Lewis, Infanticide, p. 24. 20 Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, p. 238. 21 Heijden, Women and Crime, p. 52. 22 Ferraro, Nefarious Crimes, p. 13. 23 Prosperi, Infanticide, p. 60.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

57

ensuring that the horrific and highly public ends to their lives served as a deterrent to others. The bodily nature of their sentences – amputation, use of pincers – was a violation of a body which was considered corrupt. This is particularly true when the breasts are torn, an action which indicates defiling the femininity of a woman who, through her corrupt nature and unmotherly act, had betrayed her gender. The Carolina also declared that there was just one motive for infanticide: the crime was committed by unwed mothers because they sought to hide their shame. The authorities could not envisage why a married woman might want to kill her infant and men were overlooked as possible suspects, though in both cases the situation could change if extreme violence was used. An unwed mother, on the other hand, was an easy target for the governments’ perceived need to enforce stricter morals since the visibility of her pregnancy announced her moral lapse and made her an easy target for disapproval. She became a figure who should be reviled, not only because her sexual activity threatened the cohesion of the family, but also because she and her child would become an economic burden on the community. As a result, it was considered right that a woman who bore a child outside marriage should be dealt with by whipping or banishment. She was, in effect, considered guilty even before she had committed any criminal act. The Carolina prompted a series of laws during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries including in Denmark, the Dutch Republic, England, France, most of the German states, Lithuania, Russia, Scotland, and Sweden.24 Essentially, they all followed the same precepts in assuming who the culprits were, and treating the crime as murder. As marital status was considered an important element in infanticide cases, secrecy became an essential factor in assessing guilt after the Carolina. If an unmarried woman had concealed her pregnancy but there was no living infant, she was automatically suspect. Her body could be examined for recent birth and if the evidence was found and she continued to deny that she had killed the infant, the Carolina stipulated that she could be tortured. In France, a Royal edict of 1556 required all unmarried women to make an official declaration if they became pregnant. If the infant died before baptism and such a declaration had not been made, the woman was automatically assumed to have killed the child even if there were no further evidence.25 In early modern Holland, all sexuality outside marriage was criminalized as ‘carnal intercourse’

24 Ruff, Violence, p. 152. 25 Wiesner, Women and Gender, p. 52.

58 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

and could lead to banishment, while in some towns those who reported infanticide received a monetary reward.26 In her defence, the woman had few options. One was to assert that she had been raped, though women seldom made this claim, possibly because of early modern medical beliefs about orgasm and conception. Any suggestion of enjoyment would negate the woman’s assertion that she had been unwilling. A claim of rape would have helped to put the man centre-stage in today’s discussions of early modern infanticide and other related areas. Instead, the men who fathered the infants for which the women were fated to die are constantly in the shadows, although the present research will seek to draw them into the spotlight. Another possible defence was for the woman to say that the crime had been prompted by the devil, though Lewis states that magistrates were generally not impressed by this excuse.27 Nevertheless, some did resort to such an explanation. Perhaps, after the months of hidden pregnancy followed by the fear and confusion of giving birth alone, some women genuinely did think that they were acting on the instructions of this evil force. It would have been easy enough for them to believe at a time when the devil was considered to be constantly lurking amongst people, and able to take many disguises. Lyndal Roper cites the case of Appolonia Mayr from Friedberg, a small town near Frankfurt. When accused of infanticide in 1686 she said that she had been abandoned by her lover, but the devil had told her that if she killed her child her lover would marry her. After the child was born easily because ‘the devil touched it as if he were a midwife’, she strangled her newborn and abandoned it, just as she had been abandoned, and without attempting to hide the body.28 The simple pathos of her statement and the naivety of her actions suggests the innocent nature of this desperate women, despite the crime to which she was admitting. A third option was to rely on the secrecy and help of neighbours. According to research by Joanne M. Ferraro, this was a real possibility in the Republic of Venice.29 In the Republic, both the church and the state wanted to control female sexual activity. For the church it was part of the general anxiety about women and the corrupting power which they exercised through their sexuality. The state wanted to protect families’ honour and fortunes, and were aware that only the woman could be certain who had fathered 26 Heijden, Women and Crime, pp. 56, 52. 27 Lewis, Infanticide, p. 64. 28 Roper, Oedipus, p. viii. 29 Ferraro, Nefarious Crimes.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

59

her child, which made false claims of paternity possible. However, these concerns may have had advantages for women as a number of measures were introduced which afforded them some protection from seducers, including charitable institutions for girls who were considered to be at risk. There was also the possibility of bringing lawsuits against seducers, and compensation for women who were seduced on the basis of false promises, though this only applied within the context of engagement and marriage. Matters were different lower down the social scale and unmarried pregnant servants were evicted and left to cope as best they could. Those who managed to survive pregnancy and childbirth could take advantage of the ‘baby hatch’, a safe place in the wall of the foundling home, where unwanted infants could be abandoned. These had been introduced in Italy and elsewhere from the end of the twelfth century. In the Venetian Republic, people also gave assistance. Ferraro examines in detail a number of cases in Venice and shows that when a woman committed infanticide, rather than reporting the crime, people decided for themselves who should be denounced and who should be helped. She shows that a little money, an escape route, and neighbours’ reticence during questioning enabled guilty women to take the first steps toward safety. What happened thereafter was down to their own resourcefulness and good fortune. Why were people in the Venetian Republic willing to help women who had killed their newborn infants? Partially, it may have been because they did not believe that a woman should bear the sole responsibility for a crime which the man had helped to initiate. Or, perhaps they considered the punishment was too severe and at odds with Christian doctrines of charity and forgiveness. The long-established teachings of the Church and the belief that God was the ultimate arbiter when deciding matters of right and wrong, appears to have overcome the edicts of the state. This brief overview gives an impression of the attitudes toward infanticide in medieval and early modern Europe. From a situation where evidence for the crime is sketchy, recorded instances of it escalated in the records and, officially, those who were considered guilty of infanticide became among society’s most reviled and cruelly punished criminals. Yet there were, as we have seen, exceptions. In early Christian Scandinavia the crime, in the form of abandonment, was condoned or at worst lightly punished, while in Venice specific community action may not have coincided with the official view. Those guilty of the crime were clearly defined, as was their motive: unmarried women who sought to hide their shame. Infanticide by married women and couples was seen differently, partially because the authorities appear to have been unable to imagine why someone with a spouse might

60 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

kill their child. But infanticide also seems to have been tolerated by some of the communities where it took place. People appear to have recognised it as a sad necessity because, in times of extreme poverty and scarcity, one more child could threaten the survival of the whole family. Given community complicity, infanticide was easily concealed or passed off as a tragic accident. The introduction of a severe law against a crime which appears to have existed for centuries invites the questions: Why this law? Why now? Why did the authorities make the assumptions they did? Pulling together the threads of the areas discussed above, the overarching impression is that, in much of Europe, for church and state authorities, infanticide was a convenient crime. At a time when religions had become fractured, infanticide was an area where some agreement was possible. Emphasising that it was the most heinous of crimes and linking it to unwed motherhood was convenient because it suited the Catholic church’s long-held anxiety about sexual activity. As William Naphy writes, Catholic theologians were ‘enthusiastic about the supremacy of celibacy and exalted it’ but being ‘aware of the problems’ settled for sex within marriage as second best.30 Within the Protestant church, the ideal was chastity, or fidelity within marriage. The identified infanticidal perpetrator fell foul of both groups. The authorities’ stipulation of this particular culprit also allowed the church and state to feed off existing moral indignation because, no matter how much people were inclined to help individuals, there were some irrefutable rights and wrongs about infanticide. No-one could argue against the innocence of the victims who could clearly not be considered to have contributed to their own demise. Nor, within Catholic faith, was there any question but that the murdered infants, if unbaptized, would be eternally damned or condemned to Limbo. Nor was there any denying that a mother who murdered her infant had severed the natural bond between mother and child at a time when motherhood was considered the primary role for which women were created. And there was little denying that most of the women who bore infants outside wedlock would prove to be a drain on the resources of the community. In establishing a clearly defined demographic profile of the killers the authorities chose a criminal who could be easily identified. A woman who was unmarried, pregnant, told no-one about her pregnancy, and had no living child as evidence in her defence, was clearly a killer. However, while there is no doubt that most killers did fit the ‘profile’, the determination to focus on this one perpetrator meant that all other killers – married women, 30 Naphy, Sex Crimes, p. 13.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

61

midwives, men – were largely overlooked. It also meant that an unwed woman who had kept her pregnancy secret but was innocent, having had the misfortune of a stillbirth, was liable to be put to death. Drawing attention to incidents of infanticide was also convenient because it enabled law makers to exploit existing social fear of the ‘other’. This included witchcraft, the only other offence for which women were so consistently convicted.31 A connection between the crimes was easily constructed because it was thought that ‘only women in league with the devil could have committed it [infanticide]’.32 Strident attitudes to the crime, as Wrightson suggests, had ‘a special symbolic significance in the struggle between the Church and a tenacious paganism’. He adds: ‘hostility to infanticide, like the rejection of pagan sorcery, became essential to differentiating Christian from pagan’.33 This included Jews who, thanks to ‘blood libel’ stories going back to the twelfth century, were widely held to kill Christian children, some of whom became venerated in the Christian church.34 However, when looking for a crime where the innocence of the victim was unquestionable and the guilt of the perpetrator easily assumed, infanticide was not perfect. Principally this was because infant bodies were easily disposed of, whether by burial or similar methods, or by exposure in the knowledge that the body would be taken by wild animals. This turned the focus on the woman’s body. Once a woman was suspected of infanticide, her body became the site of interrogation, a galling experience at a time when the body was a highly private domain. As Laura Gowing writes: ‘For women, and perhaps particularly for single women, not being able to talk about sexuality or the body could stand as evidence of chastity and virtue’.35 In an environment in which the female body was not spoken of among peer groups, a suspected woman’s body could be examined, touched and discussed by strangers, and then presented as evidence in court while, if she had indeed been pregnant, the man responsible remained invisible. The hardening of attitudes prompted by the Carolina appears to have had three effects. First, as was intended, it prompted a flurry of laws about infanticide across Europe. Second, it led to more reporting of the crime and hence created the impression that it suddenly appeared from nowhere, reinforcing the Carolina’s belief that it was a growing problem which was 31 Ruff, Violence, p. 152. 32 ibid., p. 153. 33 Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in European’, p. 4. 34 Laqueur, Changing Face, p. 56. 35 Gowing, ‘Bodies and Stories’.

62 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

indicative of the empire’s moral crisis. And, of course, the more the crime was reported and people’s awareness and disapproval were fanned, the more likely people were to bring the authorities’ attention to it. The law certainly led to the conviction and death of many women, some of whom were almost certainly innocent. Third, the edicts and strict punishments may have had a literary effect as well as an historic one, as the following section shows.

Representations of infanticide in Europe People have always told stories about infant death. Within Christian Europe, tales of abandonment existed in Scandinavian sagas from the tenth century as discussed in Pentikäinen’s study of Nordic dead child traditions, which shows that both legends and belief in dead child beings were part of the culture in different parts of the area. In many countries infanticide, or its threat, was familiar as a literary topic through classical texts such as Euripides’ account of Medea’s murder of her children to punish her husband for taking a new wife. The story was retold in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as was Procne’s murder of Itys who was born as the result of Procne’s husband’s adultery with her sister. In The Decameron (1353), Boccaccio retold the story of Griselda’s demonstration of wifely obedience by accepting her husband’s murder of their of children (which is subsequently revealed to have been merely a test of her subservience when the live children are presented to her). Such stories would principally have been familiar to elite and literate people. More widely known were biblical accounts, such as God requiring Abraham to kill his son which was told in many religious processions in Europe. As in the story of Griselda’s children, the biblical account concerns infanticide or child murder carried out as a sign of obedience to a higher power and involved a killing which was not carried out. The best known and most widely represented narrative of biblical infant death was the Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2.16–18), which was frequently represented in places of worship. Perhaps more memorably, the Massacre was staged in churches from the eleventh century in non-naturalistic enactments of Latin texts which emphasised the Christian message of redemption. These performances evolved into works which juxtaposed exciting violence and lamenting mothers and took place in many European countries including France, Germany and Italy. Such visual representations and enactments would have been more widely accessible than the written narratives of Medea and Griselda. However, these representations were far removed from

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

63

the ordinary people who killed infants because they felt they threatened their social or financial survival. Domestic infanticides provided a riveting subject for popular literature such as ballads and pamphlets. In Italy the subject appeared in collections of folk tales, and is connected with royalty. The story of Doralice deals with the murder of her two children by her incestuously jealous father, and his attempt to blame her for the crime, while the later Sun Moon and Talia is an early telling of The Sleeping Beauty, in which Talia’s infants are only saved by the cook who cannot bear to slaughter and cook them.36 In both Germany and France, as well as in England, there are surviving examples of this type of literature describing the murder of infants by their mothers and other killers. In general, these literatures, rather than describing the crime as it was set down in the law, concentrated instead on sensational examples. As Joy Wiltenburg points out, this was particularly true in Germany where all types of murder were carried out more violently than in England, and often involved multiple deaths. She quotes a ballad from 1626 which concerns Catharina of Limburg who killed her seven infants and is described by the author as ‘pitiless and deliberately cruel’.37 The author writes that, to kill her fifth child she: Went into the privy Threw the child in with all her might, With anger and with fury;

Another ballad tells of an unmarried woman whose suspected pregnancy is reported to her father. She denies that the accusation is true but: Soon as the child this world did see She struck it dead against a tree And cut it up in pieces: To little bits like common fish; […] No pity did she show.

She subsequently kills her father with a hatchet while he is sleeping. In France, a canard or occasionnel was a form of popular, cheap literature similar to the English pamphlets discussed in the current study, although published in the form of a chapbook rather than as a single sheet. As with 36 Straparola, Le Piacevoli Notti; Basile, Il Pentamerone. 37 Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, p. 237.

64 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

English street literature, they were written to appear true by emphasising concrete details about the central figure, places, and direct citations from eyewitnesses.38 A favourite subject was the mother who murdered her child. One of these, Discours miraculeux et véritable, tells the story of Anne Belthumier who was accused of infanticide in 1589.39 We are told that Anne was in service at a house where the daughter of the family became pregnant and, encouraged by the devil, suffocated her newborn before claiming to her parents that it was, in fact, Anne’s infant. Found guilty of the crime, for which she was tried within an hour of her arrest, Anne prayed fervently before being hanged and left on the gallows where, three days later, it was noticed that she was still alive and she was rescued. Anne Belthumier’s story ends by warning of the danger of assuming who had committed infanticide merely because they fitted the assumption of the usual infant killer. Discours miraculeux was printed twice within the year with possibly a total of five thousand copies being produced. It, and the German examples quoted above, attest to an interest in remarkable cases of infanticide – Roger Chartier cites two other works in which extreme poverty drives women, one of them married and the other a widow, to kill their infants. Such works kept the possibility of infanticide within the consciousness of ordinary citizens. The stories they tell of out-of-control daughters were a warning to all, and reinforced the impression that, because women’s weakness made them vulnerable to the temptations of the devil, they were all potential child-killers. Thus, creative writers encouraged a culture of watchfulness and suspicion. Ultimately, despite the convenience of infanticide as a focus for legislation, and the moral indignation it could sometimes induce, the edict was a double failure. The severity of the punishments became self-defeating and created a vicious circle – the dreadful punishments led to more secrecy, which culminated in infanticide as a desperate necessity, which in turn made people more aware of the crime. The strident attitudes to infanticide helped to increase not only awareness of the crime, but the crime itself, thus encouraging the very deed it sought to control. In addition, it appears that people were increasingly reluctant to report suspected incidents of the crime, partially because they did not agree with a system which placed sole responsibility for it with the woman, and also because they did not believe that women should be subjected to such mental and physical torment for a crime which poverty and hardship made easy to understand. As a result, with time, prosecutions for infanticide fell. 38 Chartier, ed. The Culture of Print, p. 61. 39 The occasionnel is discussed in ———, ‘The Hanged Woman’.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

65

Infanticide in medieval England According to the twelfth-century monk Benedict of Peterborough, who wrote an account of the miracles of Thomas Becket, a woman from Cologne who was ‘possessed of the devil’ was brought to the dead saint’s tomb in Canterbury Cathedral where she ‘raved for some four or five hours’ before she was healed by the martyr. When her frenzy calmed, her speech became intelligible and she explained how she had become insane. Her brother had killed a young man who loved her dearly and ‘in a fit of madness’ she had struck her baby son with her fist and the infant, who had been baptized the previous day, was ‘removed […] from this world’. 40 Benedict reports that Becket told the woman, who has become known as ‘Mad Matilda’, that she would be absolved if she went on a pilgrimage. There is no indication here of an unmarried woman being chastised for a pre-marital sexual liaison, or that unwed pregnancy was a crime, or that if she killed her child she should be tortured until she confessed, and then put to a terrible death. 41 Instead, in its understanding of the extreme acts which can result from intense grief, the suggested representation of a woman’s post-partum mental state, and its promotion of forgiveness, Mad Matilda’s story suggests a very modern sensibility. As well as in the account of Benedict’s record of the Saint’s miracles, the event is recorded in three panels of an early thirteenth century stained glass window in the cathedral, where it was a visual guide for pilgrims approaching Becket’s tomb, informing them about what they might expect. It also suggested to generations of pilgrims that killing an infant might be pardoned – a message that would be carried throughout the country when the pilgrims returned to their homes. In medieval England, infanticide was a crime which came under the jurisdiction of the church courts which were responsible for supervising family morality. They did not have the power to pass the death penalty, which was the prerogative of the royal courts, but instead required penances. In the early years of Christianity penances for infanticide included, for example, a year on bread and water plus two years without meat or wine if the child was overlain.42 Attitudes which recur in later periods were already visible in 40 Benedict of Peterborough, ‘Miracola’. Translated by Dr. Gerald Colson. Personal communication. 41 The fact that neither a husband nor adultery is mentioned, and the prominence of the brother in a punishment/revenge role, implies that Matilda was unmarried. 42 Kellum, ‘Infanticide’.

66 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

these early centuries. It was thought that there was a difference between a poor person killing an infant because of the difficultly of supporting it, and an unwed woman seeking to conceal her perceived wickedness. As infants were the mother’s domain, the crime was placed firmly in the woman’s sphere. Barabara Kellum writes that if a woman placed a child near a pan of scalding water but it was a man caused it to be spilled and the infant scalded to death, she was to do penance, not the man. 43 These punishments clearly indicate awareness that infanticide existed, but there is a paucity of archival records of such cases. Where it has been investigated, researchers have arrived at conflicting conclusions regarding its frequency. In his important study of the crime in the province of Canterbury during the fifteenth century, 44 Richard H. Helmholz states that its existence in later medieval England was ‘beyond doubt’, 45 while Catherine Damme writes: ‘That infanticide did occur frequently in medieval England is beyond dispute’.46 Yet, Barbara Hanawalt’s very similar research, found that the incidence of recorded infanticide was ‘extraordinarily low’47 according to the Coroners’ rolls she examined, 48 and suggests that this might have been because children were valued as future potential labour, and that the high infant mortality rate made it unnecessary. An alternative explanation, as Hanawalt puts forward, is that infanticide may have taken place but have left no legal record either because it was accepted and therefore ignored, or because it was disguised as an accident. Another possibility is that the crime never came to light because, as we have already seen, infant corpses were easy to dispose of compared to those of other murder victims. Intentional overlaying continued to preoccupy the church. During the thirteenth century, the church returned repeatedly to the possibility of an infant being killed in this way. In little more than a dozen years, they issued five statutes and made fifteen other references to the custom of taking an infant into the matrimonial bed. 49 Overlaying was, according to 43 ibid., p. 370. 44 The province covered the south of England and Wales, and the majority of the English population at the time. 45 Helmholz, ‘Infanticide’. 46 Damme, ‘Infanticide’. 47 Hanawalt, ‘Childrearing’. (Hanawalt examined fourteenth and fifteenth century Coroners’ rolls for London, Oxford, Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire). 48 ———, ‘Violent Death’. (Hanawalt studied almost 3,000 homicide cases from 1300 to 1348 and found only one case, and two suspicious infant deaths). 49 Damme, ‘Infanticide’, p. 3.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

67

Helmholz, the most common method of infanticide.50 It was hard to prove and, as Sara M. Butler suggests, this has led to some researchers concluding that the practice led to accidental death becoming a ‘polite fiction’ within communities.51 As infanticide appears always to have been considered a woman’s crime, it is unsurprising that all these pronouncements were addressed to women, but men did not escape notice. John Myrc’s poem (c. 1450) which gives ‘directions how priests with little book-learning or experience were to teach the faith of their flocks’ includes a long series of questions for them to ask.52 Among those for husbands is: Hast thou also by hyre I-layn, And so by-twene you the chylde I-slayn?

It seems that wives were addressed by the church’s statutes, but husbands were expected to report on their subsequent actions, a requirement which must have invited suspicion and deceit within marriage. Despite the pronouncements, it is unclear how seriously the church took death by overlaying. The fact that Myrc grouped these semi-accidental, semi-intentional deaths with sins such as failing to offer hospitality or to chastise children, implies that overlaying was not considered deplorable. Helmholz writes that such deaths were treated as carelessness or neglect which, while it did not absolve the parent of responsibility, did result in a lesser penance.53 Even when the death was believed to be intentional, poverty could mitigate the parents’ actions as infanticide could be seen as necessary for survival and, according to Kellum, the courts did not make much effort in such cases.54 This last point has been refuted by Butler who finds that Church courts appear to have been conscientious in their attempts to uncover the truth and cites several cases where this happened.55 This, and the fact that some women fled after overlaying a child is, she argues, evidence that they expected the death to be treated as a crime. While these researchers arrive at different conclusions, the underlying issue is that the church saw infanticide as a crime which could, and probably did, take place within marriage. It was normally the woman who 50 Scalding and refusing to nurse were also common, ibid., pp. 3–4. Such deaths could be passed off as accidents or ill health. 51 Butler, ‘Case of Indifference’. 52 Peacock, ed. Myrc’s Instructions. 53 Helmholz, ‘Infanticide’, p. 381. 54 Damme, ‘Infanticide’, pp. 5–6. Kellum, ‘Infanticide’. 55 Butler, ‘Case of Indifference’, p. 63.

68 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

was charged and, as well as poverty, insanity was also a plausible plea because, as we have seen elsewhere, it was considered that no sane, married woman would murder her infant.56 In reality, there appear to have been other motives – Damme mentions promiscuity, bigamy, secret marriages, and controversies over inheritance. Infants could be thought to be in the power of the devil, or to be changelings. Early (1948) research by Josiah Russell, which is considered innovative for its time, examined a range of sources and noted discrepancies in the male / female birth ratios among both heirs and serfs. The assumption is that daughters were of little use in the primarily agricultural and military societies of the middle ages. They also required a dowry.57 This brutal reality was expressed by Ovid. The yeoman Lyctus, whose ‘stocke was simple, and his welth according too the same’ hopes that his pregnant wife will have a son because ‘For girls to bring them up a greater cost do crave / And I have no ability’.58 He adds that, if she has a daughter: Although ageinst my will, I charge it streyght destroyed bée. The bond of nature néedes must beare in this behalf with mée.

The early emphasis on overlaying implies that infanticide was seen as a married person’s crime, rather than a crime committed by unwed women. Butler however writes that the majority of killings were by unmarried women, prompted by desperation, poverty, fear of the ensuing censure and deprecation, and the pain and shaming effect of penance.59 However, Butler’s argument hangs on the fact that sixteen of the twenty-eight cases she studied do not state the marital status of the accused. The lack of archival focus on this point suggests that, if they were unmarried, the fact was not considered particularly relevant, and is in contrast to the sixteenth and seventeenth century Sussex cases considered in this study, in which the clerks appear to have been meticulous about recording when the accused was a ‘spinster’. Certainly, unwed mothers comprise the majority of the cases that appear in the archives for early modern England. Ultimately, we cannot know how frequent infanticide was in medieval England. Given the lack of a law which clarified the situation, people may have been uncertain whether an indictment was possible with the result that 56 Damme, ‘Infanticide’, p. 9. 57 The point is refuted by Butler, but this is based on a sample in which half of the cases did not specify gender. Butler, ‘Case of Indifference’. 58 Ovid, Metamorphoses, p. 289. 59 Butler, ‘Case of Indifference’. Butler looks at over 130 cases involving 144 victims from late 13th to early 16th century

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

69

many such deaths may never have been reported, particularly as someone needed to care enough to act on their suspicions, despite the potential ramifications of such an accusation within the small rural communities which made up most of the country. As a result, attitudes to infanticide in medieval England appear ambivalent. High infant mortality meant that the death of a newborn, even if suspicious, may have appeared insufficient reason to disturb the equanimity of a community, particularly where it was believed that the death of one newborn could save a whole family from destitution. People may have been reluctantly pragmatic about its necessity and condoned it with understanding. On the other hand, it may have been, as Nicholas Orme suggests, regarded with horror. As Butler finds, there is no suggestion that the killers were condoned, particularly as infanticide was a crime which was seen as breaking the sanctity of the bond between mother and child. Perhaps it is wrong to look for an overarching attitude. Different forms of agriculture and industry requiring different levels of labour, varying levels of wealth year on year, the number of existing children, a family’s social position, and the likelihood of the child surviving, would all have contributed to attitudes toward intentional infant death. Even bearing these factors in mind, feelings and beliefs may well have varied within communities and even within families. And, when a woman was unmarried, her future would have depended on many factors including the extent to which her parents could find a spouse for her, or the existence of friends and family who could help her to earn a living.

Representations of infanticide in medieval England During the middle ages, infanticide was represented in England in writings, performance and visually.60 As in Europe, the crime may have been familiar to elite groups through works such as Medea and the Decameron. The biblical narrative of Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents, which was sometimes depicted as part of the Nativity cycle in wall paintings in town and rural churches, would have been more widely known. While many of these are lost due to the ravages of time, as well as plastering and overpainting during the Reformation, others, such as that at Croughton, Northants remain legible. While these works concern a perpetrator and motive very different 60 Sandidge, ‘Changing Contexts’.

70 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

to the domestic crimes which were the subject of clerical and latterly legal anxiety, what can be seen in the shadowy remnants of these paintings suggests a domestic environment in which mothers plead and fight for their infants’ lives, much as in the original of Brueghel’s depiction of the Massacre (Chapter 3). The spectre of violent infant death was more widely represented in the four cycles of medieval Corpus Christi plays which were enacted each year on this holy festival.61 These sequences of plays were performed by one of the ‘mysteries’ or trades during a day-long perambulatory narrative. They extended from the Creation to the Resurrection, and beyond to the Last Judgement and Christ’s second coming, and included the Massacre of the Innocents. Of these works, The Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors, one of two surviving plays from the Coventry Cycle, tells the story of the Nativity from the Annunciation to the Massacre. It is the play which most closely presents infant murder within a domestic setting. It includes Joseph’s accusing Mary of infidelity (for which he later apologises), his fetching help for her during childbirth, and his welcoming of the child with a ‘kys’. The depiction of parental affection intensifies the emotion of the Massacre later in the play, considered below. The manner of representing the Massacre varies across the Cycles, particularly the women’s defiance of the soldiers. The one-to-one series of confrontations in the Wakefield cycle gives a sense of formality, although the women clearly attack physically and verbally. ‘Out on thee I cry! Have at thy groin / Another!’62 The women’s rhyming verses in the York Massacre suggest control and dignity: Alas for dole, I die, To save my son shall I Ay-whiles my life may last.63

Richard Beadle and Pamela M. King write that this play is in a ‘largely lyrical and passive vein’ and avoids the ‘keening and screaming’ and ‘coarse invective’ of other plays.64 Yet other texts give a greater sense of the confrontational commotion. The East Anglian Ludus Coventriae cycle gives the 61 Abraham’s interrupted infanticide is also represented in two other Middle English works: The Brome Abraham and Isaac, and the Northampton Abraham. 62 Rose, ed. Wakefield Plays, p. 233. 63 Beadle and King, eds., York Plays, p. 95. 64 ibid., p. 88.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

71

single stage instruction ‘Tunc ibunt milites ad pueros occidendos’ (Then the soldiers go to the children who are to be killed) – followed by two verses of female lament which describe the effect of the soldiers’ actions: With swappynge swerde now is he shorn, the heed right fro the nekke! Shanke and shulderyn is al to-torn!65

In the Chester and Coventry plays the women are stronger and more feisty. In Chester they kick and fight with distaffs. In the Coventry play the killings are preceded by a moment’s calm with the mothers singing the ‘Coventry Carol’ before the soldiers enter. In a scene of mounting tension, mothers beg for their children’s lives with pleading: ‘But on my child have pytte’ and they fight with ladles.66 After the slaughter a soldier says: ‘Who hard [sic] eyuer soche a cry / Of wemen thatt there chylder have lost’,67 thus confirming the fulfilling of Jeremiah’s prophecy: ‘a voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children […] because they were not’. It does not describe the slaughter.68 Laura Jacobus, who traces changes in medieval representations of the Massacre in art and drama, describes the Massacre play in the Chester cycle as a comic interlude and describes the mothers as ‘foul-mouthed harridans’.69 Certainly, where the language is unusually sexually explicit, it does appear to have no purpose apart from humour. However, comments as those by Beadle and King, and Jacobus, overlook the humanity of these plays which in part depend on the audience’s ability to be moved by the death of these infants. The plays show women using symbols of their gender – ladles, distaffs – against the male symbol of a sword to protect the dynastic line whose maintenance was women’s primary role in life. While audiences may have laughed at their antics and the sexualised language, it seems doubtful that they would have laughed as the infants were slaughtered. Whether these plays should be regarded as drenched in pathos or as bawdy comic interludes, they put women – who were at the heart of the anxiety about infant death by overlaying – centre stage, and shows them courageously attempting to prevent their infants’ deaths. They are a stark contrast to figures such as Medea and Griselda, and 65 Spector, ed. N-Town Play, p. 92. Martial Rose suggests the effect was achieved by using dolls with detachable heads. Rose, ed. Wakefield Plays, p. 262. 66 Craig, ed. Coventry Plays, p. 849. 67 ibid., p. 870. 68 Jeremiah, 31.15. 69 Jacobus, ‘Motherhood’, p. 50.

72 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

in particular the ‘monstrous’ and ‘unnatural’ mothers who were described in early modern street literature. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales makes several references to infanticide. The most significant is The Parson’s Tale – a 30,000–word handbook on penance – which, under a discussion of anger, differentiates between manslaughter and murder.70 Manslaughter, he says, includes overlaying, a ‘homicide and deadly sin’, as are abortion and contraception. Murder, on the other hand, is when a child is destroyed by male sexual or physical violence, or when women ‘murder their children for dread of worldly shame’. Already, direct infanticide is seen as a woman’s crime, and only one motive is envisaged. The representations of infanticide which medieval people could have accessed were far removed from the quotidian which was the uniting theme in early modern literature. In medieval accounts, the crime is distanced both geographically and socially – the stories of Medea, Griselda, Abraham all involve elite power figures. The townsfolk and villagers may have seen these stories of threatened and killed infants as having little to do with what they suspected went on amongst their neighbours. Infanticide certainly existed in medieval England though it was largely hidden and, for the most part, lightly punished. Evidence is lacking in archives, but the crime would have been known in villages and rural settlements where, despite legal and religious opprobrium, it may not have been regarded as a very serious matter. People would have been reminded of infanticide when priests asked whether a husband and wife had killed a child by overlaying, and perhaps when attending church if the wall paintings included a depiction of the Massacre of the Innocents. Some may have been aware of violent infant death through performances of the Mystery Cycles, or from folk tales. Broadly, this was the situation which prevailed until the start of the sixteenth century, which this volume studies in more detail. The change in attitude prompted by the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina did not occur in England till the 1624 Infanticide Act (Appendix 1). Monarchs came and went, latterly instigating dramatic changes to the nation’s religion, the country moved from being a monarchy to a republic and then returned to being a monarchy, and infants continued to be murdered and their bodies disposed of in secret – invisible ghosts in the historic archives. But some of those bodies were discovered, people were accused and questioned, tried, and sometimes put to death. 70 The Man at Law mentions Medea and tells the Medea story and the Prioress’s Tale tells of a child murdered by Jews.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

73

Bibliography Primary sources Basile, Giambattista, Il Pentamerone (c.1634). Beadle, Richard, and King, Pamela M., eds. York Mystery Plays: A Selection in Modern Spelling. Oxford: OUP, 2009. Benedict of Peterborough, ‘Miracula Sancto Thomae Cantuariensis’, In Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, (7 Vols)., edited by James C. Robertson, London: Longman, 1876, Vol. 2, p. 208. Craig, Hardin, ed. Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays. London: Early English Text Society, 1902. Ovid, Metamorphoses. Translated by Arthur Golding. Edited by Madeleine Forey. London: Penguin, 2002. Peacock, Edward, ed. Myrc’s Instructions for Parish Priests. New York: Kraus Reprint, 1902. Rose, Martial, ed. The Wakefield Plays. London: Evans, 1961. Spector, Stephen, ed. The N-Town Play. Oxford: OUP, 1991. Straparola, Giovanni Francesco, Le Piacevoli Notti (1550–1553).

Secondary sources Butler, Sara M, ‘A Case of Indifference? Child Murder in Later Medieval England’, Journal of Women’s History 19, no. 4 (2007), pp. 59–82. Chartier, Roger, ed. The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. ———, ‘The Hanged Woman Miraculously Saved: An occasionnel’, In The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, edited by Roger Chartier, pp. 59–91. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Damme, Catherine, ‘Infanticide: The worth of an infant under law’, Medical History 22 (1978), pp. 1–24. Davis, Natalie Zemon, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. Ferraro, Joanne M, Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice: Illicit Sex and Infanticide in the Republic of Venice, 1557–1789. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008. Gowing, Laura, ‘Bodies and Stories’, In Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women, edited by Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seef, pp. 317–332. London: University of Delaware Press, 2003. Hanawalt, Barbara, ‘Childrearing among the Lower Classes of Late Medieval England’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8, no. 1 (1977), pp. 1–22.

74 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

———, ‘Violent Death in Fourteenth- and Early Fifteenth-Century England’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 18, no. 3 (1976), pp. 297–320. Heijden, Manon van der, Women and Crime in Early Modern Holland. Translated by David McKay. Leiden: BRILL, 2016. Helmholz, Richard H., ‘Infanticide in the Province of Canterbury During the Fifteenth Century’, History of Childhood Quarterly 8, no. 1 (1975), pp. 379–390. Hoffer, Peter C., and Hull, N.E.H., Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England 1558–1803. New York: New York University Press, 1981. Jacobus, Laura, ‘Motherhood and Massacre: The Massacre of the Innocents in Late-Medieval Art and Drama’, In The Massacre in History, edited by Mark Levene and Penny Roberts, pp. 39–54. New York: Berghahn Books, 1999. Kellum, Barbara A., ‘Infanticide in England in the later Middle Ages’, History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1974), pp. 367–388. Laqueur, William, The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. Oxford: OUP, 2006. Leboutte, René, ‘Offense Against Family Order: Infanticide in Belgium from the Fifteenth through the Early Twentieth Centuries’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 2, no. 2 (1991), pp. 159–185. Lewis, Margaret Brannan, Infanticide and Abortion in Early Modern Germany. London: Routledge, 2016. Müller, Wolfgang, The Criminalization of Abortion in the West: Its Origins in Medieval Law. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012. Naphy, William, Sex Crimes from Renaissance to Enlightenment. Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2004. Pentikäinen, Juha, ‘Child abandonment as an indicator of Christianization in the Nordic countries’, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 13 (1990), pp. 72–91. ———, The Nordic Dead Child Tradition. Translated by Antony Landon. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia 1968. Presciutti, Diana Bullen, ‘Dead Infants, Cruel Mothers, and Heroic Popes: The visual rhetoric of Foundling Care at the Hospital of Santo Spirito, Rome’, Renaissance Quarterly 64, no. 3 (2011), pp. 752–799. Prosperi, Adriano, Infanticide, Secular Justice, and Religious Debates in Early Modern Europe. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Riddle, John M., Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Religion and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700. London: Routledge, 1994. Ruff, Julius R., Violence in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

European and Medieval Contex ts of Infanticide

75

Sandidge, Marilyn, ‘Changing Contexts of Infanticide in Medieval English Texts’, In Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, edited by Albrecht Classen, pp. 291–306. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. Shahar, Shulamith, Childhood in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 1990. Wicker, Nancy L., ‘Selective female infanticide as partial explantion for the dearth of women in Viking Age Scandinavia’, In Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, edited by Guy Halsall, pp. 205–221. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1998. Wiesner, Merry E, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Wiltenburg, Joy, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany. London: University of Virginia Press, 1992. Wrightson, Keith, ‘Infanticide in European History’, Criminal Justice History 3 (1982), pp. 1–20.

3

The Liminal child and mother Abstract Works by theologians, lawyers and medical practitioners, as well as historical archives, drama and popular literature, demonstrate the uncertainty about when an infant should be regarded as being part of this world. Thus, newborns were constructed as liminal beings, a confusing situation which could lead mothers to be unclear about whether ending these new lives was murder. Similarly, the practices related to women with child, which included special diets, and ultimately retreat to a dedicated birthing chamber and the company of women, constructed pregnant women as liminal. This was a world from which those who were unwed and secretly pregnant were excluded which contributed to constructing them as outsiders. Thus, both the newborn infant and its mother were socially constructed to be in a state of liminality or otherness. Keywords: When did life begin; Childbirth customs; Cultural significance of water; Waste and abjection; Violent deaths

She took the child, which was then dead wrapped it in a cloth, carried it downstairs and laid it in a settle.1

Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s son painted many versions of the biblical story of Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents, but his father’s original has its own story.2 Shortly after its completion it came into the possession of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II who, for reasons unknown, ordered that the details of infant slaughter be painted over.3 Instead of infant death, it became an image of soldiers plundering a village. Yet, despite a later, uknown, artist’s attempt to replace one crime with a less horrif ic one, 1 2 3

Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 112 #439. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Massacre of the Innocents (1565–7), Queen’s Gallery, London. Shaw-Taylor and Scott, Bruegel to Rubens, p. 58.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch03

78 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

strangely human details can be seen beneath images of dead geese, women grieving over indeterminate bundles, and tussles over the ownership of a calf. The abandoned garments and shadowy feet of murdered infants suggest an existence between being and non-being and thus unintentionally reflect the conflicting early modern beliefs about unborn, newborn and very young infants.

Beliefs and attitudes toward new lives The point at which an infant was regarded as having existence is essential to the study of infanticide, but the question was far from straightforward for early modern people. Between conception and birth – during the development from embryo to newborn – the infant could be considered as simultaneously part of, or separate from, the human world. People sought to understand the threshold between the start of life and the pre-natal condition of ‘nothingness’. Using varied theoretical criteria, medical doctors, theologians, and lawyers had different views on when life began. They wrote extensively about this state of infants’ being and non-being and presented conflicting arguments about when an unborn or newborn infant should be considered to be part of this world – in rerum natura, which Carla Spivack defines as ‘being a reasonable creature – that is, having a soul and being capable of reason’.4 Their opinions, some of which are summarised below, show the uncertainty about the point at which life began, thus making it hard to determine at what point the ending of an infant life could be regarded as infanticide. Although their learned arguments would have been unlikely to filter to the humble people who were accused of killing their infants, the complexity of early modern thinking about infant life suggests that when an ordinary and perhaps not very educated woman gave birth, she might have been far from clear about whether that which came from her body should be regarded as a viable being. Among medical works which attempted to illuminate questions surrounding the beginnings of life is Jacob Rueff’s The Expert Midwife (1637) written for ‘grave and modest Matrons, such as have to doe with women in that great danger of childe-birth’ as well as young practitioners in ‘Physick and Chirurgery’. Rueff attaches particular significance to forty-one days, writing that at this time the seed:

4

Spivack, ‘Flowers’. The OED defines the phrase as ‘in nature, in the physical world’.

The Liminal child and mother

79

is changed into the due and perfect forme and shape of the Infant: and then by the judgement of some learned men, it receiveth life, and therefore afterward it ought not to be called a Feature [sic], but an Infant, although as yet, by reason of his tender and feeble condition and state, he wanteth motion.5

How these uncertainties relate to infanticide can be seen in the notorious case of Ann Greene who was found guilty of the crime but survived hanging. The event was described in a number of pamphlets6 one of which attempts to define what it was that Ann had given birth to. It states: that it was else but a flux of those humors which for ten weeks before had been suppressed; and that they [sic] childe which then fell from her unawares, was nothing but a lump of the same matter coagulated.7

For some, quickening, when the foetus was first felt to move (between the fourth and sixth months) was the moment when the unborn infant had life. Legally, it was not murder if death was caused before this point,8 yet, as Laura Gowing states, ‘infanticide was treated as murder only if the live child was fully out of the body when it died’.9 This could only be confirmed or denied by witnesses. Medicine appeared to offer an answer as to whether an infant had been born alive when William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood led to the lung test (1653) which was based on the belief that if a child had drawn breath the lungs would float on water. However, the test is unreliable.10 Legally, there is evidence of the high value that could be placed on an unborn infant. There were punitive measures for attacking a pregnant woman, a crime which was tantamount to abortion. Garthine Walker describes it as a ‘symbolic act of denigration and destruction’ which defiled the woman, her child, her husband, and the household.11 In 1644, Edward Coke, whose writings subsequently formed the foundation for English law and who continues to be cited in legal discussions,12 stipulated the seriousness of attacking a pregnant woman. He wrote: 5 Rueff, Expert Midwife, p. 58. 6 Taub, ‘“News from the Dead”’. 7 Anon, Declaration from Oxford, p. 7. 8 Riddle, Eve’s Herbs, pp. 94, 129. 9 Gowing, ‘Secret Births’. 10 Modern forensic science tells us ‘recognisable signs of survival of birth become evident only after several days’. Watson, Forensic Medicine. 11 Walker, Crime, Gender, p. 60. 12 ‘Judgments – Attorney General’s Reference No. 3 1994’.

80 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

If a woman be quick with childe, and by a Potion or otherwise killeth it in her wombe; or if a man beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead childe, this is a great misprision, and not murder; but if the childe be borne alive, and dieth of the Potion, batttery or other cause, this is murder; for in law it is accounted a reasonable creature, in rerum natura, when it is born alive.13

In the church, opinions circled around the question of when the soul comes into being. William Hill, a Doctor of Divinity, cited various sources and used a number of arguments to prove that it exists before birth. He wrote: ‘Children […] could not be conceaved and brought foorth in sinne, unlesse before the birth of the Child the Soule were in the Infant’ and quotes the opinion that: If any part of the Childe appeareth out of the Wombe, and some other part remayne in the same; yet that it ought to be baptized: yea if the part so appearing be but the hand, or heele (in case that the woman be in danger of death, and by hers the child).14

The medical, religious and legal arguments briefly outlined above lack a human dimension. However, social beliefs and practices suggest people’s need for the life of dead infants to be acknowledged. From the early days of Christianity, the desire for the existence of Limbo was part of this need. As far back as the fourth century arguments were put forward for ‘the rights of unbaptised innocents to their own category and space’.15 Although Augustine was not in favour, Limbo became established as a ‘compromise’.16 The need for such a place continued after the Reformation. The Limbo imagined by Milton was the destiny of ‘Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars’17 and those who were ‘Abortive monstrous, or unkindly mixed’.18 Thus Milton evades the issues of in rerum natura by allowing miscarriages and stillbirths some status. Their destiny, nevertheless, was a ‘between’ or ‘no place’, contributing to the impression that there was a post-Reformation yearning for an equivalent to Limbo, though not as a place where sin was eventually cleansed. 13 Coke, Institutes, p. 50. 14 Hill, The Infancie of the Soule, p. D5. 15 Kendrick, ‘Satire’, p. 250. 16 ibid., p. 236. 17 Milton, Paradise Lost. book III, line 474. 18 ibid., p. 456 and note.

The Liminal child and mother

81

Popular beliefs also suggest the extent to which people were uncertain about the status of newborns and reveal a desire for unbaptised infants to have a special destiny. Keith Thomas writes: ‘The souls of unbaptized children were vulgarly assigned a great number of animal resting-places: they became headless dogs in Devon, wild geese in Lincolnshire, ants in Cornwall, night-jars in Shropshire and Nidderdale’.19 More popular evidence is found in depictions of ages of man schemes. Images which adopt the stair model of life’s rise and fall sometimes show cradled infants as not yet upon the stair, as if waiting to commence their life’s ascent, a placing which also suggests that their lives had not yet begun, or that they were not yet fully human. Such depictions may have reflected an historical or social reality, or may have contributed to how infants were perceived.20 In this muddle of medical, religious and legal thinking, those charged with enforcing justice still required to know whether or not a child was living when born. The suggestion of in-between states was not helpful in doing this and although proof could be provided by those in attendance at the birth, the truth of their statements may have been questionable. Signs of violence on the body were also taken as evidence of possible malpractice, despite the possibility of the infant being harmed during childbirth, as Hoffer and Hull comment: cuts and bruises on bastard neonates might have resulted from accidents during or shortly after a delivery handled without assistance by a weak, frightened and inexperienced young mother.21

Alongside these learned theories were the parents whose feelings about the lives of infants who died could not be dictated by others. As Hannah Newton points out in her research on sick children, although it is difficult to assess the emotions of people from the past, glimpses of them can be seen.22 The sources considered below provide evidence of parental affection for small children, that there was grief when young lives ended, and that their affection was not confined to infants who had lived months or years.23 19 Thomas, Man, p. 138. 20 For a discussion of representations of infancy in the schemes see Müller, ‘Childhood’, p. 55. 21 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 107. 22 Newton, The Sick Child, p. 123. 23 Early historians of the family such as Phillippe Ariès suggested that parents avoided emotional involvement with their children due to the high infant mortality rate and evidence such as the widespread use of wet nurses. However, he has been criticised for his sources, lack of contextualisation, and his conclusions.

82 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Image 3: The ages of man schemes suggest infant liminality by showing them not yet on the stairway of life. Cornelis Anthonisz, Die neun Lebensalter des Mannes. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (1540) (reproduced by permission of Rijksmuseum)

There is a hierarchy to the sources which enlighten this subject. They range from the highly formal and public memorials in churches, through the less public burial practices which parents desired, to the private intimacy of diaries, letters and verse. Separate from these are the secret and hidden actions of unmarried women after their infants’ births. In different ways, they suggest something of the liminal nature of infants.

The Liminal child and mother

83

The liminality of the dead child is evident in English places of worship. Many modest village churches and grandiose city cathedrals contain early modern memorials to deceased women which also commemorate their infants.24 Particularly after the Reformation, when the bereaved were deprived of the ability to acknowledge and remember loved ones by holding masses for the dead, there was an increase in the use of such monuments as a public act of remembrance.25 Monuments which celebrated a dead woman’s maternal role and included representations of her dead infants might show them swaddled or in their baptismal robes. However, care needs to be taken when attempting to assess the age at which these infants died. Sophie Oosterwijk comments that sculptors may not have made distinctions about the age of the child and swaddling or chrysom clothes may simply indicate death in infancy.26 There was also the question of the artist’s skill – swaddling clothes were easier to depict than the more intricate clothes of older children. Fashion was another issue, with a tomb such as that of Princess Sophia in Westminster Abbey (1606) inspiring similar works. Although the Princess died on her first day, the tomb uncannily shows her as a healthy but sleeping infant. At the opposite end of the social scale to Princess Sophia, the memorial plaque to Elizabeth Franklin (1622), the wife of the landlord of the inn where she died in childbirth, shows her in bed surrounded by her four dead infants. Claire Gittings writes: The one who had been baptized appears in chrysom clothes with a bare face, but those who died unbaptised are depicted totally enveloped in shrouds with no visible human characteristics.27

Other monuments commemorated children who had died in infancy, again suggesting life in death. While early modern art frequently showed the dead alongside the living, in the cases of infants they are given a presence which they never achieved in life. However, these memorials may tell us more about conventions regarding child loss than the feelings of parents and the value of these brief lives. The memorials’ existence would have been influenced by the expectations of the local community, the tradition of praising the deceased’s courage and the hope of reunion. Yet, while the monuments to Princess Sophia and Elizabeth Franklin could hardly be more different, 24 Laoutaris, Shakespearean Maternities, p. 143. 25 Phillippy, ‘Comfortable Farewell’. 26 Oosterwijk, ‘Chrysoms’. 27 Gittings, Death, Burial, p. 84.

84 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

they, like other church monuments, share the desire to commemorate the tragically short lives of infants, which may have only lasted minutes or hours. In doing so, those who saw the monuments would have received the impression of the infants having a presence in the world of the living similar to the ghostly children in Bruegel’s Massacre of the Innocents who, despite annihilation, seem to linger in the present. The manner in which parents wanted infant bodies to be interred also tells us how they felt about these short lives. Gittings shows that infants who had been baptised were buried in the churchyard, but the task of disposing of the bodies of the unbaptised was left to midwives.28 A book of oaths for midwives from 1649 included the instruction that: if any childe bee dead borne, you your selfe shall see it buried in such secret place as neither Hogg nor Dogg, nor any other Beast may come unto it […] And that you shall not suffer any such childe to be cast into the Jaques.29

Gittings sees this as a ‘hinted-at exception to the almost universal rule of decent burial in early modern England’ and states that it was the lack of baptism which was the defining factor in these infant deaths.30 However, Garthine Walker notes that parsons buried such infants in churchyards, though without ceremony or service.31 This suggests that the recommended interment of unbaptised infants was insufficient for some parents who were not influenced by intellectual arguments about infants’ souls, and were instead guided by their emotions and personal beliefs. It seems that respectable, married parents who underwent the unhappiness of stillbirth wanted their infants commemorated, despite the conflicting opinions of medical, legal and religious thinkers about the importance of these lives. There is further evidence of this in parents’ writings. At times of child loss, they wrote of their grief in diaries, letters and verse describing infants as gems, doves, flowers or cropped trees. Yet, even through these stock metaphors, their sorrow is visible.32 The most remarkable is Mary Carey’s 1657 work Upon the Sight of my abortive Birth which reveals a mother’s love for her premature birth: What birth is this, a poor despised creature 28 ibid., p. 83. 29 Forbes, Midwife, p. 146. 30 Gittings, Death, Burial, p. 83. 31 Gowing, ‘Secret Births’, p. 110; Walker, ‘Just stories’, p. 103. 32 For discussion of the metaphors of bereavement see Anselment, Realms of Apollo, p. 72.

The Liminal child and mother

85

A little Embrio, void of life and feature?33

She later expresses the hope ‘that this babe (as well as all the rest) / since’t had a soul, shall be for ever blest’.34 Mary’s very physical description suggests that she had wanted to see the infant corpse. Her words suggest a late miscarriage, yet she tells us that it ‘had a soul’. These are Mary’s feelings, not those dictated by learned men. The Rector widower of Elizabeth Walker produced a posthumous collection of her writings. He tells us: ‘God was pleased to give her strength to go out her full time of eleven Children; six sons, and five Daughters, besides some abortive or untimely births’.35 Yet his terse dismissal of her ‘abortive and untimely births’ is contradicted by his later comment which, while praising his wife, also reveals his beliefs about the souls of pre-natal infants. He writes: And if ever Children were Baptized in their Mothers Belly (excuse the Expression) doubtless hers were so; I mean solemnly Consecrated to God, with fervent, frequent Prayers, and wash’d in a Jordan of her Tears, who bore them as truly in her Heart as Womb.

Elizabeth herself also conveyed her attachment to her dead infant. Of those pregnancies which went full term three were stillborn, and her grief is tragically captured in her writing, the reference to her ‘old Enemy’ suggesting that such melancholic episodes were familiar to her. She writes: God gave me a gracious Deliverance of an eighth Child, a Son, still-born after an hard Labour; December the 11 1660. In this Lying-in I fell into Melancholy, which much disturbed me with Vapours, and was very ill. It pleased God to suffer my old Enemy very impetuously to assault me.36

In two studies of seventeenth-century, mainly autobiographical verse and prose which commemorates child death, Raymond A. Anselment discusses works dealing with newborn, stillborn and very young children and finds that sorrow obliterates the authors’ distinctions of gender, age, class and religion adding that the ‘less educated and unprofessional writers’ sought

33 Carey, ‘Upon the Sight’, p. 158. 34 ibid. 35 Walker, Vertuous Wife, p. 61. 36 ibid., p. 63.

86 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

structure and purpose through poetry.37 He shows that people took consolation from religion, and that women who died shortly after childbirth anticipated reunion with their dead child. Writings by bereaved parents provide a clear example of individuals’ beliefs in contrast to learned writers on the law, medicine and religion who attempted to form opinion, and authors such as Milton with his placing of abortive (premature) births in Limbo. Whether through monuments, interment, or the private writings of educated parents, the impression is that infants who had died were liminal beings who could be regarded as both of this world and departed from it.

Death and the unwelcome infant So far, we have considered the acceptable face of early modern parenthood and bereavement. In the examples cited above the death of a child was a public event, perhaps a threat to a family’s dynastic line, and a loss of hope. What, then, of the women who committed infanticide? As discussed in Chapter 1, the vast majority of the Sussex cases of infanticide confirm the widely held view that most perpetrators were unmarried women. Unsurprisingly, women who found themselves unhappily pregnant did not write about the subject, or the infants, or the act they committed. The non-survival of the court depositions which may have provided some insights means that we are left with what Mary E. Fissell calls an ‘interpretative space’.38 Here, a detailed study of Coroners’ inquests goes part way to revealing how some unmarried women appear to have felt about their newborn infants. While ultimately they provide questions rather than answers, the inquests do suggest some of the complexities surrounding infanticide in the early modern period. The examples considered below each uncovers aspects of early modern attitudes to both burial and infanticide. They reveal ambivalent attitudes toward newborn infants, even in cases where they were possibly murdered. A notable feature of the one hundred suspicious infant deaths in the Sussex Coroners’ inquests which form the basis of this study, is that sixteen mention water in one form or another. (Appendix 4) While a handful tell us no more than that the infant was drowned, the majority provide some detail. So we learn that Dorothy Wood ‘did choake and drowne’ her newborn 37 Anselment, ‘Teares’, pp. 51,53; ———, Realms of Apollo. 38 Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, p. 1.

The Liminal child and mother

87

twin daughters in ‘a pitt full of water, mud and other filth’; and the pond into which Ann Taylor threw her infant contained ‘water, gravel, mud and other filth’.39 Both of these link directly with the ideas of dirt and defilement discussed below, reinforcing the idea that bastard infants were ‘matter out of place’. 40 Other infants were drowned, or their bodies disposed of, in clean water places, such as the wells in which three Sussex women placed or concealed bodies, an act which could pollute a community. 41 The ideas examined below show the duality of water – clean or foul, life giving or life taking – and reveal why women may have chosen water as a method and place of death. The frequency with which it is mentioned as a component of women’s actions suggests that the element had a particular significance. The theories raise the question of whether the records should be read as more than historical fact. Examining the element in relation to infanticide it becomes clear that not only was water culturally significant in many ways, but it also had particular associations with children, women and childbirth. Water was ubiquitous in early modern Sussex. The county is bordered on one side by the sea and divided vertically by four long rivers all with extensive tributaries. Water was present in pits, wells, ponds, and in the home. In addition to being constantly nearby, water was culturally important. In elite cultures it was subject to control through irrigation and fountains, and rivers were the basis for water entertainments and other leisure activities. 42 For the working people of Sussex, it would have been perceived in terms of utility. It provided food and drink, and was a source of power, through mills, and of transport. At water people laundered clothes, washed themselves and bathed; rivers, ponds, streams and wells were culturally significant as meeting places – communal points, rather than mere features of the landscape. Although water supported and enhanced life, it was also the site of death. It is not known how many people could swim in this period but it appears not to have been commonplace, although writers were promoting it as a healthy activity and a practical skill. 43 Sussex inquests show that accidental drowning was common, such as in the cases of Richard Jeffery who fell into a pond because his eyes were obstructed with mud from a previous fall, and of Agnes Ellyot who: 39 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 129 #501. 40 Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 35. 41 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 94 #369; ———, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 86 #348. 42 Syse, ‘The river as an arena’. 43 Digby, A Short Introduction; Percey, The Compleat Swimmer.

88 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

wente owte of the howsse of John Shortte, her maister, and wente downe to a water pitt where she was wonte to feche water and to wasshe her handes, takynge holde of a stake; and the same stake yeldyd and so she fell into water there, and so she came to her dethe. 44

Around a third of the accidental deaths of young people and infants which are recorded in the inquests were caused by water. Elizabeth Knight, an infant, fell from a bridge in South Bersted into a ditch of water; Alice Robynson, aged three, drowned in a puddle.45 Even homes were not safe. Mary Water, aged one year and seven months and whose family name now seems tragically ironic, drowned in her home when the servants who were caring for her suddenly went outside to deal with a swarm of bees. 46 It is unsurprising that the high number of accidents in watery areas led to folklore which said that these places were inhabited by figures such as Jenny Greenteeth and Nelly Long-Arms who dragged people, especially children, into the water to drown them.47 Such myths and folklore can be an insight into community beliefs and the mental world of early modern people and, as anthropologist Gary Varner writes, should not be belittled. In his international and cross-cultural studies of the significance of water he suggests that the substance is deeply imprinted on the human psyche, and can be seen in societies’ tales, legends and symbolic actions.48 J.E. Cirlot is among those who have studied symbols and their use. He makes the point that, contrary to what many believe, accepting the symbolic meaning of an action does not require the rejection of the literal or historical meaning.49 This statement draws attention to the fact that, when seeking to understand a subject as emotionally and socially significant as infanticide, it is useful to consider a subject from as many perspectives as appear relevant, without privileging one over another. The power of water to maintain or take life, and the belief in the ability to effect ‘influences’ at water places, such as the English custom of tying scraps of fabric onto trees near water to ‘switch off’ evil influences and ‘switch on’ positive ones, makes it unsurprising that associations developed which suggest that these were liminal places where the border between life and death was weakly constructed. Researchers in a mass of disciplines including literature, art and folklore, as well as theologians, philosophers 44 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1485–1558, pp. 50 #176, 51 #181. 45 ———, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, pp. 29 #133, 4 #15. 46 ibid., p. 12 #54. 47 Simpson and Roud, Dictionary of English Folklore, pp. 275, 381. 48 Varner, Water of Life, pp. 16,139. 49 Cirlot, Dictionary of Symbols, p. xiv.

The Liminal child and mother

89

and classicists, draw attention to the associations between women, infants and water which is widely considered a liminal or ‘between’ substance. Deep waters are connected with the realm of the dead,50 and submersion in water meant a return to the primordial state, death and interment.51 But it is also a symbol of life and regeneration. Although these ideas are contradictory, according to Chevalier and Gheerbrandt, they are not ‘irreconcilable’.52 Water, they state, is both a creator and a destroyer. The symbolisms of rivers include ‘the fluidity of forms, of fertility, death and renewal’.53 Wells, they state, are sacred in all traditions. They are a channel of communication with the realm of the dead.54 Writers on symbolism refer to water washing away, being regenerative, cleansing and sanctifying,55 and state that ‘the cleansing properties possessed by water give it the additional force of the power of redemption. Immersion was regenerative, it effected a rebirth in the sense of its being simultaneously alive and dead’.56 This clearly suggests Christian baptism and the holiness of water which extended beyond the confines of church buildings, as expressed by George Herbert who writes of the ‘blessed streams’ which ‘stop our sinnes from growing thick and wide’.57 Creation and destruction, death and renewal, cleansing, redemption, regeneration and baptism – these intuitive symbolisms may have invited women to call on water in the death and disposal of their infants, particularly as many of the legends, beliefs, and symbolisms concerning water are connected with women, fertility, fecundity, pregnancy, and childbirth. There are particularly strong connections between children and water, possibly related to their pre-birth existence in amniotic fluid. In a study of this topic a century ago Dan M’Kenzie, after narrating a number of waterrelated legends concerning children, wrote that ‘in the minds of the older peoples of Britain […] there probably existed some mysterious bond of union between children and wells, ponds, and rivers’.58 He provides a worldwide list of water places in which ritual washing of young infants and newborns was practised, and some instances of the sacrifice of children.59 50 Cooper, Encyclopaedia of Symbols. 51 Cirlot, Dictionary of Symbols, p. 365. 52 Chevalier and Gheerbrandt, Symbols, p. 182. 53 ibid., p. 808. 54 ibid., p. 1095. 55 Cooper, Encyclopaedia of Symbols, pp. 188, 189. 56 ibid., p. 1084. 57 Herbert, ‘‘Holy Baptism I’, (1633) ’, p. 151. 58 M’Kenzie, ‘Children and Wells’, p. 258. 59 ibid., p. 275.

90 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Shakespeare drew on these cultural associations between water, women and children, suggesting the extent to which the ideas were intrinsic to early modern thinking about women and infants. Both Thaisa in Pericles and Hermione in The Winter’s Tale are associated with childbirth and water. Thaisa survives burial at sea after her apparent death in childbirth. Following Hermione’s assumed death shortly after childbirth she appears at sea to Antigonus, her servant. She is described as a ‘vessel […] in pure white robes’, while her use of the language of a ship suggests a water being.60 Thaisa and Hermione’s infants both escape watery deaths, as do the infant Miranda and the two pairs of newborn twins in The Comedy of Errors.61 The baby Perdita’s abandonment by water, and the ‘rotten carcass of a butt’ in which the infant Miranda and Prospero are placed, both have echoes of the older narrative of Moses left at the riverside in a basket.62 Water was a liminal place where life and death, pagan and Christian, purity and def ilement met and mingled. It is unsurprising, therefore, that evidence of the death and disposal of infants with or near water is an international and centuries-old crime. The action was depicted in the fifteenth century murals of Santo Spirito in Rome. Writing of the Middle Ages, Catherine Damme cites several cases of infants killed by drowning while other researchers have found instances in Belgium and Venice.63 Such research suggests the enduring nature of this method of killing and disposing of infant corpses. The association of water with baptism, cleansing and purification, and those beliefs which aligned water with child-stealing spirits, support the intuitive association which appears to exist between children and water. The placing of a child in or by water may have been partly ceremonial, partly a corrupted form of Christian baptism, and also a rite connected to the older cultural beliefs about water which exist across time and place. Varner states: ‘there is a primeval connectedness between humankind and the spirit world through these portals’. They are ‘healing and deadly, generating life and taking it away – a source of knowledge and a place where knowledge is hidden’.64 With these ideas in mind, the actions of some of the Sussex women who chose water as the means of killing their infants, or as the place where they 60 The long-established association between a woman in white robes and a ship in full sail is discussed in Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale. notes p. 67. 61 Adults also escape drowning at sea in The Comedy of Errors, The Tempest, and Pericles, though not in The Winter’s Tale storm. 62 Exodus 2.3. 63 Damme, ‘Infanticide’. 64 Varner, Wells, p. 12.

The Liminal child and mother

91

left their bodies, seems more complex than the brief facts of inquest and Assize records suggest. These topics lead us to wonder what was in the mind of Alice Baker when she drowned her male child in a pond, and of Elizabeth Freakes when she threw her newborn daughter into a ‘pond full of water’.65 The ideas discussed above would not have been formally recognised by Alice and Elizabeth or any of the other women who called on water in the death of disposal of their infants, but it is probable that a sense of them existed as cultural knowledge. Whether their actions were for a specific reason, or the effect of a deep instinct, they help to illuminate the mental world which early modern women inhabited, and suggest that their actions should not be understood solely in terms of their social and marital status, nor their reactions to the prescriptions of the law and church.

Killing and caring The idea of the monstrous, murdering mother takes on a different perspective when the details of some of the Sussex Coroners’ inquests are examined. In July 1656 a Coroner’s jury met in Hastings to look into a local mystery. The events surrounding the inquest are recorded in English. They describe an infant body found buried in an outhouse. (For further details of the case, including the Coroner’s account, see Chapter 6). Although the assumption was that this was a bastard birth, it is equally possible that the infant was a stillbirth to a married couple who had buried it because they were unable to afford the funeral, or were unwilling to part with their child. This may have been the case in another Sussex archival account. A Churchwardens’ presentment from 1623 describes widow Hedger as: living incontinently and having a childe begotten and borne without any lawfull marriage; [who] was unchristianlie buryed [with]in the gates where the said widdow Hedger dwelt; and having been found by some of the parrish shee confest it to bee her childe, still-borne, and by her there buryed.66

In both cases it seems that people in the vicinity knew that something was amiss, and this idea of community knowledge or complicity will be 65 Cockburn, ed. Sussex Indictments : Elizabeth I, p. 140 #712; Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 104 #418. 66 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 65.

92 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

discussed in Chapter 6. The two cases demonstrate the difficulty in analysing these accounts. In his work on bereavement, Anselment mentions parents’ ‘reluctance to leave the infant in another’s care’.67 The uncertainty surrounding infant life, and the possible confusion also surrounding the birth, suggest murder and grieving were not mutually exclusive possibilities – the women may have kept the infant nearby as a form of maternal caring, or it may have been an act of concealment, but this cannot be taken for granted. Again, from the Coroners’ inquests we learn that spinster Elizabeth Beecraft gave birth to an infant in 1656. She stated that she did not know if it was a boy or a girl, alive or dead. The records state that: Some time later she got out of bed, took the child, which was then dead, out of the bed and therefore wrapped it in a cloth, carried it downstairs and laid it in a settle.68

Elizabeth’s actions could be interpreted as panic and concealment, yet keeping the infant in the bed gives a sense of caring, wrapping has associations with swaddling and preparation for burial, and the settle suggests a coffin. At her trial, Elizabeth was accused of strangling the infant, but was found not guilty, despite four women giving evidence against her. Again, as their evidence has not survived, we do not know what was said or why the not guilty verdict was given. Popular literature provides more examples of burial practices which reveal possible ambivalence toward bastard newborns. One example is the pamphlet Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers which states that when spinster Alice Shepheard gave birth to a boy, her mother, grandmother and midwife, working together, broke his neck and then ‘secretly buried it in the Churchyard’. According to the pamphlet, which is inevitably judgmental, the choice of location was to ‘escape worldlye punishment’.69 Yet the choice of the churchyard may sugget a desire for the infant’s heavenly salvation. There is a progression in these examples from the outhouse, to the garden, to the settle, to the churchyard which indicates that people may have considered the dead infant as something to be hidden, or to be kept close as a form of caring, or as deserving quasi-Christian interment. As Gowing writes: ‘many women, and not just legitimately pregnant ones, expected more than the simple disposal of the body that was prescribed in instructions to midwives’. 67 Anselment, Realms of Apollo, p. 88. 68 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 112 #439. 69 Anon, Sundrye Strange, p. sig.B1r.

The Liminal child and mother

93

Another inquest describes the case of Elizabeth Gery (sic) and the killing of her newborn. It states that she ‘secretly gave birth to a male child at Nuthurst and on the same day murdered him there’.70 It subsequently emerged that she had done this by ‘stuff ing nettles into its mouth and throwing it in a gutter’. The case shows the complexity of unravelling these brief accounts. The description of Elizabeth’s action with the nettles also invites investigation. The reference to ‘stuffing’ implies a violent action, though it may simply reflect the reaction of the clerk who recorded events. If Elizabeth’s action with the nettles was an attempt to silence or kill the child, it was a strange choice. Or was it a desperate attempt to care for the infant? Nettle was and is a foodstuff. Medically, it was believed ‘itt draweth downe the womens Termes, and expelleth the youngling deade’71 and was ‘good for them that cannot breathe unlesse they hold their necks upright’,72 uses which have loose connections with childbirth. A bewildered and not very well-informed young woman who had just given birth could have simply misapplied her half knowledge resulting in a description which brutalised her action. She was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged.

Throwing In contrast to these cases which imply caring for dead infants, others describe women as having ‘thrown’ their infants or their bodies. This suggests that a newborn may have been associated with ideas of dirt, defilement and body waste and gives an indication of the women’s sense of repulsion and repugnance toward the infants. Of the one hundred recorded cases of suspicious infant deaths in Sussex, fifteen use the verb ‘to throw’ (proicere), including the case of Elizabeth Gery described above.73 (See Appendix 5). For example, the records tell us that Mary Delve ‘gave birth to a male child at Northiam throwing him into a pit full of water with both hands whereby he was drowned, dying immediately’.74 Subsequently, she pleaded not guilty 70 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 33 #153; Cockburn, ed. Sussex Indictments : Elizabeth I, p. 113 #569. 71 Gesner, newe jewell, p. 47v; Gerard, Herball (1636), p. 707. ‘Termes’ refers to menstruation. 72 ———, Herball (1636), p. 707. 73 Meanings of the verb include: to throw, cast, make projection; to send, project, propel (from the body); to throw away, discard, reject (especially something unwanted or little valued); to cast out, banish. Howlett, Dictionary. 74 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 54 #222.

94 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

and six people gave evidence, but we do not know the nature of this. She was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Joan Power: gave birth to a live male child at South Mundham and later on the same day murdered him at South Mundham, taking him in both [hands], violently throwing him onto a mound of earth [tumulus] and suffocating him whereby he […] [died].75

Although this account suggests the child was a few hours old, Jane was eventually acquitted after pleading not guilty, the jury finding that the infant had died a natural death. Did Elizabeth, Mary and Joan throw their infants, or simply leave them? Modern forensic science would analyse the force of the action by studying the positioning of the body and physical injuries, but the science barely existed at the time. Yet there seems to be little doubt about the probability of throwing in other cases such as those of Alice Bankes and Alice Thatcher.76 Both women are described as having thrown their newborns from a window, though the former was found guilty and not the latter. Pamphleteers also occasionally state that dead infants were thrown. After Martha Scambler gives birth to an illegitimate child she is persuaded by the Devil ‘to give it death before the body had well recovered life’ and so she ‘threw it downe into a lothsome privy house’.77 The collection of crimes contained in the pamphlet Natures Cruell Step-Dames includes brief accounts of the infanticides by Anne Willis who threw her child into a vault and Anne Holden who ‘was delivered of a child, no body being with her; which said Child shee threw into a Ditch […] because it should not be known nor seene’.78 Remaining with the fact that some women are described as having thrown their infants or their corpses, it is worth considering whether the recorded action reveals anything about infanticide. By recognising that, while some aspects of pregnancy are socially and temporally specific, such as fears about reputation and economic survival, other aspects of pregnancy are universal and eternal. Knowledge about a mother’s potentially hostile relationship with her unborn child provides a new perspective on why infants were thrown. 75 ibid., p. 68 #273. 76 Cockburn, ed. Sussex Indictments : Elizabeth I, p. 106 #125; ———, ed. Sussex Indictments: James I, p. 647 #120. 77 Anon, Deeds Against Nature, p. A4. 78 Goodcole, Natures Cruell Step-Dames.

The Liminal child and mother

95

Psychoanalyst Dana Birksted-Breen suggests that even today women who welcome pregnancy can experience complex emotions. She states that they may fear that the expected child is invasive ‘like a cancerous growth’, and that it knows her secret thoughts and disapproves of them.79 The baby may be perceived as ‘an intruder and an invader getting into her as a dangerous representative of the outside world’.80 She writes of their: doubts, confusion, regrets, anxieties and disbelief […] The baby inside is felt to be able to read [the mother’s] mind […] All this is aggravated by the fact that minimal reassurance is available concerning the baby.81

An unmarried, early modern woman who was with child may have had a sense of herself as polluted and polluting. She would have had every reason to perceive the child she was expecting as ‘an intruder’ and ‘a dangerous representative of the outside world’, particularly as an infant would be a genuine threat to her physical and social survival, while the idea that the unborn child could read her thoughts under circumstances when they could be riven with guilt, is truly haunting. Compounding this was lack of bodily understanding at a time when, as Gowing points out, there were taboos on discussing the subject.82 The fact that rape and unmarried pregnancy could not be spoken of may have contributed to infanticide, particularly bearing in mind research which shows that being able to express anxiety during late pregnancy can influence the mother’s ability to cope once the child is born.83 Tragically, the enforced secrecy which surrounded many unmarried pregnancies could damn the mother, as not telling others that she was with child was considered an indication that she intended to kill her infant. It is ironic that the reverse was also true. When an unmarried woman told someone such as her mistress or mother that she was pregnant, the admission could lead to them becoming accomplices in the crime, as discussed in Chapter 6. Researchers in other f ields offer insights into why an infant might have been thrown. Anthropologist Mary Douglas, who discusses body orif ices in terms of boundaries, describes that which comes from them as marginal. She writes: ‘Spittle, blood, milk, urine, faeces or tears by simply issuing forth have traversed the boundary of the body’. 84 Excreta 79 Birksted-Breen, ‘The experience’, p. 20. 80 ibid., p. 19; Cosslett, Women, p. 117. 81 Birksted-Breen, ‘The experience’, p. 17. 82 Gowing, ‘Bodies and Stories’. 83 Birksted-Breen, ‘The experience’, p. 17. 84 Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 121.

96 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

can be dangerous and pollutant. In her examination of what is meant by ‘dirt’, Douglas concludes that it is ‘matter out of place’ a def inition which, she states, ‘implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order’. 85 Feminist thinker, philosopher and literary critic Julia Kristeva also writes of the body in terms of boundaries. Discussing the pregnant body she writes of ‘the collapse of the border between inside and outside’.86 She continues: ‘it is as if the skin, a fragile container, no longer guaranteed the integrity of one’s “own and clean self” but, scraped or transparent, invisible or taut, gave way before the dejection of its contents’. When a woman threw her newborn, the action may have been prompted by the belief that what had come from her body was dirty and defiling waste matter. For an early modern woman this would have been compounded by the knowledge that all female bodies were perceived as polluting. As Gail Kern Paster notes, early modern women were inscribed as ‘leaky vessels’, beyond their own control and therefore threatening, excessive, disturbing and shameful.87 Diane Purkiss states that women were ‘moister, and more polluted and flowing and […] thus more prone to impinge leakily on someone else’s space’.88 Sexual impurity – of which unmarried mothers were guilty – magnified women’s polluting effect and playwrights used this belief in their work. In Thomas Middleton’s The Changeling, BeatriceJoanna, who was seduced before her marriage, warns her father that she is contagious: O come not near me, sir, I shall defile you: I am that of your blood was taken from you For your better health; look no more upon’t. But cast it to the ground regardlessly, Let not the common sewer take it from distinction.89

Similarly, in Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, after Anne has been unfaithful to her husband he asks for their children to be brought to them only to demand that they are removed, punishing her with a form of on-stage ripping of the child from her womb: 85 ibid., p. 35. 86 Kristeva, Powers of Horror. 87 Paster, Body Embarrassed, p. 25; Gowing, Common Bodies, p. 22. 88 Purkiss, Witch in History, p. 121. 89 Middleton, ‘The Changeling’, p. V.iii.149.

The Liminal child and mother

97

Away with them, lest as her spotted body Hath stained their names with stripe of bastardy, So her adult’rous breath may blast their spirits With her infectious thoughts.90

Douglas’ phrase ‘matter out of place’ appears an apt description of how an unmarried woman might have felt toward her newborn. It suggests that when infant bodies were found in privies it may not have been entirely due to such places being private and beyond the home.91 Valerie Fildes excludes such cases from her study of abandonment ‘since they were more likely to be cases of intended infanticide’,92 but when infant bodies were found in this location it may have been because, as Hoffer and Hull suggest: ‘Some young, ill-tutored mothers did not know when they were pregnant, much less so in labor, and their infant might have fallen into a privy by accident, or been placed there after stillbirth’.93 That findings such as those of Birksted-Breen can result from research with women who were happy to be pregnant and unlikely to be regarded as social outcasts, suggests that an unmarried early modern woman may have regarded the child she was carrying with fear and animosity.94 A woman may have thought of the infant as an ‘intruder’ which came away from her body’s secret places and should be disposed of like any other bodily ‘dirt’ – with force to put it at a distance.95 Reading the Sussex inquests with the benefit of knowledge about modern women’s mental feelings toward their unborn infants, and with awareness of anthropological theories about dirt and defilement, what really lies behind the infanticide cases becomes less open to broad assumptions. Ultimately, we cannot know what was in the minds of Alice Banks and Alice Thatcher when they each threw their infants’ bodies from windows.96 Nor can we know why Joan Power threw her newborn onto a mound of earth, or Elizabeth White threw hers into a cellar.97 Yet their actions appear to be more than simple cases of unmarried women seeking to destroy the evidence that they 90 Heywood, ‘A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603)’, pp. Scene 12, 123. 91 Kilday, Infanticide, p. 63. 92 Fildes, ‘Maternal feelings’, p. 144. 93 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 10. 94 Of course, many women welcomed the prospect of motherhood. See Becker, Death, pp. 35, 192. 95 Walker, ‘Just stories’, p. 102. 96 Cockburn, ed. Sussex Indictments : Elizabeth I, p. 25 #106; ———, ed. Sussex Indictments: James I, p. 120 #647. 97 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 68 #273; Cockburn, ed. Sussex Indictments: James I, p. 98 #393.

98 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

had given birth. When infant bodies were thrown or left on dung heaps, it may have been a convenient way of disposing of the evidence of infanticide, but equally a woman may have considered what had come from her body’s secret places as little different to bodily waste. Even if she did accept that it was an infant, she may have been unclear about its place in the world, and have not fully understood that the church and state would consider taking its life as an act of murder. The fact that women were drawn to liminal, water places when they killed or disposed of infants – places where the borders between life and death are perceived to exist – and the fact that some appeared both to kill the infant and to give it some form of care, suggests that early modern women may have felt uncertain about the status of the infant and the act they had committed, an idea which fits readily with the lack of agreement among medical, legal and religious writers. Their actions may have been part ritual, part folk memory, part cleansing, and part a re-enaction of baptism. When a woman threw her infant, it suggests a definite emotion, associated with shame and repugnance. Yet all these actions are related to a sense of ambivalence toward the infant, which in turn emphasises its liminality.

The liminal world of childbirth From her monument in St. Pancras Old Church, London, Philadelphia Woolaston looks out from her bed, raised on an elbow and with her swaddled infant at her side. The tablet beneath the statue suggests that Philadelphia, who died in childbirth in 1616 along with her child, is speaking to the congregation: ‘If Youth If Feature Lovlynesse Or Ought / That In Our Sex May Ornaments Be Thought / […] I Had Not Dy’d’. Her words, a surprising eulogy of self-praise from the grave, suggest the deceased woman living in the present, so that she seems simultaneously alive and dead, part of the congregation, yet apart from it. For four hundred years, this has been the liminal place she has appeared to occupy. Such an in-between state is, in some ways, an extension of her state of being during the later months of her pregnancy, a time which was marked by a myriad of special practices and rituals. These customs set pregnant women apart, both physically and psychologically, and constructed them as revered beings whose existence made them both part of, and separate from, the everyday life of the household. One aspect of these rituals in apparent in Philadelphia Woolaston’s monument. Its depiction of a bedpost and bed hangings suggests lying in,

The Liminal child and mother

99

the period of seclusion which preceded and followed childbirth, and which continued until the closing ritual of Churching. David Starkey’s description of the preparations for Anne Boleyn’s lying in describes the extravagance which lying in could involve: The walls and ceilings were close hung and tented with arras – that is, precious tapestry woven with gold or silver threads – and the floor thickly laid with rich carpets. The arras was left loose at a single window, so that the Queen could order a little light and air to be admitted, though this was generally felt inadvisable. Precautions were taken, too, about the design of the hangings. Figurative tapestry, with human or animal images, was ruled out. The fear was that it could trigger fantasies in the Queen’s mind which might lead to the child being deformed. Instead, simple, repetitive patterns were preferred.98

These preparations were, of course, an extreme version of what was recommended for all women. The advice in medical books, which recommend lying in a peaceful room with female attendants, constructs respectably pregnant women as goddess-like figures attended by votaresses. Being with child required special foods and a careful sleep and exercise regime.99 Jacques Guillemeau recommends that a woman who was pregnant should be ‘carried in a chaire or litter betweene two strong men, and chiefely two houres before meales’ and to preserve her beauty she was to ‘weare a chaine of gold about her necke’.100 In the weeks approaching the birth she was to sit in a perfumed bath each morning for fifteen to thirty minutes before being put to bed and massaged with oils.101 These recommended adornments, cordials, and foods are semi-medical, semi-ritualistic, and semi-superstitious. They were to care for the woman’s mental and physical well-being at a time when the use of pre-Reformation sanctified objects, such as holy girdles, was forbidden,102 although Keith Thomas argues that their use often continued.103 The duties of the midwife involved actions which today appear like animal sacrifice and resemble pagan-like rituals for a goddess. They exist in strange juxtaposition with the midwife’s Christian 98 Starkey, Elizabeth, p. 2. 99 Guillemeau, Childe-birth, p. 20. For the benefit of oils see also Rueff, Expert Midwife, pp. 70, 72, 79. 100 Guillemeau, Childe-birth, pp. 22, 27. 101 ibid., p. 30. 102 Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, pp. 11, 14. 103 Thomas, Religion, pp. 84, 222.

100 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

duty to baptise the infant if its life was in danger. According to Guillemeau the special attendant was to: cause a sheep to be fleaed, and to wrap the womans backe and belly in the skin yet warme, thereby to strengthen and comfort all those parts, which have beene as it were disjointed, and pulled one from another, with much striving in her travaile. Avicen104thinks it enough to lay upon the womans belly, a Hares skin, newly stript from the Hare being alive.105

Such attentive care continued in the days and weeks after the birth, as did the offerings to the new mother. Guillemeau continues: The first five dayes, let her use Broths, Panades, new Egges, and gelly not glutting herselfe (as commonly they doe) either with flesh or Almonds. In the morning let her take a supping or Broth: and so likewise at dinner […] The great Ladies of Italy doe use a water made of Capons.106

The essentially abstemious diet continues with a recipe for chicken broth which could include ‘leafe of Gold, with a dramme of powder of pearle’. Rueff suggests a less demanding and more pragmatic approach to pregnancy. He advises women to ‘be of a merry heart’ and to ‘give their endeavour to moderat joyes and sports’ and to ‘take heed of cold and sharp winds, great heat, anger, perturbations of the minde, feares and terrours’.107 The extent to which women followed these recommendations is questionable, and they may therefore tell us more about how pregnant women were perceived than about the practices which were really followed. However, a version of this indulgence was followed by some, and was sourly observed by the childless, and perhaps embittered, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Her criticisms of pregnant women included their ‘Eating more […] taking pride in their great Bellies’ and using their condition as an excuse for ‘Feigning Laziness’ and ‘the wasteful expense of fancy childbed linen and other accoutrements of the lying in’.108 The sense of the pregnant woman as deity is also captured in sixteenthand seventeenth-century portraits celebrating women in the late stages of 104 Avicenna (first century CE), a Persian physician and polymath. 105 Guillemeau, Childe-birth, p. 101. 106 ibid., p. 191. 107 Rueff, Expert Midwife, p. 67. 108 Mendelson, Mental World, p. 25.

The Liminal child and mother

101

pregnancy.109 Marcus Gheeraerts’ portrait of Anne, Lady Pope shows her wearing pearls, emblems of purity and attributes of St. Margaret of Antioch the patron saint of childbirth.110 These, and her white dress contrasted with her pregnant figure, suggest she can be perceived as both pregnant and chaste, in the sense of married chastity, which Protestants regarded as women’s most virtuous state. From the pinnacle of the triangle formed by her family group – a position of power – and adorned with a complex headdress and wired collar forming a quasi-halo, Anne Pope looks at the world of the viewer from the edge of her separate realm of the pregnant woman, like a virgin goddess of motherhood. The end of the woman’s lying-in and her reintegration into society were marked by the ritual of Churching,111 a ceremony held at the church for the mother and her friends and during which the new mother’s liminality was sometimes marked by her wearing a veil or sitting apart from the others in church. Churching was surrounded in controversy.112 There was uncertainty about its purpose – whether it was celebration, thanksgiving for the mother’s safe delivery, purification, or her welcome back to the community.113 Religious leaders regarded it as a dangerous survival of Popish and Jewish practices; Thomas says it was considered ‘one of the most obnoxious Popish survivals in the Anglican church’.114 For some, Churching was semi-magical, again linking it with the rituals identified by van Gennep and Turner. Social reformers reviled its implication that women who had given birth were temporarily unclean.115 Many objected to a rising lack of decorum at the service.116 Again, Mary Cavendish criticises: ‘To redouble the Charge, there must be Gossiping, not only with Costly Banquets at the Christening and Churching, but they have Gossiping all the time of their Lying-in’.117 Yet the church expected women to go through the ceremony. In Sussex, Margaret Parker of Thakeham was named to Churchwardens because ‘she came not to give thanks unto Almighty God for her safe deliverance from the payne and perill of childebirth’.118 ‘Mr. Robinson’, the minister at Launsing, was 109 Croft and Hearn, ‘‘Only matrimony’’. 110 Hearn and Jones, Marcus Gheeraerts II, p. 46. 111 Cressy, ‘Thanksgiving’; Wilson, ‘Ceremony of childhood’. 112 ———, Ritual, pp. 175, 207–209. 113 Cressy, ‘Thanksgiving’; Thomas, Religion, p. 68. 114 ———, Religion, p. 42. 115 ibid., p. 43. 116 Cressy, ‘Thanksgiving’, p. 128. 117 Mendelson, Mental World, p. 26. 118 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 17.

102 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

presented to the Archbishops because he ‘did put of [sic] from churching the wife of one William Osborne upon the Sabbath day and is not as yet churched’.119 Such complaints suggest that these mothers continued to be apart from society; women certainly wanted the ceremony. There was a belief that if a woman died in childbirth without being Churched she should be denied a Christian burial.120 Such ideas help to explain why an excommunicated woman was so distressed by her inability to be Churched that her husband carried out the ceremony, and why a woman Churched herself.121

Unmarried women and pregnancy Throughout the final months of her pregnancy the special diet and exercise regimes, the being separate from her household and occupying a room designated for her use, and the reintegration signified by the Churching ceremony, all constructed a woman who was with child as a liminal being, poised to move from her previous state to that of the newly birthed mother. But what of unmarried women who, rather than enjoying a life of luxury and celebration, felt forced into a life of secrecy and concealment? Their attitudes toward being pregnant, and their ability to pursue any kind of special regime may have been virtually non-existent, not only from a practical or fiscal viewpoint, but also emotionally. It is hard to imagine an unmarried woman following Rueff’s advice to ‘be of merry heart’ and to avoid ‘perturbations of the minde’ when her unhappy situation meant she might feel forced to conceal her pregnancy and give birth alone, and might ultimately lead to her killing her newborn. Instead of the usual rituals of childbirth, for many, from moment of their ‘fornication’ to the disposal of the infant corpse, their lives were defined by guilt and secrecy. For those who admitted pregnancy to themselves, there were glimmers of hope in that they might be able to destroy the child before it was born. If unsuccessful, they could turn to the lying-in houses which some women ran, where they could be cared for before and during childbirth. The Middlesex County Records contain a case from 1608 in which two men took out bonds to guarantee the appearance of Margaret Rutt at the next Session. She was described as ‘a common harbourer of light weemen great with child and suffring them to be 119 ibid., p. 93. 120 Thomas, Religion, p. 43. The belief endorses the idea of the polluting body. 121 Cressy, ‘Thanksgiving’, p. 130; Thomas, Religion.

The Liminal child and mother

103

brought to bedd in her house’.122 David Cressy cites several similar cases and writes that running such a house was a charitable act which also provided an income.123 But the final phrase of the Middlesex record hints at the dark side to this business, telling us that Margaret Rutt could ‘give no accompt whatt is become of the children’. Women accused of infanticide often claimed that they gave birth alone though David Cressy refutes this. He writes that ‘Few single women were completely alone when they came to give birth, and most secured some attendance by neighbouring women and assistance by midwives’.124 Yet, the single woman who gives birth alone, or with direly inadequate assistance, can be glimpsed in historical records. Among the many shocking details concerning Richard Barnerde, which are recorded in the Sussex Coroners’ inquests, is the fact that ‘she gave birth […] without the company of women’.125 Similarly, the Old Bailey proceedings tell us that Robert Foulks fathered a child on a single woman in his care, but when she goes into labour and asks ‘for the wellcome assistance of her own sex’ it is denied her.126 Lone birth is a trope in street literature. The single woman in A Lamentable Ballad of a Ladies Fall instructs her maid: ‘Call not my Mother for thy life / nor call no women here’ while in No Naturall Mother the unwed woman sings that she gave birth ‘where none me saw’.127 In the ballad concerning The Norfolk Lass, we are told: ‘Up into her Chamber she went alone / The Women below did hear her groan’, and when they go to investigate they find the newborn on the floor.128 Writers may have favoured the idea of lone birth as an aspect of these accounts of immorality and murder. It was a possibility which would have been frightening, and a reality which would have been dangerous. The situation, with its suggested echo of the biblical punishment: ‘in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children’ (Genesis, 3.16), would have given an air of didactic morality to such works. Historical records and literature also show the expectation for the rite of passage into motherhood to be marked in some way, even when the pregnancy did not fall within the social ideal of matrimony. Sussex archives include the case of Elizabeth Diggins of Binderton who ‘was delivered of 122 Jeaffreson, ed. Middlesex Records Vol II, p. 46. 123 Cressy, ‘Thanksgiving’. 124 ———, Birth, Marriage & Death, p. 75. 125 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1485–1558, p. 47 #165. The case is discussed in Chapter 8. 126 ‘A True and Perfect’. 127 Anon, Ladies Fall; Parker, No Naturall Mother. 128 Anon, Norfolk lass. See also Brewer, Bloudy Mother, pp. B2, B2v; Anon, Unnatural Mother – Kennet.

104 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

a bastard childe. Shee had layen in about iij weeks’.129 After this period of lying in, she had ‘stole out of our parrishe without punishment’. In Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew (1641),130 a comic tale of vagrant life, the charitable Oldrents comments on the noise coming from his barn where the Crew is temporarily residing. He is told by his steward, Randall: ‘There’s a doxy / Has been in labor, sir’.131 Oldrent’s instinct is to celebrate the moment: ‘We will have such a lying in, and such / A christ’ning, such upsitting and gossiping’,132 but is denied the moment when Randall describes the events which follow such a birth: Their work is done already: The bratling’s born; the doxy’s in the strummel Laid by an autem mort 133 of their own crew, That serv’d for midwife; and the childbed woman Eating of a hasty pudding for her supper And for the child, part of it for pap.134

At the opposite end of the social scale, in Thomas Middleton’s The Witch, the bastard bearing Francisca goes into hiding for the final stages of her pregnancy – possible for an elite woman whose money and power allowed her to use others to help her conceal her wrong. Away from her husband, she follows a special diet, which is queried mockingly by her co-conspirator Almachildes: ‘Come, how much spice and sugar have you left now / At this poor one-month’s voyage?’135 Beliefs about Churching, cleansing, and the denial of heaven to those who were unchurched help us to understand why women were so desperate for the rite to be carried out. Cressy writes of a woman awaiting execution for infanticide wanting to be allowed the ceremony, and another who wanted to be Churched although her child was stillborn.136 Although bastard bearers could be Churched, archbishops were keen to deny the right until the woman had named the child’s father and carried out penance, thus using her desire 129 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 69. 130 Brome, Jovial Crew. 131 ibid., p. II.ii.126. 132 ibid., p. I.ii.134. 133 Autem mort. ‘In canting language, a married women’; ———, ‘Jovial Crew’. Persons of the Play, 15 134 ibid., p. II.ii.146. 135 Middleton, The Witch, p. II.iii.40. 136 Cressy, ‘Thanksgiving’, pp. 120, 125.

The Liminal child and mother

105

for the ceremony to force her to conform to societal demands.137 In any case, she may have felt ambivalent about Churching. Although the ceremony was seen as marking the woman’s reintegration into society, the unwed mother would almost certainly remain partially outside the respectable matron group whose status gave them power as assessors of suspects’ virginity or pregnancy, as witnesses in court, and as part of the friendship group who helped others during childbirth.138 Cressy believes the main purpose of Churching was thanksgiving and celebration,139 but while a bastard bearer may have wanted to give thanks that she had survived the ‘grim lottery of child-bed’, she might not have been thankful about the situation she found herself in. Additionally, she may have felt unable to afford the service or the celebration to follow it, or have lacked people willing to celebrate with her. In answer to the question, was it also purification? Cressy answers ‘Only if she thought herself unclean’, which a bastard bearer may, more than others, have believed. Not taking part in Churching or Baptism could have contributed to a mother’s sense of herself and her child as liminal. The lack of these ceremonies could have emphasised the reality of her situation – that she was between the two traditional cultures of the single woman working to assemble a dowry and find a husband, and that of the married matron and respectable mother. By concealing her pregnancy, giving birth alone and then committing infanticide, a single woman could attempt to relocate herself from her liminal state into that of a single woman. Unchaste women who tricked men into marriage when pregnant demonstrate another route out of this liminality. They were popular subjects in early modern ballads and their colourful stories are considered in Chapter 5. In conclusion, most infanticide was committed by unmarried women, and fear and shame can be assumed to be their principal motives. However, the Coroners’ inquests studied for this research suggest that looking at the crime purely from the perspective of the socio-economic position of these perpetrators, gives it a concreteness, whereas in fact many aspects of the women’s actions appear elusive and intangible. The impression arises from the killers’ actions which seem illogical and bewildering, in particular the frequency with which infants or their corpses are described as having been thrown, and the number of cases in which water is either the cause of death, or the place where bodies are left. This chapter has suggested that the women’s actions can be understood if they are seen in the context of wider social beliefs about infants and pregnancy, in particular the fact that 137 ibid., p. 131. 138 Oldham, ‘History of the Jury’. 139 Cressy, ‘Thanksgiving’, p. 145.

106 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

unborn and newborn infants were regarded as liminal beings, and that pregnant and newly birthed women were similarly given a liminal status. Perceived infant liminality can be inferred from the writings of early modern theologians, lawyers and medical practitioners who sought to ascertain whether an unborn or unbaptised infant should be considered of this world. Legitimate parents had their own feelings about new life. Texts as public as church monuments and as intimate as private verse reveal the high level of emotional attachment which was felt for miscarried or stillborn infants. Many of these capture early modern uncertainty about when life really began. Welcome pregnancies took place within a culture in which a woman with child was subject to medical advice covering exercise, diet and what the expectant mother saw and heard. Following the birth, she was subject to an extended period of seclusion during lying in, which ended with the Churching ceremony and marked her reintegration into society. Both the seclusion and reintegration are symptomatic of the mother’s liminality. None of these comforts applied to unhappily pregnant women. Their infants did not receive monuments and they did not commit their thoughts to writing. The mothers’ memorials are the archives in which their actions are recorded which again suggest the infant as liminal. Many supposed killers are described as having thrown the infant. The action appears related to ideas about the invasion of the body’s boundaries and waste. It raises the question of whether, when an ill-informed and frightened young woman destroyed what came from her body, she might have been unclear about the significance of her action. Similarly, some deaths were caused by water, or bodies were left by watery places such as streams and ponds. Water is widely regarded as a liminal place, marking the border between life and death, and is also associated with Christian baptism. When a woman killed her infant, she may have been in a disturbed mental state beyond rationality; she may have regarded the infant as less than human, and herself as an invaded person who was disposing of body waste by throwing it into a privy or gutter. When she drowned her child, or left it by water, she appears to have turned to this liminal medium as part of an intuitive association between water, women and children which, as we have seen, was part of ancient myths and remains with us through rituals of baptism. The drowning of a child may have been part of an atavistic ritual of which she was intuitively aware. Her motives may have been deeprooted, complex, and her actions only partly conscious. Taken together, these ideas dilute a straightforward cause-and-effect paradigm for explaining infanticide, and contribute to showing that the crime could be driven by the complexities of the early modern mental and emotional landscape.

The Liminal child and mother

107

Bibliography Primary sources Anon, A declaration from Oxford (1651) (ESTC R226660). ———, Deeds Against Nature and Monsters by Kinde (1614) (ESTC S115346). ———, A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall (1686–1688) (ESTC R234208; EBBA 20242; Pepys 1.510–511). ———, The Norfolk Lass: or, The Maid that was Blown With-Child (1672–1696) (ESTC R227371; EBBA 30804; Roxburghe 2.366). ———, Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers (1591) (ESTC S2242). ———, The Unnatural Mother Being a Full and True Account of one Elizabeth Kennet (1697) (ESTC R187648). Brewer, Thomas, The Bloudy Mother (1609) (ESTC S124650). Brome, Richard, A Jovial Crew (1641). Edited by Ann Haaker. Nebraska: Edward Arnold, 1968. ———, ‘A Jovial Crew: or, the Merry Beggars (1641)’, In The Dramatic Works of Richard Brome, pp. 341–452. New York: AMS, 1966. Carey, Mary, ‘Upon the Sight of my Abortive Birth (1657)’, In Kissing the Rod: An anthology of 17th-century women’s verse, edited by Germaine Greer, Jeslyn Medoff, et al., pp. 158–161. London: Virago, 1988. Cockburn, J.S., ed. Calendar of Assize Records: Sussex Indictments: Elizabeth I. London: HMSO, 1975. ———, ed. Calendar of Assize Records: Sussex Indictments: James I: HMSO, 1975. Coke, Edward, The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England. Vol. III, 1644. Digby, Everard, A Short Introduction for to Learne To Swimme, 1595. Gerard, John, The Herball or Generall Historie Of Plantes. Edited by Thomas Johnson, 1636. Gesner, Conrad, The Newe Jewell of Health, 1576. Goodcole, Henry, Natures Cruell Step-Dames (1637). Guillemeau, Jacques, Childe-birth or The Happy Delivery of Women, 1635. Herbert, George, ‘‘Holy Baptism I’, (1633) ’, In The English Poems of George Herbert, edited by Helen Wilcox. Cambridge: CUP, 1640. Heywood, Thomas, ‘A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603)’, In A Woman Killed with Kindness and other Domestic Plays, edited by Martin Wiggins, pp. 70–128. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Hill, William, The Infancie of the Soule: or, The Soul of an Infant, 1605. Hunnisett, R.F., ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1485–1558. Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1985. ———, ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1558–1603. Kew: PRO Publications, 1996.

108 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

———, ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1603–1688. Kew: PRO Publications, 1998. Jeaffreson, John Cordy, ed. Middlesex County Records Vol II. Middlesex County Records Society: Greater London Council, 1887. Johnstone, Hilda, ed. Churchwarden’s Presentments (17th century) Part 1: Archdeaconry of Chichester. Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1947 / 8. Middleton, Thomas, ‘The Changeling’, In Women Beware Women and Other Plays edited by Richard Dutton, pp. 165–236. Oxford: OUP, 1999. ———, The Witch. Edited by Elizabeth Schafer. London: A&C Black, 1994. Milton, John, Paradise Lost. Edited by Alastair Fowler. Harlow: Longman, 1998. Parker, Martin, No Naturall Mother, but a Monster (1634) (ESTC S94604). Percey, William, The Compleat Swimmer, 1658. Rueff, Jacob, The Expert Midwife, or an Excellent and Most Necessary Treatise of the Generation and Birth of Man, 1637. Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale. Edited by J.H.P. Pafford. London: Macmillan, 1963. Walker, Anthony, The Vertuous Wife, or the Holy Life of Mrs Elizabeth Walker, 1694.

Secondary sources Anselment, Raymond A., The Realms of Apollo: Literature and Healing in SeventeenthCentury England. Cranberry, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1994. ———, ‘‘The Teares of Nature’: Seventeenth-Century Parental Bereavement’, Modern Philology 91, no. 1 (1993), pp. 26–53. Becker, Lucinda M., Death and the Early Modern Englishwoman. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Birksted-Breen, Dana, ‘The experience of having a baby: a developmental view’, In ‘Spilt Milk’: Perinatal Loss and Breakdown, edited by Joan Raphael-Leff, pp. 17–27. London: Institute of Psychiatry, 2000. Chevalier, Jean, and Gheerbrandt, Alain, The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by John Buchanan-Brown. London: Penguin, 1996. Cirlot, J.E., A Dictionary of Symbols. Translated by Jack Sage. London: Routledge, 1993. Cooper, J.C., An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols. London: Thames & Hudson, 1978. Cosslett, Tess, Women Writing Childbirth: Modern Discourses of Motherhood. Manchester: Manchester University, 1994. Cressy, David, Birth , Marriage & Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. ———, ‘Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women in Post-Reformation England’, Past and Present 141 (1993), pp. 106–116. Croft, Pauline, and Hearn, Karen, ‘‘Only matrimony maketh children to be certain’ Two Elizabethan Pregnancy Portraits’, British Art Journal 3, no. 3 (2001), pp. 19–24.

The Liminal child and mother

109

Damme, Catherine, ‘Infanticide: The worth of an infant under law’, Medical History 22 (1978), pp. 1–24. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Ark, 1966. Fildes, Valerie, ‘Maternal feelings re-assessed: child abandonment and neglect in London and Westminster 1550–1800’, In Women as Mothers in Pre-industrial England, edited by Valerie Fildes, pp. 139–178. London: Routledge, 1990. Fissell, Mary E., Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Forbes, T.R., The Midwife and the Witch. New Haven: Yale University, 1966. Gittings, Clare, Death, Burial and the Individual. London: Croom Helm, 1984. Gowing, Laura, ‘Bodies and Stories’, In Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women, edited by Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seef, pp. 317–332. London: University of Delaware Press, 2003. ———, Common Bodies: women, touch and power in seventeenth-century England. New Haven: Yale University, 2003. ———, ‘Secret Births and Infanticide in Seventeenth-Century England’, Past & Present 156 (1997), pp. 87–115. Hearn, Karen, and Jones, Rica, Marcus Gheeraerts II: Elizabethan Artist in Focus. London: Tate, 2003. Hoffer, Peter C., and Hull, N.E.H., Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England 1558–1803. New York: New York University Press, 1981. Howlett, D.R., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. Vol. Fascicule XII Pos-Pro. Oxford: OUP for British Academy, 2009. Kendrick, Christopher, ‘Satire and Speculation in Milton’s Limbo’, Milton Studies 54 (2013), pp. 229–258. Kilday, Anne-Marie, A History of Infanticide in Britain, c. 1600 to the Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Colombia University Press, 1982. Laoutaris, Chris, Shakespearean Maternities: Crises of Conception in Early Modern England. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. M’Kenzie, Dan, ‘Children and Wells’, Folklore 18, no. 3 (1907), pp. 253–282. Mendelson, Sara Heller, The Mental World of Stuart Women. Brighton: Harvester, 1987. Müller, Anja, ‘Childhood in Early Modern Stairs of Life – Envisioning Age Distinctions’, In Childhood in the English Renaissance, edited by Anja Müller, pp. 43–56. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2013. Newton, Hannah, The Sick Child in Early Modern England. Oxford: OUP, 2014. Oldham, James C., ‘History of the Jury of Matrons’, Criminal Justice History 6 (1985), pp. 1–64.

110 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Oosterwijk, Sophie, ‘Chrysoms, shrouds and infants on English tomb monuments: A question of terminology?’, Church Monuments XV (2000), pp. 44–64. Paster, Gail Kern, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1993. Phillippy, Patricia, ‘A Comfortable Farewell: Child-loss and Funeral Monuments in Early Modern England’, In Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood, edited by Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh, pp. 17–37. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Presciutti, Diana Bullen, ‘Dead Infants, Cruel Mothers, and Heroic Popes: The visual rhetoric of Foundling Care at the Hospital of Santo Spirito, Rome’, Renaissance Quarterly 64, no. 3 (2011), pp. 752–799. Purkiss, Diane, The Witch in History. London: Routledge, 1996. Riddle, John M., Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Shaw-Taylor, Desmond, and Scott, Jennifer, Bruegel to Rubens: Masters of Flemish Painting. London: Royal Collection Publications, 2007. Simpson, Jacqueline, and Roud, Steve, The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore. Oxford: OUP, 2003. Spivack, Carla, ‘To ‘Bring Down the Flowers’: The cultural context of abortion law in early modern England’, OCU Law 14 (2007), pp. 107–151. Starkey, David, Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne: Thorndike Press, 2001. Taub, Susan S., ‘“News from the Dead”: The strange story of a woman who gave birth, was executed, and was resurrected as a virgin’, In The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation, edited by Laurel Amtower and Dororhea Kehler, pp. 193–210. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003. Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800. London: Penguin, 1983. ———, Religion and the Decline of Magic. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. Varner, Gary R., Sacred Wells. New York: Algora, 2009. ———, Water of Life, Water of Death: The folklore and mythology of sacred waters. Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2002. Walker, Garthine, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. ———, ‘Just Stories: Telling Tales of Infant Death in Early Modern England’, In Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women, edited by Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seef, pp. 98–115. London: University of Delaware Press, 2003. Watson, Katherine D., Forensic Medicine in Western Society: A History. London: Routledge, 2011.

The Liminal child and mother

111

Wilson, Adrian, ‘The ceremony of childhood and its interpretation ’, In Women as Mothers in Pre-industrial England, edited by Valerie Fildes, pp. 65–97. London: Routledge, 1990. ———, Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

On-line sources ‘A true and perfect Relation Of the Tryal and Condemnation, Execution and last Speech of that unfortunate Gentleman Mr. Robert Foulks (1679)’. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ [Accessed 1 July 2014]. ‘Judgments – Attorney General’s Reference No. 3 1994’. House of Lords, https:// www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199798/ldjudgmt/jd970724/gneral01. htm [Accessed 5 June 2018]. Syse, Karen V.L. ‘The river as an arena for leisure and pleasure in Early Modern England’, Interdisciplinary Communications 2008/9, http://www.cas.uio.no/ publications_/transference.php [Accessed 2 October 2014].

4

Love, Law and Liminality Abstract Changes to marriage laws, and confusion about matrimonial customs, could place couples in a ‘betwixt and between’ situation with accompanying uncertainty about whether intercourse was permissible. This made unmarried women vulnerable to desertion if they became pregnant. The punishments for ‘fornication’ or bastardy, which included public penance and whipping, both having strong parallels with the rites of passage, were a public demonstration of the woman’s liminal status in her society. As the punishments were designed to shame, they contributed to a situation which could easily lead to infanticide. Women would have sought every possible means to avoid pregnancy during courtship. Therefore, the chapter examines the extent to which women could avoid pregnancy by using contraception and / or abortion, and the availability and effectiveness of the practices available. Keywords: Betrothal and informal marriage; Premarital pregnancy; Birth control; Punishments for bastard bearing; Self-punishment

Jaques:

Touchstone[aside]:

And will you, being a man of your breeding, be married under a bush like a beggar? Get you to church, and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is. This fellow will but join you together as wainscot. I am not in the mind but I were better to be married of him than of another, for he is not like to marry me well; and not being well married, it will be a good excuse for me hereafter to leave my wife.1

Looking at early modern marriage and attitudes to premarital sex across a gap of four hundred years and more, it is hard to imagine what religious, legal and social groups were thinking, or indeed what they expected to happen, as a result of their strictures. As apprenticeships had to be completed before couples 1 Shakespeare. As You Like It, III.iii.74.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch04

114 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

married, so that they were financially self-sufficient, most women wed around the age of twenty-six. But, getting married was risibly easy – a few words in the present tense, with no other ceremony or even witnesses, constituted a binding union. It is unsurprising that some couples, unwilling to wait, married informally and that, after a change of heart (usually by the man), a woman could find herself in a union she could not prove, pregnant and abandoned. Add to this the phobic attitudes to bastard bearing, and the demeaning and shaming public punishments and financial hardship which could result from unmarried pregnancy, and it is unsurprising that some women committed infanticide in a desperate attempt to regain control of their lives. Of course, this was not the case for all single women who were obliged to wait for the appropriate time to wed. As Patricia Crawford and others have observed, high levels of bridal pregnancy indicate that many couples anticipated their formal wedding and simply married later, thus making the situation more regular.2 They did not necessarily escape censure, as Sussex Churchwardens Presentments show, but doubtless these early misdemeanours were soon forgotten. Other women were less fortunate and joined the ranks of bastard bearers who would seek to scrape a living as best they could. The fact that these women bore infants at about the same age as their married counterparts suggests that they may have been expecting to marry. While some would have been the victims of men who manipulated the lax marriage laws to their advantage, others may well have been the subject of the cruel vicissitudes of fate. Early modern life was dangerous, as much in the rural farming and fishing communities of Sussex as anywhere else. As the Sussex Coroners’ inquests attest, even staggering home after an evening at a tavern could prove fatal. Martin Ingram comments that an unexpected death, impressment into the army, and financial problems may have prevented or delayed marriages. He writes: ‘Many unmarried mothers thus differed from pregnant brides only in that they had enjoyed worse luck’.3 They were ‘stranded by ill-judgement or ill-fortune’.4 These are the areas which this chapter investigates.

The ‘betwixt and between’ of betrothal and marriage Uncertainties surrounding courtship and marriage in this period meant that couples could find themselves in a situation which Frances E. Dolan 2 Crawford, Parents, p. 40. 3 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 163; Wilson, Ritual, p. 8. 4 Wrightson, ‘Nadir’, p. 190.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

115

calls a ‘grey area’,5 in which there was confusion about whether they were legally married, or whether a betrothal or contract to marry permitted them to consummate their relationship. The legal marriage process, which had been in place from the twelfth century and would remain essentially unchanged until 1753,6 was simply ‘the exchange of words of present consent (I take thee, N).’7 Helmholz writes: The consent of the parties was all that mattered to the question of a union’s validity. Public ceremony, marriage gifts, consent of parents, permission of a lord, endowment of the woman, publication of banns, and the presence of a priest were all, strictly speaking, irrelevant to that question.

If lovers exchanged words in the future tense, ‘I shall take thee’, it constituted a contract to marry later. In Of Domesticall Duties (1622) William Gouge sets out the correct ordering of the Christian family, adding the phrase ‘and doe faithfully promise to marie thee in time meet and convenient’ after the words ‘I take thee’.8 This, he continues ‘serveth such a right and property of the one in the other as cannot be alienated without licence had from the great Judge of Heaven’. He goes on to warn of the ‘abusing’ of contracts: Many make it a very marriage, and thereupon have a greater solemnitie at their contract, then at their mariage: many take libertie after a contract to know their spouse, as if they were maried: an unwarrantable and dishonest practice.9

Such marriages created ‘uncertainties, moral ambiguities and opportunities for deceit and fraud’.10 As even witnesses were not required, the proof of a marriage became one person’s word against another’s and, as Helmholz states: What cannot be proved cannot be enforced, and where one party had a change of heart or remembered the events differently and therefore denied the contract, the courts of the church would dismiss the couple ‘to their consciences’.11 5 Dolan, ‘Shakespeare and Marriage’, p. 629. 6 Helmholz, Canon Law p. 522; Ingram, Church Courts, p. 132. 7 Helmholz, Canon Law p. 524. 8 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 198. 9 ibid., p. 202. 10 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 133. 11 Helmholz, Canon Law p. 529.

116 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

In his theories of rites and liminal situations, van Gennep writes of betrothal as a ‘period of transition’ and such loose arrangements clearly placed couples in an uncertain situation,12 particularly since, as Wrightson states, it is apparent that restraints ‘crumbled once a marriage was in sight’.13 Describing the effect of this ambiguity Houlbrooke writes: ‘All too frequently informal or inadequately witnessed contracts took place in shops, fairs, backyards and fields’.14 As a result ‘at each stopping place on his circuit the commissary would be confronted with the spectacle of the unmarried mother-to-be, abandoned by a casual lover and cold-shouldered by an unfriendly community’.15 Another complication was that the validity of a marriage, and therefore the legitimacy of a child, could rest with the community, as Peter Laslett explains: It was public opinion and especially the opinion of the local community, the neighbours, which decided whether any particular association could be called a marriage, not only the Church and the law’.16

Attempts by the church to reform the principle of ‘exchange of words of present consent’ failed, but the financial and social importance of marriage, and the personal misery caused by the existing practice, led to a move toward a ceremony conducted by a priest in a church, with an entry in the church register.17 The evolutionary nature of these changes, and the confusion concerning what constituted a formal marriage, contributed to a climate of suspicion and watchfulness. Suspected couples could be named to the Archdeacons. The 1621 records for Clapham in West Sussex state: ‘We present one Hodges and Joane Bowles, which be come together in our parrishe; where they were marryed wee know not’.18 Sara Marshall of Wisborough Greene was presented for ‘unlawfully keeping company with Robert Hooper, glover, as if shee had bene his wife; but (for any thing wee can learne) they were never marryed’.19 The wording suggests that enquiries had been made. The 1625 reports for Arundel state that ‘Elizabeth Hopkin and Thomas Freene ([…] his late wive’s daughter) are married together, but where or by whome wee know not’.20 12 van Gennep, Rites of Passage, p. 116. 13 Wrightson, English Society, p. 85; Wilson, Ritual, p. 15. 14 Houlbrooke, Church Courts, p. 55. 15 ibid. 16 Laslett, Family Life, p. 109. See also Wilson, Ritual, p. 28. 17 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 133. 18 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 4. 19 ibid., p. 123. 20 ibid., p. 100.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

117

It is unclear whether those who questioned marriages were concerned for morals or feared a bastard birth, and spying did not always prevent a birth outside marriage. William Dyer and ‘Sibill his Mayd’ of Yapton, Sussex, appear twice in the Churchwarden’s Presentments. The first account states that ‘as the report goeth […] [they] have been contracted about a yeare since, and yet are unmarryed, and live in one house suspiciously together’.21 The suspicion was well founded, but the vigilance was futile, as a later entry confirms: ‘We present William Dyer, for harbouring his wife, Sibill Mascoll, with childe before marriage, and then he marryed her, and shee had a childe within one moneth after her marriage’.22 Sibill and William appear to have been contracted to marry, but the community required more ceremony before consummation was acceptable. Thomas Nicholson of Felpham was named to the Arundel court in 1621 for receiving: one Joane Capelin, as shee calleth her self, who being with childe, is thereof lately delivered; wee know not whence shee came nor what she is, but she saith she is married and comes from Burleigh nere Rochester in Kent.23

As the Presentments suggest, uncertainty about the validity of marriages created anxieties in communities. Those who entered informal marriage, and those who were betrothed, occupied a liminal time where their legal and moral position was debatable, and bastardy was possible due to misunderstanding rather than immorality or deliberate deception. Some may have failed to realise how vulnerable an informal marriage made them. Unconsummated marriages created another liminal state. This was a personal tragedy rather than a public concern though as Helmholz writes, if the husband or wife ‘not only would not, but could not, render the ‘marital debt’, a divorce was possible’.24 However, as remarriage was not allowed the law blithely and injudiciously attempted to commit men and women to lifelong celibacy, in reality inviting bastardy. Again, the Sussex archives describe women as pregnant but living apart from their husbands, such as Amy Powell who was ‘brought abed of a childe, suspected to bee a bastard, by her husbande living apart from her, not lately seene to our knowledge and not knowne whether alive or dead’.25 Similarly, Constance, ‘servant to 21 ibid., p. 22. 22 ibid., p. 34. 23 ibid., p. 4. 24 Helmholz, Canon Law pp. 548, 540. 25 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 17.

118 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

John Bymmble’ was ‘great with childe; and it is sayd she hath a husband but he hath not resorted to her these two yeares or upwards’.26 Such cases suggest that individuals did not believe that marriage breakdown should commit them to a lifetime of sexual abstinence.

Liminal marital states in literature The situations described above – the unclear laws which invited exploitation, uncertainty about the legality of a marriage, the personal misfortune of incomplete or unconsummated ceremonies – inspired creative writers who called upon what Margaret Loftus Ranald terms their ‘osmotic knowledge’ of marital law.27 Theatre audiences would also have known something of the confusing legal circumstances which writers used in their plots. As Ranald points out, many plays have something to say about betrothals and the legality of marriage, including Hamlet, Measure for Measure and All’s Well that Ends Well. In As You Like It, marriages and the courtships which accompany them are comically presented as couples confuse identities and intentions. Shakespeare’s inclusion of a marriage ceremony slips into the flirtatious mood of the surrounding dialogue almost unnoticed: Orlando: I take thee Rosalind for wife. Rosalind: I might ask you for your commission; but I do take thee Orlando for my husband. (IV.i.129)

The words – witnessed by Celia though this was not essential – constitute a marriage, and throughout the rest of the play Orlando and Rosalind are man and wife, though her cross-dressing prevents him from realising it. Alongside this is the interrupted ceremony between Touchstone and Audrey, which opens this chapter. It exposes the cynical exploitation to which a woman could be subjected. Similarly, Polixenes interrupts a potentially binding betrothal in The Winter’s Tale. Perdita’s later complaint that ‘The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have / Our contract celebrated’ suggests that she believes herself and Florizel contracted and that they merely lack the formal celebration (V.i.203). Shakespeare does not suggest the perilously ambiguous situation 26 ibid., p. 41. 27 Ranald, ‘As Marriage Binds’, p. 68. Ranald’s paper discusses matrimonial laws, how Shakespeare’s work related to them, and the legal loopholes which his characters could have used.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

119

in which this places Perdita, or the tragic outcome in his source Pandosto. After Dorastus (Ferdinand) and Fawnia (Perdita) ‘plight their trowth’ in an apparently private agreement, they ‘could not have the full fruition of their love in Sicilia’, and a marriage is to be sought. Fawnia’s comment that ‘delay bred danger; and that many mishaps did fall out between the cup and the lip’ indicates that she understands her vulnerability. While the nature of this is unstated, her adoptive father recognises what could ensue – he says he fears ‘lest she went so often to the field that she brought him a young son’ and he in turn telling his wife ‘I will not give her a halfpenny for her honesty at the year’s end’. The ambiguity of Fawnia’s situation allows Pandosto (Leontes) to attempt to ‘scale the fort of her chastity’, not realising that she is his daughter.28 Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi presents an on-stage marriage. The simple ceremony is, as the Duchess points out, fully legal and she asserts its validity: ‘I have heard lawyers say, a contract in a chamber / Per verba de presenti is absolute marriage’ (I.i.468).29 After witnessed exchanges with Antonio she continues ‘What can the church force more?’ and affirms ‘we are now one’ (I.i.478). Clearly, consummation follows. Margaret Mikesell notes that a number of Stuart tragedies deal with dubiously formed marriage and suggests that changing marriage laws and customs were ‘a useful vehicle for playwrights’ exploration of a society in flux’.30 As the Duchess is murdered after her power has been removed, Theodora Jankowski suggests that she is punished as a private woman partially for violating social custom.31 Although the marriage is legal, her children are treated as bastards and deemed unworthy to inherit due to their father’s status. In effect she is murdered as a bastard bearer. This is one of the many examples of bastard bearers condemned by writers to a ‘literary death sentence’, as discussed below. There was also dramatic potential in unconsummated contracts. In Measure for Measure and All’s Well unscrupulous men take advantage of the marriage law and abandon women to a liminal world of being neither married nor single. In the former, following the loss of her dowry, Angelo does not honour his contract to wed Mariana, but the Duke believes this makes consummation permissible. He states: He is your husband on a pre-contract To bring you thus together ’tis no sin. (IV.i.72) 28 29 30 31

Greene, ‘Pandosto’, pp. 212–220. Webster, ‘Duchess of Malfi’. Mikesell, ‘Formative Power’. Jankowski, ‘Defining / Confining’.

120 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

The marriage is complete after Angelo unknowingly consummates it by the role switch in the bed trick. In the interim, Mariana is described as ‘Nothing then: neither maid, widow nor wife’ (V.i.176), a phrase which defines her by what she was not, as opposed to what she was – a state of non-being, rather than being – and she appears veiled until the truth is known. In Much Ado, Hero similarly unmasks after Claudio’s contrition (V.iii.30) and the marriage which restores her status, while in All’s Well Helen, whose marriage is interrupted, incomplete and unconsummated is constructed as having a liminal existence. Her subsequent seeking out of her husband places her outside her community until, again, the bed-trick legally completes the marriage. The ‘moated grange’ in which Mariana has sequestered herself and Helen’s wandering are self-imposed physical expressions of the liminal state of those in incomplete marriages. In these plays, Jaques, Polixenes, the Duke, and Helen are given the moral high-ground, making them the arbiters of marital justice. Yet these are dubious characters. Jaques is ‘a libertine / As sensual as the brutish sting itself’ (II.vii.65). Polixenes’ relationship with Hermione is unclear but it is questioned by Camillo, and in Measure for Measure the Duke manipulates the situation in the hope of receiving a reward in the shape of Isabella. These characters – Polixenes, the Duke, Helen – are not acting in their own persons, but in disguise, each of them moving about the plots like avenging spirits of Hymen. They are onlookers, Polixenes spying on his son, Helena observing Bertram in the parade, and the ‘fantastical Duke of dark corners’ forever watching (IV.iii.52). The disguises set these characters apart from others in the narrative yet from these side-lines – margins – they control situations and outcomes. They resemble the trickster figures who emerge in liminal situations, and those citizens of early modern England who spied on their neighbours to ensure marital propriety and, like their historical counterparts, they manipulate dubiously happy endings. Balladeers were similarly attracted to narratives of women who were neither maid, widow nor wife, describing many who had been involved in apparently casual liaisons, some of whom appear to have fallen foul of the ease with which informal betrothals could be made.32 The pregnant woman in A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall reminds her lover of his 32 Writers in other genres also used the tradition of informal betrothals in their works such as romances. See e.g. Riche, ‘Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581)’; Wroth, Urania. Unlike ordinary people, who may have left no record of such marriages, when it took place between aristocratic writers, there may be a trail of evidence in their work. See Bond, ‘“Amphilanthus to Pamphilia”’.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

121

‘former promise’, begging him to ‘convey me to some secret place, / and marry me with speed’.33 The ‘Lancashire Lasse’ in The Bonny Bryer, whose lover is killed days before their marriage, describes herself in the same terms as the Duke describes Mariana as ‘neither widow, wife, nor maid’, telling the audience that ‘to wed me in haste he meant’ and declaring that ‘to lose that gem, I wanted wit, before my day of marriage’.34 She is advised to return to her family in Lancashire and claim that her husband was killed in the ‘Swedish warres’, thus professing that she has been through the marriage ritual which would enable her reintegration into her former community by offering a false narrative with the resonance of truth. Casual alliances, exploitation of the naive, the ambiguity of marriage contracts, betrothals, confusion about what constituted an acceptable ceremony, and the complications of unconsummated marriage all created liminal states which could potentially lead to unmarried pregnancy. Their representation in drama and ballads suggests that audiences were aware of the pitfalls created by loose marriage laws, but also appreciated the interesting dramatic potential of such situations.

Bastard bearing, punishment and liminality If an unmarried woman became pregnant, she and the child’s father could be brought before the ecclesiastical or civil courts for the crime of bastardy.35 In reality, the woman was more likely to be punished for this perceived crime than the man, partially because her guilt was written on her body and could not therefore be denied, and also because it was harder for her to escape the place where her wrong was known. Even if she did flee, the reality of her pregnancy would remain a situation which she would eventually have to manage. As courts were male-dominated, the idea of being presented to them would have been intimidating to any woman, let alone one whose sexual morality was in question. However, it would be wrong to construct all these women as victims. Walker writes that when brought before the courts women ‘inverted the stereotypes of bastard bearers’, presenting themselves as ‘honest, lawful, and abused by an implicit juxtaposition of male dishonour 33 Anon, Ladies Fall. 34 ———, Bonny Bryer. 35 McIntosh, Controlling Misbehaviour, p. 73.

122 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

and female honour’.36 Elizabeth Wilkinson, who appeared before Middlesex Assizes in 1613, charged both Walter Whithe and Robert Chiltern with being the father of her daughter. The account states: she upon her examininge at sundry tymes doth in short charge both of them, that as she sayth shee cannot cleere either of them, but that the one of them may as well be the trewe father of the childe as the other, and will not directly charge one but tother also.37

How we should understand this account of Elizabeth Wilkinson’s statement is impossible to ascertain, as so much would have been conveyed by her tone. With the claim that two men could be the father of her child, was she snubbing the high morals of the court and her society? Or, was she humbly submissive to the court’s questioning? Frustratingly, we cannot know, but whatever her tone Elizabeth does not construct herself as a victim, and her desire not to encumber the wrong man with the child’s upkeep can be seen as female honour. The men were instructed to share payments. Elizabeth’s sentence is not recorded. Punishments for bastardy can be divided into two categories: those of seclusion or separation, in which the wrong-doers could be isolated in some way, and those of inclusion in which communities participated in rituals which involved elements of theatre and spectacle, such as penance and whipping. Seen from the perspective of modern ideas related to liminality, it is clear that both kinds of punishment have parallels with the rites of passage which are used to mark the progress from one life stage to another. They emphasise that unmarried, pregnant women were liminal beings.

Social seclusion and separation In Rites of Passage, van Gennep discusses the rituals which allow, or are essential to, transition from one stage of life to the next. His examination of small communities concludes that their rituals have ‘a wide degree of general similarity’ and can be divided into those of seclusion, separation and reintegration.38 He writes: ‘In a semi-civilised society […] sections are carefully isolated, and passage from one to another must be made through formalities and ceremonies’. Individuals who have not been through these 36 Walker, Crime, Gender, p. 230. 37 Jeaffreson, ed. Middlesex Records Vol II, p. 97. 38 van Gennep, Rites of Passage, pp. 3, 10, 81.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

123

‘formalities and ceremonies’, he continues, can be isolated. Using the rooms of a house as a metaphor for sections of a society, he writes: ‘An individual that does not have an immediate right, by birth or through specially acquired attributes, to enter a particular house and to become established in one of its sections is in a state of isolation’.39 These moments of transition include: birth, puberty, marriage and death, as well as entry to new status. As we have seen, women who had a child before undergoing the marriage ritual were neither maids, widows nor wives but in a liminal state. Their punishments reflected their liminality. McIntosh writes of the early modern period that ‘If wrongdoers failed to confirm to local standards, they could readily be evicted from the community’. 40 Such eviction constructs wrongdoers as liminal or marginal. The punishments of seclusion and separation to which bastard bearers and begetters could be subjected emphasised this state, and the women’s polluting effect. Turner writes that during ritual processes, the separation phase ‘comprises symbolic behaviour signifying the detachment of the individual’. 41 In early modern England Courts were able to detach people from society by punishments such as excommunication, which excluded offenders from church services, or, in extremis could mean ‘total exclusion from the church and from the society of Christian people’.42 Those who had commercial dealings with them, or gave them food or lodging, could themselves be punished. 43 This is seen in churchwardens’ presentments from Climping in Sussex. Bridget Holland, who may have been running a lying-in house was: stayed from communion by our minister for enterteyning Elizabeth Hedger an excommunicated person into her house, Joane Pescod, who lay in of childbed, Elizabeth Nashe, who likewise lay in on childbed. 44

However, absolution could be achieved ‘with relative ease’45 and according to Houlbrooke excommunication began to ‘lose its edge’ with the Reformation. 46 A 1602 case brought before Horsham Assizes demonstrates this (my italics): 39 ibid., p. 26. 40 McIntosh, Controlling Misbehaviour, p. 206. 41 Turner, Ritual Process, p. 94. 42 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 53. 43 ibid., pp. 53, 286. 44 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 90. 45 Ingram, Church Courts, pp. 53, 342. 46 Houlbrooke, Church Courts, p. 49.

124 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Mr [Matthew] Alwyne, vicar of Horsham, says that within the last few years two or three harlots in his parish have had bastards and suffered no punishment other than excommunication. At this time two of them have three bastards and a third is pregnant. Gillian Cole of Hurstpierpoint and Elizabeth Masone of Bignor had bastards some years ago and suffered no punishment other than excommunication.47

Even if excommunication had ‘lost its edge’, it was a visible and socially diminishing punishment which both indicated offenders’ liminality and satisfied church and community desire for punishment. Among those named in the Sussex records is Elizabeth Gardner who ‘hath had a bastard and as yet hath never receaved punishment for the same’, and Joane [Blank] who had been ‘delivered of a base borne childe’, and who it was feared would be ‘conveyed away before she hath receaved any punishment’. 48 Similarly, among the many complaints against the minister of Launsing is one which demonstrates the expectation of visible punishment. It also suggests that bastardy could divide a community: Our minister hath admitted one Mary Washer unto the Holy Communion, having lately had a bastard and is a very lewd huswife, without giving any satifaccion to the congregacion, and did the same tyme put backe from the communion many of the better man’s daughters and servants, having bin communicants a long tyme, for noe cause that we know but of his owne humors. 49

Another punishment of separation followed a 1576 statute which stipulated that a House of Correction should be set up in every county where ‘those refusing to work’50 should be forced to labour and be physically chastised. Houses of Correction, commonly referred to as Bridewells, attempted to place people, including bastard bearers, outside their communities. Froide writes that they were ‘designed for exactly the sorts of petty crime associated with single women: prostitution, living out of service, petty larceny, idle and disorderly behaviour, and bastard bearing’.51 This last was stipulated in a 1609 amendment to the 1576 statute. It prescribed that ‘all mothers of bastards supported by the parish 47 Cockburn, ed. Sussex Indictments : Elizabeth I, p. 417 #2071. 48 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, pp. 76, 78. 49 ibid., p. 93. 50 Slack, English Poor Law, p. 52. 51 Froide, Never Married, p. 38.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

125

welfare to be imprisoned in the house of correction for one year’, although Innes suggests that in London people may have stayed only a few weeks, or days.52 In some respects, the concealed nature of activities within the Houses reduced the opportunity to use punishments as a warning to others and did not allow societies to see justice exerted, which the church and communities appeared to want.53 For example, Mary Robins was described as an ‘impudent queane’ who had twice given birth to bastards and Churchwardens desired that ‘some sev[e]re course may be taken with her, to make her an example unto others’.54 However, incarceration did not completely isolate wrongdoers from the community as the Houses were open for public visits. In A True Discourse of The Practises of Elizabeth Caldwell, which describes the case of a woman who accidently killed a child when attempting to murder her husband, Gilbert Dugdale writes that ‘There was many of all sorts resorted to see her, as no fewer some daies then three hundred persons’ to whom she gave ‘good admonitions, wishing that her fall might be an example unto them’.55 Balladeers had a lighter approach to incarceration. Works such as the decidedly coquettish The Bridewel Whores Resolution and Whipping Cheare are performed by whores, who boast their trade and complain of their treatment.56 Their ribald comments invite audience participation, if only to guffaw, again breaching ‘inmates’ isolation and suggesting that the punishment was ineffective.57

Literary death The harshest punishment of exclusion for bastardy was what could be called a ‘literary death sentence’ in that those guilty of begetting or bearing bastards are committed to death, or a quasi-death, a punishment which could apply to men as well as women. In Measure for Measure Claudio is to be beheaded ‘for getting Madame Julietta with child’ (I.ii.70), a punishment which is considered excessive within the play. In Thomas Middleton’s The Witch, Francisca’s unmarried pregnancy prompts an escalation of blood and death, including that of the bastard bearer. Even lack of chastity merited a literary death, albeit 52 King, ‘Punishment’, p. 132. King also suggests that this law prompted infanticide and led to the Infanticide Act of 1623 / 4. See also Innes, ‘Prisons for the poor’, p. 57. 53 Wilson, Ritual, p. 35. 54 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 68. 55 Dugdale, A True Discourse, p. B2. 56 Anon, Bridewel Whores Resolution; ———, Whipping Cheare. 57 Works such as The Honest Whore, Measure for Measure, and The Duchess of Malfi similarly perforated the isolation which Bridewells were intended to impose.

126 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

temporary. After Hero is suspected in Much Ado we are told that ‘Death is the fairest cover for her shame’ and that she must be concealed ‘in some reclusive and religious life, / Out of all eyes’ (IV.i.116, 244). Hermione’s seclusion in The Winter’s Tale until her honesty is proven fulfils a similar function, the ‘removed house’ secreting her in a kind of tomb. As Dolan suggests: it was not legally, morally, or socially clear exactly what one should or could do with a woman who had sex outside marriage. What happens to Hero might be viewed as wishful thinking: a woman who is unchaste would simply drop dead.58

Literary death was also part of the ballad tradition. The woman in The Bloody Miller is murdered by her lover in one of many works about murdered, pregnant women. He sings: ‘From Ear to Ear I slit her mouth / and stab’d her in the Head’59 in a crime which could be seen as a double murder. This sensational description is accompanied by verses in which he sings his woeful lament, with a refrain emphasising that his sins will be punished. Yet, while serving as a warning to others, the ballad attempts to move audience sympathy from the dead woman and her child to the killer, perhaps in an attempt to remind men of their own guilt and shame: Let all pretending Lovers take warning now by me, Lest they (as I) procure their woe, and work their misery: For I myself have overthrown, as you shall plainly see, I for my transgression must die.

In A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall a deserted pregnant woman dies in labour, after forbidding her maid to call either her mother or the midwife: With that the Babe sprang in her Womb, no Creature being nigh, And with a sigh that broke her heart, this gallant Dame did dye.60 58 Dolan, ‘Shakespeare and Marriage’, p. 629. 59 Anon, Bloody Miller. 60 ———, Ladies Fall.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

127

The ‘gallant’ makes her a figure of courage rather than revilement. The ballad continues with the infant’s death and the arrival and suicide of the lover: This living little Infant young, the mother being dead, Resign’d his new received breath, to him that hath him made, Next morning came her Lover true, affreighted at this news, And he for sorrow slew himself, whom each one did accuse.

What do these literary death sentences tell us about infanticide in early modern England? Were these fictional deaths seen as a form of punishment? Or was it a criticism of a society which demonstrated that the harsh attitudes toward unwed mothers led to concealment, lone birth, and death, whether by intention or misfortune? As neither playwrights nor balladeers were renowned for being reluctant to criticise society, as evidenced by the mass of politically and socially critical ballads which have survived, the latter explanation seems more probable. Ballads move, entertain, inform, and educate, but the same works could also make honest and critical, albeit oblique, comments about contemporary life.

The rituals of socially inclusive punishments While practices such as excommunication, literary death or incarceration in a house of correction emphasised bastard bearers’ liminality by separating them from their communities, another group of punishments gave communities an active role in their implementation. These punishments exhibit many of the characteristics of the ceremonies which, in his study of rites of passage, van Gennep describes as being used to mark individuals’ movement from one life stage to the next.61 In some societies those in transition form an isolated group throughout, or for much of, the ceremony; in others the rituals take place within the community. In both cases, the rites combine aspects of theatre, magic and religion. Recurring elements of the procedures include going or being taken to a special or sacred place, prescribed garments, striking or flagellation, and marking the body. These 61 van Gennep, Rites of Passage, p. 78f.

128 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

observances allow individuals to be reintegrated into their societies. Turner cites research which identifies initiation rites as involving ‘exhibitions, “what is shown”; actions, “what is done”; and instructions, “what is said”’. These, he states, ‘hold good for initiation rites all over the world’.62 Showing, doing and stating are the basis of the community-centred punishments to which early modern bastard bearers were subjected. They emphasised their liminal state and should have enabled their reintegration into communities, though the next chapter will consider the extent to which social practices made this feasible. Those found guilty of bastardy could be subjected to public penance and whipping. In these performance-based rituals, offenders played a central role in their own drama – a form of street theatre, with the community as ‘audience’, thus blurring the distinction between punishment and theatre.63 The penance to which bastard bearers could be sentenced could take various forms.64 Pre-Reformation it usually entailed a procession around the church, barefoot and wearing a sheet, preceded by a cross, with the wrongdoer carrying a candle, which he or she placed before the principal image or the high altar: Turner’s ‘what is done’. Later, people were required to carry a placard or symbol of their sin: ‘what is shown’. It sometimes included a beating by those holding office in the church: the flagellation which van Gennep noted. Post-Reformation the spoken aspect of the ceremony was emphasised and wrongdoers were often ordered to make a declaration in the church and the marketplace: Turner’s ‘what is said’. Penance, with its elements of showing, doing and saying was still in use in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1624. E.R.C. Brinkworth’s work on the Ecclesiastical Court records for the town gives several accounts of this form of punishment. Isabella Hall, bastard bearer (no relation to Shakespeare’s son-in-law John Hall), was to: repayre to the parish church of Stratford and there she is to stand upon a matt or seate in the midle ile of the church during all the tyme of Morning Prayer and sermon in white sheets hanging down from her shoulders to her feet and holding a white rod in her hand and untill the end of the sermon to confesse according to a shedle.65 62 Turner, Forest, p. 102. 63 For a discussion of punishment see Wilson, Ritual, p. 19. He describes penance as ‘a potent piece of theatre’. 64 Houlbrooke, Church Courts, p. 46; McIntosh, Controlling Misbehaviour, p. 113. 65 Brinkworth, Shakespeare, p. 166. ‘shedle’ [sic] probably implies schedule, at that time ‘a slip or scroll of parchment or paper containing writing’ (OED) Wilson notes that such confessions

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

129

Shakespeare may well have witnessed such punishments. The stage directions for 2 Henry VI state: ‘Enter Eleanor [barefoot and] a white sheet [about her, with a wax candle], in her hand, and verses written on her back and pinned on’.66 Though Eleanor’s punishment was for a different crime, the scene shows public participation in the ritual. Gloucester, who had been appointed to watch her penance at a specific time and place, anticipates: The abject people staring on thy face With envious looks, laughing at thy shame. […] See how the giddy multitude do point And nod their heads and throw their eyes on thee. (II.iv.11, 20)

Eleanor complains: Methinks I should not be thus led along, Mailed up in shame, with papers on my back. And followed with a rabble that rejoice To see my tears and hear my deep-felt groans. (II.iv.30)

Unlike Measure for Measure, in which only Claudio is to be punished, in Shakespeare’s source Promos and Cassandra (1578), we are told that Andrugio: For loving too kindlie, must loose his heade, And his sweete hart, must weare the shamefull weedes: Ordainde for Dames, that fall through fleshly deedes.67

Penance was also imposed on men. For failing to be catechised, William Bartlet was to appear in the parish church of Stratford ‘in his usual apparell at the beginning of Morning Prayer […] untill the sermon […] and then to confes his fault publickly before the congregacion’.68 After Claudio discredits Hero in Much Ado, he also performs a penance as a necessary prerequisite to readmission to the society he has wronged. He enters with ‘three or four with tapers, all in black’ (what is shown); reads aloud an account of his crime (what is said) and ‘hangs the epitaph on the tomb’ (what is done)

affirmed that the actions were wrong (Wilson, Ritual, p. 20). 66 Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI, p. II.iv.17. 67 Whetstone, ‘Promos and Cassandra’, p. 169. 68 Brinkworth, Shakespeare, p. 163.

130 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

(V.iii.1).69 Offenders’ public avowals of guilt and repentance, and the gallows speeches described by balladeers and pamphleteers, are a variation of this ritual. Penance may have given satisfaction to the community that had been offended, as Houlbrooke suggests, or have been an act of purification and absolution, as Adair believes.70 However, in the case of women, theories about liminality and pollution suggest that the ritual would have marked the liminal state of being neither maid, widow, nor wife. Public whipping was another punishment to which men and women could be sentenced for conceiving a bastard. A case in Liminster, Sussex, names ‘William Berry, for incontinency with Joane Bastow, as the common fame goeth; but he hath been laid by the heeles and whipt already by the maior of Arrundall’.71 Another case in the Sussex archives shows what could happen when a woman was left to cope with unmarried pregnancy on her own. Margery Porter had intercourse with John Mody several times, though he said this stopped when she told him she was pregnant.72 After she killed the newborn infant she was sentenced to be hanged but ‘the mayor and jurats ordered that for his fornication Mody, in addition to the imprisonment he had already suffered, should be fastened to a cart’s tail at the court-house on 6 Feb and whipped around the town’. Another case from the Middlesex records describes the public whipping of a man and a woman. The account states that Henry Wharton and Elizabeth Mason, a single woman, ‘have lately to the Highe displeasure of Almightie God and to the evill example of others lived together in incontinencie and therein have begotten a base childe upon the bodie of the said Elizabeth’.73 Their behaviour was worse because Henry had since married Elizabeth’s sister which was likely to ‘plucke downe vengeance from the highest’. Those carrying out the punishment were to bind them to a cart and were instructed: strippinge them naked from the waste upp you give or in your owne presence cause to be given them sound correction by whippinge them throughout youre towne, to begin with them both in Homerton at the house of goodwife Godfrey (the place where they committed their offence) and soe drive them by the Church through Churchstreet and soe through Marestreete to the further end thereof. 69 The designation given here follows early modern cultural practice and usual theatrical practice. For other attributions of the line see Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. notes p. 306. 70 Houlbrooke, Church Courts, p. 56; Adair, Courtship, p. 157. 71 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 15. 72 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 52 #239. 73 Jeaffreson, ed. Middlesex Records Vol II, p. 157.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

131

The case appears in the records because James Bowman, a yeoman and one of the parish constables, had ‘obstinately refused’ to execute a previous warrant for the punishment. Subsequently, the court decided to take counsel about the ‘sufficiency’ of the warrant and it is not known whether it was ever executed. Neither is it known whether Bowman’s refusal was due to a point of principle or of law, though it does suggest community involvement in deciding what was right and what was wrong. Physical punishment could be commuted with a payment. Evan Rogers of Edmonton, labourer, who ‘upon his own confession is the reputed father of a bastard child christened Richard Rogers […] gotten by him uppon Jane Barton of Edmonton’ was to be ‘whiped [sic] in some open place’.74 To avoid punishment, Evan was to ‘pay to the churchwardens of the said parishe of Edmonton to the use of the poore […] the some [sic] of Twenty shillings’. Whipping wrongdoers resembles the ritual of flagellation described by van Gennep, but how it should be interpreted is unclear. Van Gennep saw it as a form of purification and an entry rite, which in an early modern context could indicate that it was required to enable a bastard bearer to re-enter society. But he also describes it as serving as an act of separation, equivalent to breaking or cutting.75 Marking the body, which is also an aspect of ritual, was an effect of whipping. In Whipping Cheare the women sing of their punishment and in their reply the ‘Roring Boyes’ taunt them with ‘Shew your shoulders printed’,76 and those in The Bridewel Whores Resolution tell the audience ‘Our backs they do scourge and lash’.77 In this context the scars seem to be almost a trophy, and part of the entertainment. Such scarring would seemingly have followed the punishment meted out to Joane Lea. The Middlesex records tell us: Forasmuch as Joane Lea uppon her owne peticion exhibited in Courte hath confessed that she had a bastard child begot on her body by Thomas Bates: It is therefore ordered that she shalbe openly whipte at a Cartes tayle in St. John’s Streete upon Saturdaye next untill her body be all bloodye.78

By prescribing the date and time of punishment and giving an account of what they could expect to see, as in the case of Joane Lea, sentencing 74 ibid., p. 153. 75 van Gennep, Rites of Passage, p. 174. 76 Anon, Whipping Cheare. 77 ———, Bridewel Whores Resolution. 78 Jeaffreson, ed. Middlesex Records Vol II, p. 92.

132 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

ensured that whipping, like penance, had elements of theatre and spectacle. Penance and whipping were rituals which must be undergone by those who had offended their communities by bastard bearing or begetting. Highly performance-based, they were spectacles with audiences who could participate through staring and jeering. They were part of the tradition of the body as the locus of punishment which included the pillory and branding, and were sometimes a component of the death penalty, as in the breaking of limbs, dismemberment, and immolation. These were replaced by less theatrical representations of pain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.79 With their elements of saying, doing and showing penance shared much with the rituals associated with liminality, thus blurring the division between punishment, theatre and ritual. Penance and whipping potentially marked the end of the individual’s liminal state. The extent to which this was the case is discussed in Chapter 5.

Self-imposed punishment and liminality In creative literature women seek punishment for pre-marital fornication and adultery, even if only suspected. Women in ballads mourn their seduction, loss of virginity or unmarried pregnancy, their expressions of remorse resembling the public, spoken confessions of post-Reformation penance, as in Celia’s Complaint for the Loss of her Virginity.80 She uses the common metaphor of warfare to describe her seduction: ‘My spotless virgin’s fort / Thou strongly didst assault’ – and confesses that she was wrong ‘So soon to yield / to thee the field’. Others adopt the metaphor of crime. In An Answer to the Bonny Scot the author uses jewel imagery, the woman telling listeners that ‘my virgin treasure did he steal’, and that ‘my splendid glory’s gone’. Other ballad women resort to voluntary isolation resembling the separation of ritual processes, similar to that of Hero, Hermione and Mariana. The woman in Ladies Fall secretes herself away, and A love sick maid’s song is a long lament about unmarried pregnancy from a desolate place which suggests the woman’s withdrawal to a liminal, nowhere space:81 These Rocks and stones can tell the sorrowes I substaine 79 Foucault, Discipline, pp. 10, 14. 80 Anon, Celia’s complaint. 81 ———, love-sick maids.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

133

My meate is hawes and hips, my drink is water cleare: Nought els my tender lips, have tasted this halfe yeare.

The idea of punishment by marking the body, van Gennep’s ‘what is shown’, is adopted by dramatists who show adulterous women desiring visual manifestation of their wrong-doing. In his introduction to Promos and Cassandra, Whetstone writes of a country where a woman guilty of adultery ‘should wear some disguised apparrel during her life, to make her infamously noted’.82 After Cassandra submits to Promos’ lust to save her husband’s life, a promise which is not kept, she elects to adopt the appropriate attire: I have condemnde my selfe to weare these weedes of shame; Whose cognisance doth showe, that I have (fleshly) sind.83

Similarly, in A Woman Killed with Kindness, Anne wants her betrayal to be visible: O to redeem my honour I would have this hand cut off, these my breasts seared, Be racked, strappadoed, put to any torment; Nay, to whip this scandal out84

At the most extreme end of self-punishment for pre-marital dalliance, women long to die, another form of literary death. Celia sings ‘Come quickly, Death / To stop my breath / and end my misery’.85 This is her fate in Repentance too late, a version of Celia’s tale in which the author’s introduction tells us she ‘warns all Virgins by her doleful grief […] then lies her down and dyes’.86 This ballad’s illustration of her funeral, dominated by the maiden’s garland atop her coffin,87 gives Celia the same funeral rights as Ophelia

82 Whetstone, ‘Promos and Cassandra’, p. 166. 83 ibid., p. 187. 84 Heywood, ‘A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603)’, pp. Sc.13, 113. 85 Anon, Celia’s Complaint. 86 ———, Repentance. 87 The garland was part of the special funeral rites allowed to unmarried women. The oldest surviving example (1680) is at St. Mary’s Church, Beverley, Yorkshire. (Morris, ‘Innocent and Touching’, p. 357).

134 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

‘She is allowed her virgin rites / Her maiden strewments’88 (V.i.226). The representation of the custom of maiden’s garlands in written, visual and performed works, for women who were not (or may not have been) virgins appears to be an attempt to restore women to a place which was not liminal. The pregnant woman in Ladies Fall chooses death, telling her lover she will kill herself if he does not marry her. When he deserts her she carries this out by refusing help when in labour, and turning her bedchamber into a quasi-cell or tomb which will eventually contain her corpse: Weep not, said she, but shut the door And windows round about Let none bewail my wretched case But keep all persons out.

Other defiled women take a more active role in their demise, such as the ‘desperate damsell’ who drew a knife and ‘Dido-like / her heart did strike, / Thus dyde the Damsell in despaire’.89 The requirement for women to behave acceptably, and be believed to be so doing, meant that writers show them accepting punishment even if merely suspected of sexual wrong-doing. They submit to feigned death and temporarily reside in a liminal state, while their honesty is proved, yet this concealment is a virtual imprisonment, comprising an isolation similar to that they would have experienced had they been guilty of pre- or extra-marital intercourse. Hero willingly acquiesces to hiding and apparent death so that she can re-emerge once her honour has been proved: ‘She died, my Lord, but whiles her slanders lived’ – her veiled entrance suggesting her state of betweenness (V.iv.66). She emerges as a ‘new’ woman, a reborn and purified Hero. Hermione is similarly secreted while her shame lives and until the Oracle is fulfilled, her ‘dead’ body only returning from its liminal state when Paulina instructs ‘’Tis time; descend; be stone no more’ (V.iii.99). The isolation and apparent death of these women is a form of punishment and self-imposed liminality during which they both have, and do not have, earthly presence, similar to those who reach out from a liminal world by singing their confessions from beyond the grave. Changing marriage customs, and uncertainties about what form of service was acceptable, could place people in a liminal situation – not quite married, and not quite single. This could lead to unmarried pregnancy and bastardy, 88 Flowers scattered on a coffin or grave (OED). 89 Parker, Desperate Damsells Tragedy.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

135

and put women in danger of being abandoned – a situation which could lead to infanticide. Bastard bearing could result in punishments which have many parallels with rites of passage. They might encompass elements of separation from society, in the form of banishment from religious ceremonies and incarceration in Houses of Correction, or they might involve communities in witnessing ritual-based acts of penance or public whipping. The people of early modern England would not have thought and spoken in terms of liminality or regarded the services, ceremonies and traditions of their society as rites of passage. Nevertheless, the beliefs and attitudes identified by van Gennep and Turner permeated their world. People would have known that an unmarried, pregnant woman should be perceived as neither maid, widow nor wife, and she would have known it herself too. This sense of not belonging or being outside – liminality in today’s terms – would have magnified her sense of shame. Her sense of self, self-worth, and the gap between her expectations of herself and the actuality, would have given her a feeling of non-integration. The shattering of the self, which went beyond the sexual shame and guilt that she had had intercourse outside marriage, would have been felt as something much more fundamental. Infanticide was a way of trying to redeem what had been lost. This did not, of course, apply to all those who killed their infants. The crime was also carried out by married women and by men. But they are the subject of other chapters.

Avoiding the shame of pregnancy: ‘A dose of the Doctor’ Bearing in mind the punishments to which men and women could be sentenced for bastardy, those who occupied the liminal space of betrothal or uncertain marriage, and those in illicit relationships, would clearly do all they could to enable them to be sexually active while avoiding pregnancy. Early forms of birth control,90 while unreliable, would have been some help in preventing the birth of an illegitimate child and therefore the temptation to commit infanticide. With this in mind, this section will consider popular awareness of birth control, the means that could be used, how effective they would have been, and how knowledge was shared. In the seventeenth-century ballad Good Sport for Protestants, an ‘old bawdy priest’ attempts to seduce a ‘wanton young nun’ who resists his entreaties 90 In this chapter contraception will refer to anything which prevents conception and will therefore include abstention; birth control will apply to anything which prevents a live birth and will include abortion. The specifics of individual cases and circumstances will be clarified as appropriate.

136 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

and bribes for fifteen verses before her duty of obedience convinces her to relent.91 Dolan writes that apart from works which were by or for Catholics, texts about nuns ‘provoke laughter at the nun’s failed attempts at chastity, her misguided obedience’.92 However, there is little in this ballad to suggest that Betty is a nun or that the man is a priest apart from a single reference to ‘Holy Father’. The only stipulation of the relationship is in the title, and the nun’s persistent objections hardly suggest that she is ‘wanton’. She is addressed throughout by the homely and domestic name ‘Betty’, and the relationship is established as based on her duty of obedience. Betty could be any servant who is seduced by her master, and servants were frequently those whose fate was unmarried pregnancy.93 The impression is endorsed by the illustration showing the humble truckle bed on which the seduction is attempted. In this ballad, Betty recognises her danger: But if it should prove, the disgrace would be great, I should be the object of all People’s hate.

If pregnancy occurs, the man has the solution: Should you prove with child, you may murther the brat With a Dose of the Doctor, next door to the Cat.94

The dialogue-form ballad is a step-by-step lesson for would-be seducers, with no corresponding advice for women, though it does tell us what Betty should do in the event of pregnancy: she should acquire ‘a Dose of the Doctor’. Contraception could prevent this situation, though this is not what the seducer suggests, and it is unclear whether the ‘dose’ is to cause abortion, or to kill the infant after it is born. This does not alter the statement that Betty can take action if she becomes pregnant. Good Sport for Protestants suggests that there was popular belief that unmarried motherhood was avoidable, whether by contraception, abortion or infanticide. References in other street literature and historical sources confirm this. The ballad shows that means of birth control were not uniquely female knowledge, 91 Anon, Good Sport, p. 109. 92 Dolan, ‘Why are nuns funny?’, p. 509. 93 Ingram, Church Courts, pp. 264, 286. Gowing, Common Bodies, p. 59; Kilday, Infanticide, p. 37. For an analysis of this situation see Wilson, Ritual, p. 11. 94 This may refer to a sign outside a property. Such signs were used to identify specific buildings, as in the modern use of pub signs.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

137

and that obtaining ‘the dose’ would be easy. It also suggests the uncertain dividing line between contraception and abortion, which I discuss below. The early modern period is generally thought of as a time when women could not prevent childbirth. However, practices did exist and, while unreliable, could have some effect. Certainly, this was the belief of contemporary religious thinkers and moralists, who condemned anything which might inhibit conception. Benedicti, a sixteenth-century Franciscan theologian, wrote: ‘Those who by potion, drink, or whatever other method prevent conception and generation out of a fear of having too many children, sin mortally’.95 No matter what the official attitudes were, studies show patterns which suggest that people limited the size of their families, spaced births, and avoided inappropriate times (such as winter births).96 Clearly, married people practised birth control and the same methods existed for those who were unmarried, though they were not all equally applicable. Both Riddle and McLaren, who have studied the history of contraception, show that abstention, particularly during times of maximum fertility and prolonged breast-feeding, were commonly practised.97 Coitus interruptus appears to have been frequent, but threw some thinkers into a frenzy of disapproval. For them it was ‘detestable and abominable in the sight of God’, though by others it was ‘not considered all that outrageous’.98 Physical and verbal violence were other possibilities: the early modern womb was a vulnerable place which could be cursed and bewitched into sterility. The fear and horrors of such possibilities were adopted by Shakespeare throughout his career. In Richard III Lady Anne curses ‘If ever he have child abortive be it’ (I.ii.26). Lear prays to the gods ‘Into her womb convey sterility; / Dry up in her the organs of increase’ (I.iv.257) when Goneril demands that he decrease his number of attendants. As we have seen, the recently-conceived child existed in a liminal space between being and non-being, and could be injured by mental influences. Pregnant women were advised to maintain their equanimity. Rueff warns that women must have particular heed after forty-one days of pregnancy ‘For then hee is most like to a tender flower and blossome of trees, which is easily cast downe and dejected’.99 Therefore, women should avoid ‘sudden feare, affrightments, by fire, lightening, thunder, with monstrous and 95 Benedicti, La somme des péchés. Cited in McLaren, Rituals, p. 57; ———, History, p. 149. 96 The practice is implicit in Wrigley, ed. English historical. For example p. 370; McLaren, History, p. 146; Riddle, ‘Oral contraceptives’, p. 3. 97 ———, Eve’s Herbs; ———, Contraception; McLaren, History; ———, Rituals. 98 ———, History, p. 155; ———, Rituals, p. 76. 99 Rueff, Expert Midwife, p. 58.

138 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

hideous aspects and signs of men and beasts, by immoderate joy, sorrow and lamentation’. He later adds that women should be ‘of a merry hart, let them not be wasted and pined with mourning and cares’.100 Anselment states that Elizabeth Freke associated one miscarriage with financial loss and attributed another to unkindness from her mother-in-law.101 In 3 Henry VI, the pregnant Lady Grey will not grieve her husband’s pending fate ‘Lest with my sighs or tears I blast or drown / King Edward’s fruit’ (IV.iii.23). Emotional turbulence was also thought able to terminate pregnancy or damage the unborn child. Leontes’ abuse of Hermione could be interpreted as an attempt to induce miscarriage of the child he considered to be a bastard. Shakespeare suggests that such dangers extended to infants. Leontes’ abuse of Hermione destroys Mamillius, whose name, Helen Hackett points out, is a diminutive of the Latin for breast, and emphasises their close maternal bond.102 Miscarriage could also be caused by physical violence. Striking a pregnant woman in or near her ‘belly’ was often considered an attempt to induce abortion, or to threaten fertility. Helmholtz cites the 1487 case of John Wren, who was charged with having ‘wounded his wife during the time she was pregnant so that he killed the child in her belly’, a phrase which could signify intent or ‘with the result that’. Spivack argues that cases of violence towards pregnant women were seen as an injury to the woman, not the child she was carrying.103 In Sussex, a post mortem on Joan Myles and her unborn child states of the dead infant: ‘the right side of the head near the ear was bruised in three places and the skin was off’.104 It was known that she had ‘taken hurt before her troubles’ and a women who accompanied her during labour stated: ‘she heard her say that her husband’s brother Francis took her and shook her about 3 days before her troubles, set her down upon the brake and set his knee against the side of her belly’. The perpetrator was charged with killing Joan, not the child. Violence could be self-inflicted. Elizabeth Williams, of Graffam, Sussex, was named in the Churchwardens’ reports in 1621 ‘for running up and downe the countrey with a deboyst [debased or debauched] knave, saying he was her husband’.105 The report states that ‘shee confessed that hee was run away from her, and that he was none of her husband, and that shee was with childe by him, and, as she confessed, fell over a stile by mischaunce and so spoyled it’. The Surrey Assizes for 100 ibid., p. 67. 101 Anselment, Realms of Apollo, p. 58. 102 Hackett, ‘‘Gracious be the issue’’, p. 36. 103 Schnucker, ‘Elizabethan Birth Control’, p. 568; Spivack, ‘Flowers’, p. 129. 104 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 139 #542. 105 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 8.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

139

1599 include the case of Margaret Webb of Godalming, a spinster who was indicted for taking ratsbane, an arsenic derivative, with the intention of destroying her unborn child. She was pardoned.106 Women could also imbibe substances which could be perceived as inducing menstruation but actually caused abortion.107 The difficulty of reliably diagnosing pregnancy, discussed by Eccles,108 would have made it easy to deny to themselves what they were doing. Such thinking is seen in The Araignment for Hypocrisie (discussed in Chapter 8) in which Mr. Barker procures savin (Juniperus sabina, a known abortifacient), for his kinswoman because the maid told him that it ‘would bring down those things which used to come monthly, the stopping whereof made her so ill’.109 The comment captures the extent to which substances claimed to induce menstruation were used to induce abortion. Spivack writes that the difference between the two ‘was seen as so minimal as not to warrant discussion’.110 Rueff writes: How many Virgins, how many Widdowes also ensnared and intangled with these Arts and devillish practice [of Witches and Harlots], have commmitted cruell and more than brutish murders of their tender Babes and Infants? […] They make first experiments by lacing in themselves straight and hard, that they may extinguish and destroy the Feature conceived in the wombe.111

He continues that they then go: by the instinct of the Divell, to some old Witch very skilfull in curing these diseases […] asking and questioning with them about the cure and remedie of the stopping of their Termes, desiring a medicine and counsell to procure them to issue. The old Witch not ignorant of the matter, willeth them to enquire for medicines of the Apothecaries.112

Similarly, there were many substances not be to given to pregnant women, and, as Monica H. Green writes, women could ‘flip’ technologies, using those which were to cleanse the womb or bring down the menses, to prompt 106 Cockburn, ed. Surrey Indictments: Elizabeth I, p. 512, (3146). 107 Riddle, Eve’s Herbs, pp. 27–32; ———, Contraception. Chapter 2 108 Eccles, Obstetrics, p. 58. 109 Crowch, Araignment, p. np. 110 Spivack, ‘Flowers’, p. 123. 111 Rueff, Expert Midwife, p. 59. 112 ibid., p. 60.

140 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

abortion.113 However, sometimes the substance’s use was specified. The index to the 1636 edition of Gerard’s Herball lists fifty entries ‘To provoke or bring down the Termes’.114 The table of contents lists three suggestions for ‘Causing abortment’: stinking gladdon (Iris) sowbread (cyclamen) and fern. The text is less specific, stating that fern ‘bringeth barreness, especially to women; and that it causeth women to be delivered before their time’.115 Of ‘stinking gladdon’ Gerard states: If it be drunke in Wine it provoketh the termes, and being put in Baths for women to sit over, it provoketh the like effects most exquisitely. The root put in manner of a pessarie hasteneth the birth.116

Hannah Woolley’s The Accomplisht Ladys Delight explains how ‘To make a Woman be soon deliverd, the Child being dead or alive’ and to ‘Provoke the Terms’.117 The possibility of misapplying the advice is clear. In The Ladies Dispensatory Leonard Sowerby offers pages of suggestions to ‘Provoke Womens monthly Purgations’ while ‘To hinder Conception’ he lists eighteen possibilities and ‘To cause abortion’ he suggests over forty substances.118 Most are herbs, and many are still regarded as poisons, including ivy and lupin. Others challenge rational thinking, such as ‘Roots of Sow-bread fastened to the thigh’, ‘milke of a Bitches first Litter drunk’, and ‘the Samian stone worne about the neck’.119 The recipes’ existence in books which also contain cures for scurvy, shingles, and dropsy, positions the ending of an unwanted pregnancy as a natural matter, supporting Spivack’s assertion that it was not regarded as serious. What of the recommendations themselves? A complicating factor is that methods used ‘To cause abortment’ are not very different from those to be used for assisting conception, an overlap which may exist because cleansing the womb could either cause abortion or prepare it for conception. Whatever the effect, there appears to have been a belief in a connection between some substances and pregnancy. Yet, the doubts about effectiveness can be seen in the differences between two editions of Gerard’s Herball. Writing about sowbread in 1597 Gerrard warns that pregnant women should not even go 113 Green, ‘Gendering the History’, p. 500. 114 Gerard, Herball (1636). 115 ibid., p. 1130. 116 ibid., p. 60. 117 Woolley, The Accomplisht Ladys Delight, pp. 150,154. 118 Sowerby, Ladies Dispensatory, pp. 146, 161, 158. 119 ibid., pp. 158–161.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

141

near or step over the plant because if they do so ‘without controversie’ they will be ‘delivered before their times’.120 This was glossed by Thomas Johnson for the 1636 edition. He notes: I judge our author to be somewhat womanish in this, that is, led more by vaine opinion than by any reason or experience, to confirm this his affection, which frequent experience shows to be vain and frivilous.121

These few lines, with their reference to reason and experience, demonstrate that contraception occupied a territory between superstition and rationalism, and suggest that enlightenment thinking could encroach onto ancient beliefs and ultimately lead to their disappearance.122 Attempts at birth control may have been more effective than we tend to assume. Riddle’s research to ‘evaluate recipes for which modern scientific knowledge may help us to assess efficiency’123 recognises the possible, but not yet understood, transdermal absorption of toxins. He acknowledges that ‘the placebo effect is very real in medicine’124 and the effect of psychological factors on the reproductive system is still not understood.125 Riddle concludes: ‘another day may come when judgements about what appears magical to us now will have a reasonable explanation’.126 He also shows that many of the recommended substances were capable of being effective. Pennyroyal ‘contains pulegone, which does terminate pregnancies when taken in controlled amounts’.127 The chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus L). has abortifacient qualities, and birthwort works as a contraceptive and abortifacient.128 The savin obtained by Mr. Barker did not work, though Riddle quotes research which shows that its oil could cause abortion.129 Other commonly cited substances include rosemary, rue and willow, which have inevitably fuelled academic discussion of Ophelia’s relationship with 120 Gerard, Herball (1597), p. 694. 121 ———, Herball (1636), p. 845. Sowbread is also mentioned in the late seventeenth-century Jerningham family papers, cited in Pollock, ‘Embarking’, p. 55. 122 The idea of the broken line of communication which results in the loss of ancient knowledge is discussed in Riddle, Eve’s Herbs. 123 ibid., p. 69. Riddle’s methods have been challenged, partly because animal testing does not prove effectiveness in humans. Green, ‘Flowers, poisons and men’. 124 Riddle, Eve’s Herbs, pp. 66, 68; McLaren, Rituals, p. 100. 125 Riddle, Eve’s Herbs, p. 66. 126 ibid., pp. 66, 70. 127 ibid., p. 47. 128 ibid., pp. 57, 58. 129 ibid., p. 54; Crowch, Araignment.

142 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Hamlet and her possible pregnancy. Perdita in The Winter’s Tale distributes similar herbs (without attracting comment) although other flowers she names, and many of the spices on the Clown’s shopping list (IV.iv.34), are also associated with birth control. As well as written advice, information on birth control and abortion was available from midwives, and women shared information, as shown in the Somerset Archives. The account, summarised by Quaife, concerns Amy Laggot, whose daughter was learning bone-lace making from Elizabeth Salway.130 Amy, however, had taken her away because her teacher was ‘sickly and could not attend to her work’. Amy had then become peeved because Elizabeth had not paid her for some physic which she had obtained on her behalf from the apothecary. Amy complained to her friend Frances that if she had not obtained the physic, Elizabeth ‘might have gone as other whores did, but she would warrant her freed this time’ and that she had told Elizabeth that if ‘anything came from her’ she should ‘bury it in the garden’. Subsequently it was revealed that Amy had told another friend that she herself had had a ‘base child’ and that ‘if she had made her [self] acquainted with it [i.e. the physic] in time, her enemies should not have laughed at her’. The case demonstrates McLaren’s comment that ‘women looked not to their spouses but to their female friends and relatives for advice on stratagems to be employed well before or after intercourse’.131 Rueff, whose comment about witches has already been quoted, says that women who have sought advice ‘impart and communicate likewise those murthering arts and cruell practices to others, that thereby many murthers of sillie Infants are committed’.132 Angus McLaren states that such sharing of advice ‘shored up a sense of female solidarity’ and considers this, rather than their effectiveness, to be the recipes’ main benefit.133 Most women would have gained knowledge of these potentially effective practices from their mothers but, as Riddle points out ‘One mother failing to tell her daughters about what she had learned would be enough to break a chain that was, in many cases, thousands of years old’.134 When a woman was not wed, escaping unmarried pregnancy may have depended on questions of isolation versus friendship groups, who her female associates were, and their own, and their mothers’, knowledge. 130 Quaife, Wanton Wenches, p. 119. 131 McLaren, History, p. 9. 132 Rueff, Expert Midwife, p. 61. 133 McLaren, History, p. 5. 134 Riddle, Contraception, p. 157.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

143

Literary and archival sources indicate that men knew about preventing childbirth. It was hinted at in married women’s letters to their husbands and discussed by unmarried people,135 as we saw in Good Sport for Protestants. In 1624 Joan Barnett appeared before the Coroner at Ryde, East Sussex, accused of giving birth to a ‘live female child’ which died within half an hour due to her negligence.136 At the inquest, Joan said the child was born after two instances of intercourse with Thomas Frenchman. On both occasions she asked what she should do if she became pregnant, to which he replied: ‘Take something to do away with it’. She stated that she had not done so, but does not suggest that she did not know what to take or how to obtain it, though such an admission may have created a negative impression on jurors. Frenchman seems to have had complete confidence that the situation could be dealt with should it arise. His nonchalant attitude, which shows that he perceived this as a female problem which Joan will have to take care of, is the same as that of the bawdy old priest. Joan was convicted. However, it was not considered that only the woman’s contribution to a pregnancy could be controlled. Riddle states that Artemisia, which causes termination in rats, may interfere with the production of sperm. Sowerby recommends ‘Rosin of Cedar applied on the mans member’.137 Other male alternatives mentioned by Schnucker included anointing the penis with any of a long list of substances including rock salt, tar, balm, juice of onion and sesame oil.138 Riddle quotes the 1560 translation of Peter of Spain’s Treasury of Health, which states: ‘Hemlockes bounde to a mans stones, take utterly awaye all desyre of copulation’.139 Understandably, men may have been keen to leave the responsibility with the woman until the ‘small linen covering’, mentioned by Fallopio in 1564 as a means of preventing infection began to be used as a contraceptive in the latter part of the early modern period.140 What does this add to our knowledge of infanticide and liminality? Women could avoid unmarried motherhood by controlling their bodies’ boundaries by methods which, though unreliable, did have some effect. Their actions occupied a ‘between’ territory, between preventing conception, 135 Pollock, ‘Embarking’, p. 56. 136 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 63 #254. 137 Sowerby, Ladies Dispensatory, p. 162. 138 Schnucker, ‘Elizabethan Birth Control’, p. note 4. 139 Riddle, Contraception, p. 148. 140 McLaren, History, p. 157. Condoms found at Dudley Castle are belived to be the earliest physical evidence for the use of animal-membrane condoms in post-medieval Europe. Gaimster et al., ‘Archaeology of Private’.

144 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

and causing abortion. The herbs and spices which could be used were similarly between life-giving nourishment and life-taking or preventing. Riddle writes: Many of the antifertility plants fall into the category of pot herbs […] and were served in salads or placed on meat. The woman’s salad may have been her control over her life and her family’s life, while the men and non-childbearing women ate from the same bowl and saw it as simply a nourishing, tasty meal course.141

Knowledge about substances which could be taken was itself liminal, existing in a grey area between openly written advice – which was often inadequately detailed to be of practical use142 – and the private, oral tradition in which women’s shared knowledge may have been more precise and accurate. However, it is questionable whether mothers might have shared such information with their unmarried daughters. Gowing comments that not being able to talk about the body or sexuality could be evidence of chastity or virtue in both married and single women.143 This may have prevented some women from sharing their knowledge. When a daughter was going into service, for a mother to give her advice about birth control she would first have to admit to herself that the situation her child was going into could make her vulnerable. Such an admission may have made it hard to send her away, no matter how much the family was driven by financial or social need. The high number of servants accused of bastardy or infanticide suggests lack of advice from mothers, as well as evidence of predatory masters and liaisons between servants. In a society in which, according to Sharpe, the objective of infanticide legislation was to control sexual morality as well as to protect infants,144 sharing birth control advice with single women would have allowed them to be neither maid, widow nor wife while having a level of protection from pregnancy. Single women could have some control of their bodies’ boundaries and could thus maintain the semblance of respectability whilst thwarting convention. And of course, once one of them had knowledge, she would be likely to share it with her friends, thus reducing the risks of conception and, ultimately, of infanticide. 141 Riddle, Contraception, p. 155. 142 A herb’s effectiveness is influenced by the means of extraction (into alcohol or water), the amount of heat applied, the concentration of the substance, the amount and frequency of administration, and the duration of the pregnancy (ibid. p, 124). 143 Gowing, ‘Bodies and Stories’, p. 318; ———, Common Bodies, p. 11. 144 Sharpe, Crime, p. 88.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

145

This wide-ranging chapter has shown that uncertainty about what constituted a marriage could place couples in a liminal situation between married and single. This could lead to unmarried pregnancy, and bastardy, and put women in danger of being abandoned, a situation which could lead to infanticide. The same legal uncertainties also led to situations which inspired writers to both comedy and tragedy. The marital liminality of women such as Mariana and Helen is shown by their withdrawal from society and, although their plights are represented using romance motifs, their situations are tragic. Ill-formed marriages could be comic, as represented in As You Like It, or deeply tragic, as in The Duchess of Malfi. In the historical world those who were not acceptably married would have their wrong socially marked by punishments which have many parallels with rites of passage. Separation in the form of banishment from religious ceremonies, and incarceration in Houses of Correction and ritual-based acts of penance or public whipping, similarly contain elements of these rites. The liminality of a marriage state and – if this led to bastardy – the awareness that it would be emphasised through these punishments, could have had a potentially damaging effect on a woman who found herself pregnant, but alone. Her act of mental separation might have begun with her pre-marital sexual liaison and would have increased as she attempted to keep her condition secret, an act which may have encompassed elements of denial.145 The customary lying-in period of later pregnancy, which would have been unfeasible for those attempting to conceal a secret pregnancy, marked the liminal nature of all pregnant women but, for the unmarried woman, her pregnancy, culminating in childbirth, took her more deeply into liminality, a transitional state where, according Szakolczai ‘almost anything can happen’.146 She was inhabiting an unknown and undiscussable state to which there was no visible end unless she went through the ritual of marriage, thus complying with the ‘strictly prescribed sequence’ of life, and allowing her reintegration into society. Under these circumstances, her options included, but were not limited to, abandoning her child, or disposing of it.

145 Dulit, ‘Girls who deny’. 146 Szakolczai, ‘Liminality’, p. 148.

146 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Bibliography Primary sources Anon, The Bloody Miller (1684) (ESTC R234346; EBBA 20776; Pepys 2.156). ———, The Bonny Bryer (c1623–61) (ESTC S103548; EBBA 30473; Roxburghe 3.174–175). ———, The Bridewel Whores Resolution (1674–1679) (ESTC 175581; Bodleian 5560). ———, Celia’s Complaint for the loss of her Virginity (1678–1695) (ESTC R227010; EBBA 30448; Roxburghe 2.50). ———, Good Sport for Protestants in a Most Pleasant Dialogue Between an Old Bawdy Priest, and a Wanton Young Nun (1682–1700) (ESTC R188130; EBBA 21042; Pepys 3.46). ———, A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall (1686–1688) (ESTC R234208; EBBA 20242; Pepys 1.510–511). ———, A Love-Sick Maids Song (1625?) (ESTC S125691; EBBA 20020; Pepys 1.371). ———, Repentance too Late (1663–1674) (ESTC R229032; EBBA 30946; Roxburghe 4.28). ———, Whipping Cheare (1625) (ESTC S125692; EBBA 21303; Pepys 1.208–2–9). Benedicti, Jean, La somme des péchés et le remède d’iceux. Paris: Hierasme de Marnes, 1595. Cockburn, J.S., ed. Calendar of Assize Records: Surrey Indictments: Elizabeth I. London: HMSO, 1980. ———, ed. Calendar of Assize Records: Sussex Indictments: Elizabeth I. London: HMSO, 1975. Crowch, John, The Araignment for Hypocrisie or a Looking-Glasse for Murderers (1652) (ESTC Wing C52). Dugdale, Gilbert, A True Discourse of the Practices of Elizabeth Caldwell (1604) (ESTC 7293). Gerard, John, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, 1597. ———, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. Edited by Thomas Johnson, 1636. Gouge, William, Of Domesticall Duties, 1622. Greene, Robert, ‘Pandosto (1595)’, In Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, edited by J.H.P. Pafford, pp. 181–225. London: Macmillan, 2005. Heywood, Thomas, ‘A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603)’, In A Woman Killed with Kindness and other Domestic Plays, edited by Martin Wiggins, pp. 70–128. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Hunnisett, R.F., ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1558–1603. Kew: PRO Publications, 1996. ———, ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1603–1688. Kew: PRO Publications, 1998.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

147

Jeaffreson, John Cordy, ed. Middlesex County Records Vol II. Middlesex County Records Society: Greater London Council, 1887. Johnstone, Hilda, ed. Churchwarden’s Presentments (17th century) Part 1: Archdeaconry of Chichester. Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1947 / 8. Parker, Martin, The Desperate Damsells Tragedy (1601–40) (ESTC S119367; EBBA 30060; Roxburghe 1.86–87). Riche, Barnabe, ‘Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581)’, In Twelfth Night, edited by J.M. Lothian and T.W. Craik, pp. 157–179. Walton-on-Thames: Methuen, 1975. Rueff, Jacob, The Expert Midwife, or an Excellent and most Necessary Treatise of the Generation and Birth of Man, 1637. Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Edited by Claire McEachern. London: Macmillan, 2006. Shakespeare, William, 2 Henry VI. Edited by Ronald Knowles. London: Macmillan, 1999. Sowerby, Leonard, The Ladies Dispensatory, 1651. Webster, John, ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, In The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays, edited by René Weis, pp. 104–200. Oxford: OUP, 1996. Whetstone, George, ‘The Historie of Promos and Cassandra’, In Measure for Measure, edited by J.W. Lever, pp. 166–193. London: Macmillan, 1965. Woolley, Hannah, The Accomplisht Ladys Delight, 1675. Wroth, Mary, Urania, 1640.

Secondary sources Adair, Richard, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester University, 1996. Anselment, Raymond A., The Realms of Apollo: Literature and Healing in SeventeenthCentury England. Cranberry, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1994. Bond, Garth, ‘‘Amphilanthus to Pamphilia’: William Herbert, Mary Wroth, and Penshurst Mount’, Sidney Journal 31.1 (2013), pp. 51–80. Brinkworth, E.R.C., Shakespeare and the Bawdy Court of Stratford. London: Phillimore, 1972. Crawford, Patricia, Parents of Poor Children in England, 1580–1800. Oxford: OUP, 2010. Dolan, Frances E., ‘Shakespeare and Marriage: An Open Question’, Literature Compass 8 / 9 (2011), pp. 620–634. ———, ‘Why are nuns funny?’, Huntington Library Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2007), pp. 509–535. Dulit, E., ‘Girls who deny a pregnancy. Girls who kill the neonate’, Adolescent Psychiatry 25 (2000), pp. 219–235.

148 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Eccles, Audrey, Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Croom Helm, 1982. Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punishment: the Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1977. Froide, Amy M., Never Married: Single women in early modern England. Oxford: OUP, 2005. Gaimster, David, Boland, Peter, Linnane, Steve, and Cartwright, Caroline, ‘The Archaeology of Private Life: The Dudley Castle Condoms’, Post Medieval Archaeology 30, no. 1 (1996), pp. 129–142. Gowing, Laura, ‘Bodies and Stories’, In Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women, edited by Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seef, pp. 317–332. London: University of Delaware Press, 2003. ———, Common Bodies: women, touch and power in seventeenth-century England. New Haven: Yale University, 2003. Green, Monica H., ‘Flowers, Poisons and Men: Menstruation in Medieval Western Europe’, In Menstruation: A cultural history, edited by Andrew Shail and Gillian Howie, pp. 51–64. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005. ———, ‘Gendering the History of Women’s Healthcare’, Gender and History 20, no. 3 (2008), pp. 487–518. Hackett, Helen, ‘‘Gracious be the issue’: Maternity and Narrative in Shakespeare’s Late Plays’, In Shakespeare’s Late Plays, edited by Jennifer Richards and James Knowles, pp. 25–39. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Helmholz, Richard H., Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s. Vol. 1, Oxford History of the Laws of England (15 vols).. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Houlbrooke, Ralph, Church Courts and the People during the English Reformation. Oxford: OUP, 1979. Ingram, Martin, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England 1570–1640. Cambridge: CUP, 1987. Innes, Joanna, ‘Prisons for the poor: English Bridewells 1555–1800’, In Labour, Law, and Crime: An historical perspective, edited by Francis Snyder and Douglas Hay, pp. 42–76. London: Tavistock, 1987. Jankowski, Theodora A., ‘Defining / Confining the Duchess: Negotiating the Female Body in John Webster’s ‘The Duchess of Malfi’’, Studies in Philology 87, no. 2 (1990), pp. 221–245. Kilday, Anne-Marie, A History of Infanticide in Britain, c. 1600 to the Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. King, Walter J., ‘Punishment for Bastardy in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 10, no. 2 (1978), pp. 130–115. Laslett, Peter, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations. Cambridge: CUP, 1977.

Love, L aw and Liminalit y

149

McIntosh, Majorie Keniston, Controlling Misbehaviour in England 1370–1600. Cambridge: CUP, 1998. McLaren, Angus, A History of Contraception from Antiquity to the Present Day. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. ———, Reproductive Rituals: The perception of fertility in England from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. London: Methuen, 1984. Mikesell, Margaret, ‘The Formative Power of Marriage in Stuart Tragedy’, Modern Language Studies 12, no. 1 (1982), pp. 36–44. Morris, Rosie, ‘The ‘Innocent and Touching Custom’ of Maidens’ Garlands: A Field Report’, Folklore 114 (2003), pp. 255–387. Pollock, Linda A., ‘Embarking on a rough passage: the experience of pregnancy in early modern society’, In Women as Mothers in Pre-industrial England, edited by Valerie Fildes, pp. 39–67. London: Routledge, 1990. Quaife, G.R., Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives: Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth-Century England. London: Croom Helm, 1979. Ranald, Margaret Loftus, ‘‘As Marriage Binds, and Blood Breaks’: English Marriage and Shakespeare’, Shakespeare Quarterly 30, no. 1 (1979), pp. 68–81. Riddle, John M., Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. ———, Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. ———, ‘Oral contraceptives and early term abortifacients during Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages’, Past and Present 131, no. 1 (1991), pp. 3–32. Schnucker, Robert V., ‘Elizabethan Birth Control and Puritanical Attitudes’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5, no. 4 The History of the Family II (1975), pp. 655–667. Sharpe, James A., Crime in Early Modern England 1550–1750. London: Longman, 1999. Slack, Paul, The English Poor Law 1531–1782. Cambridge: CUP, 1990. Spivack, Carla, ‘To ‘Bring Down the Flowers’: The cultural context of abortion law in early modern England’, OCU Law 14 (2007), pp. 107–151. Szakolczai, Arpad, ‘Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009), pp. 141–172. Turner, Victor W., The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1970. ———, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. New York: Aldine, 1969. van Gennep, Arnold, The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: Chicago University, 1960. Walker, Garthine, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2003.

150 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Wilson, Adrian, Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Wrightson, Keith, English Society 1580–1680. London: Routledge, 1995. ———, ‘The nadir of English illegitimacy in the seventeenth century’, In Bastardy and its Comparative History, edited by Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen, et al., pp. 176–191. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980. Wrigley, E.A., ed. An introduction to English historical demography: from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966.

5

Constructing Outsiders, Constructing Killers Abstract Fines for those who helped unwed pregnant women, unwilling or hostile attendance in the birth chamber, and the ability to deny birth-related customs such as baptism and churching to women who had given birth outside marriage, reinforced their outsider status. Life as a bastard bearer continued to be difficult as the provision of housing and most work was forbidden. One possibility was brazening it out including duping unsuspecting men into marriage, a situtation represented in ballads. Other possibiities were vagabondage or prostitution. Infanticide thus became one of the options for managing a desperate situation. Pamphlet narratives of women who followed this route used animal imagery, described them as monsters, and related them to devils, comparisons which link them to liminal worlds as well as vilifying them. Keywords: Social restrictions on bastard bearers; Surviving unwed childbirth; Vilifying infant killers

When once I felt my belly swell, no longer might I abide, My mother put me out of doores, and bang’d me back and side. Then did I range the world so wide, wandering about the knoes1, Cursing the Boy that helped me, To fold my dadyes Ewes.2

1 Probably knolls or hills. 2 Anon, Lovely Northerne.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch05

152 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

The previous chapter noted that late marriage, and the belief that a simple, unwitnessed ceremony was an adequate manner in which to form a binding union, was a combination which could put a woman in a perilous situation. If she became pregnant, it was easy for an unscrupulous man to deny that a ceremony had taken place and desertion offered him an easy escape. For many unwed women, finding themselves with child was a problem which they would have to deal with alone, though importantly this was not the case for all women. Many couples married after the woman’s pregnancy was apparent, suggesting that they had merely anticipated the formal ceremony, but this moral lapse did not preclude women and men from being presented to Archdeacons for ‘incontinency before marriage’. This chapter looks at the kind of lives which unwed pregnant women faced. It shows that the restrictions which were placed on those who bore children outside marriage were so difficult to survive that they led some women to attempt to conceal the evidence of promiscuity by killing the infant. If the popular literature discussed below is to be believed, women also tricked unsuspecting men into fathering another man’s child, a scenario which may say more about masculine fears than social reality. But what was the reality for the woman who was unmarried and with child? As we saw in the previous chapter, one possible course of action was for the woman to abort the child, but many factors could have prevented this, including the woman’s ability to realise that she was with child. Recognising pregnancy was not straightforward and a woman could both believe herself to be pregnant and deny it to herself. The term ‘pregnancy denial’ is a modern commonplace and has, according to Dulit, three phases.3 These are: hoping not to be pregnant (termed by Theresa Porter and Helen Gavin ‘a simple desire’), denying the condition to others (which they term concealment) and pushing the facts away, which they acknowledge as true denial. 4 For a woman who already sensed that she was outside the social norms of being maid, widow or wife, admitting her condition to herself may have been difficult. Denying the truth of her situation would have helped her to cope with pregnancy only to be faced with the reality later and, as Peter Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull suggest, some women may have been so ill-informed about their bodies that they could have been unaware that they were pregnant and not have realised that they were in labour. If the medicaments to induce abortion did not work, the woman’s body increasingly announced her wrong, though she might attempt to hide it. 3 4

Dulit, ‘Girls who deny’. Porter and Gavin, ‘Infanticide’; Kilday, Infanticide, p. 63.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

153

In the pamphlet The Bloudy Mother, Jane Hattersley, who commits several infanticides, disguises her condition with ‘loose lacing, tucking, and other odde tricks that she used’. Similarly, in the ballad No Naturall Mother the narrator, a servant who has murdered her newborn, mentions that her mistress noted that ‘The Belly that was high / Is fallen suddenly’.5 Disguising pregnancy made the woman’s situation more lonely and desperate and, if successful, it is easy to see how the situation would culminate in lone birth and infanticide, unless prurient communities realised the situation and acted upon it. If this happened, the woman could be presented to the Churchwardens, a potentially threatening situation which may, nevertheless, have saved the child’s life, and thereby prevented the woman from being hanged. Yet, satisfying though it would be to think that community intercession was for the benefit of the mother and her infant, the overwhelming majority of opinion is that the concern was with sexual morality, and the desire not to have to pay for the upkeep of an unwed mother’s child. As we shall see in the next chapter, frequently communities appear not to have intervened. Laura Gowing cites several cases of women claiming to have given birth alone, often when sharing rooms, houses or even beds with others,6 an idea reinforced in popular literature. In No Naturall Mother Besse, a young servant who keeps her pregnancy secret and ultimately murders the infant, tells us that when she realised that she was in labour: Into the yard I ran, Where suden pangs began, There was no women than, Neere to assist me

Similarly, in The Bloudy Mother, each time Jane Hattersley give birth, she appears to be alone, despite being in a house inhabited by others.7 Rather than giving birth alone, a woman could attempt to find a compassionate and courageous neighbour or family member to help her, though this was fraught with difficulties.8 Although offering shelter and assistance to an unwed, pregnant woman was an offence for which people could be reported, 5 Parker, No Naturall Mother. 6 Gowing, ‘Secret Births’, p. 102. 7 Improbable though it seems that a woman living in close proximity to others can both conceal her pregnancy and give birth alone in a house occupied by others, recent documented cases in England show that this is possible. These cases, in which infanticide was suspected, are listed in Chapter 10. 8 Postles, ‘Surviving’.

154 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

even if it was a family member, Sussex Presentments give an indication of the sympathy that was sometimes felt toward unwed, pregnant women.9 Richard Selding, of Wiggenholt in Sussex, allowed his pregnant daughter Alice to ‘soiourne’ with him, but was presented by the Churchwardens for his action.10 Outside the family, those who offered a pregnant woman a home could be required to carry out penance, and to take out a bond to relieve the parish of charges if the mother fled leaving the child, though such bonds were rare.11 Thomas Davy the elder of Horsham ensured the safety of a child, as well as protecting the reputation of both parents. He was presented for harbouring a pregnant woman and ‘suffering her to be brought to bed in his howse. When he brought the child to church to be baptised, he would not confesse the father of the child nor the mother’s name’.12 John Ide of East Wittering appears in the Presentments for 1623. The record states: We present that there is one Joane [Blank] that is lately come into our parrish, that is delivered of a base borne childe. The reputed father is one James Channell, dwelling as we heare about Poole in Dorsetshire. She hath bin secretly harboured by John Ide of our parrish ever since Michaelmas last, and we are in doubt shee wilbee privily conveyed away before she hath receaved any punishment.13

Joane Cowper of Ashurst, a widow, ‘did in Christian pitty take into her house Alice Sumner, a servant to Mr. Bridger, begotten with child as she said (wee think falsly) by Robert Hurst, and she hath secretly departed away unpunished’.14 The record ominously adds: ‘her child being dead. Vocentur gardiani’.15 The reference to ‘Christian pitty’ sits strangely alongside the Church’s desire to present and punish those who gave support in this way. The desire to protect the community from having to support a bastard child led to the requirement to demand the infant’s father’s name. If the woman withheld it the midwife would demand it during labour, as it was thought that when she felt close to death she would be less likely to damn her soul with a lie. The duty to extract a name from single mothers became

9 King, ‘Punishment’, p. 138; Ingram, Church Courts, p. 286. 10 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 26. 11 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 290; Wilson, Ritual, p. 20. 12 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 123. 13 ibid., p. 78. 14 ibid., p. 58. 15 Vocentur gardiani: The wardens being called.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

155

part of the agreement signed by midwives in the mid-sixteenth century.16 That signed by Eleanor Pead in 1567 included the statement: ‘I will not permit or suffer that [a] woman being in labour or travail shall name any other to be the father of her child than only he that is the right and true father thereof’.17 Wilson questions the frequency of such questioning practice,18 but if exercised it could work. Elizabeth Diggens of Binderton in Sussex gave birth to a bastard, lay in for three weeks and then fled. The records tell us that Richard Payne was the ‘reputed’ father ‘as the common fame goeth, and as she confessed in her travail’. These Sussex cases suggest that a bastard bearer could divide a community by emphasising the conflicting attitudes of the church and individuals. While the church and some community members appear to have wanted to punish women and men for straying sexually even if they were planning to marry, others appear to have been able to see a desperate and human situation and to realise their own ability to prevent tragedy. The belief that an unmarried pregnant woman should be concealed treated her much like those in the transitional stage of ritual processes. But concealment, even though it arose from good intentions, would have emphasised her sense of shame and not belonging. Of course, not all women found a neighbour with the goodness of Joane Cowper, and many found the place where they would eventually be harboured by wandering.19 This also reinforced their liminal existence: a life on the road where they had no place of belonging – lost women, in every sense of the term. The frequency of such women in ballads suggests that they were familiar figures in early modern communities. For example, after eviction by her mother the northern lass, whose words opened this chapter, did ‘range the world so wide’ and the woman in The Bonny Bryer, who is found walking by a man travelling on foot to ‘Totnam-Court’, is sent back to Lancashire and so forced to become a wanderer. In his play A Jovial Crew, considered below, Richard Brome includes two women who give birth when travelling with vagabonds. Many single, pregnant women escaped to London as a place where the outcome of pregnancy could be hidden and identities changed, as seen in The Witty Westerne Lasse and A True and Perfect Relation.20 Griffiths 16 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 14; Gowing, ‘Secret Births’, p. 103. Wilson notes that the cost of licensing was ‘huge’ and that midwives only took the oath under duress from churchwardens. Wilson, Ritual, p. 159. 17 Forbes, Midwife, p. 145. 18 Wilson, Ritual, p. 26. 19 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 287; McIntosh, Working Women, p. 63; Wrightson, ‘Nadir’, p. 179. 20 Guy, Witty Westerne Lasse; ‘A True and Perfect’.

156 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

shows that many women abandoned their children there,21 but the extent to which abandonment was at the houses of those who might care for them is unclear. Fildes’ examination of abandoned infants in London finds they were frequently older, suggesting that the mothers had been unable to overcome the realities of surviving as a bastard bearer.22 Fildes has found that of the children who were abandoned, only twenty-six percent were under four weeks old, which she attributes to the mother’s lying-in and to women’s failed attempts to care for their infants.23 She states that most were under six months, which suggests that social restraints had forced those who had rejected the possibility of killing their newborns eventually to abandon them. The restrictions and difficulties imposed on an unwed mother would have made her survival a daily struggle, and may have contributed to infanticide. As Keith Wrightson states: the ‘known consequences [of bastard bearing] were sufficiently disproportionate to the offence to terrify some who faced unmarried motherhood alone into concealment and worse’.24 For an early modern single mother the challenges of finding lodging and employment constantly emphasised her liminal state of being neither maid, widow nor wife. Ballads, plays and archival records provide fictionalised representations of the bleak prospects for the bastard mother and her child: how she might have managed to live, where she might have gone, and how she might have obtained enough money for herself and her infant. The literary works discussed in this chapter suggest how unmarried, pregnant women might have dealt with their situation and the awaiting dangers. Works which make unmarried pregnancy the subject of bawdy comedy, as in The Skilfull Doctor of Gloster-shire, or describe comic situations growing out of past tragedy, such as Rocke the Babie Joane, while far removed from the tough reality of a liminal existence, are interwoven with accurate representations of early modern life, blurring the line between literary and historical sources.

Lack of money In his collection of statutes, cases and customs of the law relating to women, Thomas Edgar wrote: ‘All of them are understood either married or to bee married and their desires or [sic] subject to their husband, I know no remedy 21 Griffiths, Lost Londons. 22 Fildes, ‘Maternal feelings’. 23 ibid., p. 148. 24 Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in European’, p. 8.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

157

though some women can shift it well enough’.25 For the bastard bearer who was outside these categories, ‘shifting it’ was fraught with difficulties. As Froide writes, women were expected to be under the control of a master and their need for ‘discipline and authoritarian control’ required that they live with others.26 Those who did not created fear about immorality as single women and prostitution were associated in the early modern imagination.27 Becoming a live-in servant was felt to be the preferred option for an unwed woman as it put her under the control of a master. Earning a living by her own skill was not allowed. Eighty percent of those brought before the court (location unspecified) for living ‘at their own hand’ were women.28 Day service was similarly frowned upon, and women working as char maids or day-labourers could be sent to Bridewell.29 At every potential opportunity, the needs of the single woman living out of service were secondary to the needs of the respectable widow or those ‘genuinely’ deserving of work or assistance. The remaining options were peddling and victualling, though single women were unlikely to obtain licences as they were not considered among the worthy poor.30 It is hard to think of two more disastrous options for an unwed mother. Walking the streets and the countryside trying to sell what she could would have made her physically vulnerable, and as Howard writes: ‘Those who sold goods could be suspected of also selling themselves’.31 Working in victualling, with the ominous combination of men and alcohol, was equally perilous. Froide’s description of one single woman seems to apply to many. She describes her as having a ‘precarious life on the economic margins – moving from job to job, eking out a living, and trying to avoid the notice of the authorities’.32 Such difficulties were amplified for bastard bearers. Even if she could find and pay for a wetnurse, and there is evidence that women did supply this service to unmarried women, prospective employers may have been reluctant to give a home and work to a woman whose sexual immorality was undeniably obvious.33 The ideal solution to the woman’s financial needs was for the infant’s father to pay its upkeep until the child was old enough to be apprenticed. 25 Edgar, Lawes resolutions, p. 6. 26 Froide, Never Married, p. 19. 27 ibid., p. 20; Peters, ‘Single Women’, p. 329. 28 Griffiths, Youth and Authority, p. 358. 29 Froide, Never Married, p. 31. 30 ibid., p. 29. 31 Howard, Theater of a City, p. 128. Gowing, ‘Freedom of the Streets’. 32 Froide, Never Married, p. 31. 33 Eccles, Obstetrics, p. 97; Adelman, ‘Born of Woman’, p. 98.

158 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

This is why midwives demanded his name during labour. However, some women did endanger their souls by naming the wrong man, considering the truth less important than accusing someone who could afford the infant’s upkeep,34 or perhaps wanting to protect a married or influential local person. Communities had their own ideas on the matter as well and sexual slander was a popular way of injuring individuals.35 The Norfolk Lass, discussed below, is one of many ballads describing comic situations in which unwed, pregnant women lie and brazen their way out of their situation. Though fictions, they demonstrate that naming a father was a point at which an unmarried woman could start to manoeuvre her life out of the liminal state in which she had existed for months. While women attempted to move away from a liminal existence by naming false fathers and ‘making shift’ in whatever ways they could find to be accepted in a community, the authorities appeared determined to ensure that they lived on the social margins: poor, unemployable and morally suspect. If a woman was unable to find work, she could go to the parish for support, but the possibility of such assistance was low for any women not living under authority – they were regarded as ‘undeserving’ on the basis of being ‘able bodied’. This was not purely victimisation of bastard bearers. Parish concerns about making contributions from poor relief funds seem to have been almost phobic36 to the extent that, if people were planning to wed but it was believed they would be unable to support a child, the banns might be prohibited.37 This, of course, would have been another reason to embark on an informal, unwitnessed marriage. Poor couples from different parishes could be forced to live apart to prevent the danger of either parish becoming responsible for the cost of both,38 a practice which sits oddly alongside Churchwardens’ Presentments in which couples are named for living apart after marriage. Steve Hindle points out that decisions were made by the ‘the inhabitants’, ‘the parishioners’, ‘the parish’ which, he states, implies the whole community but should really be understood to mean the ‘best’ of the inhabitants and the vestrymen.39 For the respectable and socially ambitious parishioner, disapproval of ‘wanton’ behaviour would have been an opportunity to demonstrate moral superiority and align themselves with the best. These were small communities fuelled 34 Quaife, Wanton Wenches, p. 104; Wrightson, ‘Nadir’, p. 179. 35 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 292. 36 Gowing, Common Bodies, p. 12. 37 Wilson, Ritual, p. 72. 38 Hindle, On the Parish?, p. 343. 39 ibid., p. 345.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

159

by petty rivalries and painfully status conscious, as when people were named to Churchwardens for sitting in the wrong place in church. The prurience and constant watchfulness for any unacceptable behaviours were part of this small community respectability. For the unwed pregnant woman, the difficulty of finding lodging both before and after the birth, and the restrictions on her employment, constructed her as an outsider, and ensured that she was condemned to live in a marginal state as a homeless and unemployable person. This was the background of fears about survival in which many infanticides were committed.

Mirth and misery: single pregnancy in literature The frequency with which unmarried, pregnant woman feature in literature suggests that they interested those who bought ballads, and playgoers. Like dubious marriages, they inspired both comic and tragic representations. One example, Rocke the Babie Joane (‘Jone’ in the text) describes a scenario which seems close to reality. The narrative concerns the events which take place after an unwed, dying woman names her infant’s father, in this case a married man: The Dad on’t she descried, Which having done, shee dyed, This could not be denyed, alas he knew too well. 40

As a result of the naming ‘The Parish him enforced / To see the Infant nursed’ but being poor he takes the infant home to be suckled by his wife Jone, who has just given birth to a daughter. The ballad suggests the confrontations which could exist between the desires of the parish, those of the people intimately involved with the child, and the requirement to show charity to those in need. Jone’s objections are countered with various arguments: No more can she thee trouble, And ’twould be charges double, If every moneth a Noble I pay for milke and bread.

40 HG, Rocke the Babie.

160 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Jone is concerned for her reputation: ‘My neighbours will deride me’ and it would ‘discredit’ her ‘For woman never did it / to a Bastard of this kind’. The danger of infanticide lurks in these merry tales, Jone’s ‘What if the brat be starved?’ possibly suggesting her intention. (Wetnurses and infanticide are discussed in Chapter 7). There was also a fear that a bastard could take part of the legitimate children’s inheritance, the milk here serving as a metaphor for what the bastard will take from its adoptive sibling. The ballad depicts the confrontation between charitable duty, personal reputation, and pragmatism. Jone will not protect the child without expressing her sentiments toward a husband who has fathered a bastard. Similar emotions are expressed in Robert Greene’s Pandosto by the shepherd’s wife after the arrival in her home of the recently-found Fawnia. Greene writes: ‘Taking up a cudgel (for the most the master went breechless) she swore solemnly that she would make clubs trumps if he brought any bastard brat within her doors’.41 She is persuaded by the gold found with the child, whereas Jone appears to be won over when her husband reminds her of her Christian duty and suggests heavenly reward with the reference to ‘lasting glory’: Let patient Grissels storie, Be still in thy memorie Who won a lasting glory, Through patience in like sort.

This tale of Grissel’s wifely obedience and her forgiveness of her husband after his pretence that he had ordered her children to be killed, again brings the danger of infanticide into the background of the ballad.42 Clark questions the idea that ballads were underpinned by masculine values, and finds they are not ‘so dominated by a patriarchal endorsement of male control and pre-eminence as one might initially suppose’. 43 This ballad demonstrates her suggestion that negotiation within marriage was characteristic of street literature.44 Jone’s eventual acceptance of her husband’s bastard appears to promote wifely duty rather than marital fidelity, yet the two-part refrain 41 Greene, ‘Pandosto’, p. 200. 42 The narrative of Grissel’s stoicism would have been familiar through several works including Boccaccio, The Decameron; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; Dekker, ‘Patient Grissel (1603)’. 43 Clark, ‘Economics’, p. 119. Familial duty was a recurring literary theme, whether sibling, as throughout the drama of Thomas Merry in Anon. Two Lamentable Tragedies (1601), parental, as in Richard II (V.ii.85), and King Lear, or the wider family, as in Blood for Blood, discussed in Chapter 6. Such works suggest the changing nature of early modern relationships. 44 ibid., p. 120.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

161

invites listeners to participate with separate male (equating to the parish) and female (equating to the individual) refrains: Suckle the Baby huggle the Baby Rocke the Babie Jone I scorne to suckle the Baby; Unlesse it were mine owne.

The ballad encourages women in the oral and public def iance of their husbands and both teaches and rehearses them in the act of negotiation. It enables them to demonstrate their own personal moral code against the man’s patriarchy, to defy his right to operate his own sexual morality within marriage, but ultimately to show themselves to be merciful and pragmatic about the solution to a problem. Rocke the Babie can be seen as a didactic work in that it shows a woman who has given birth to a bastard dying for her wrongs and provides an example of selfless Christian charity. Other street literature acts more controversially by suggesting that unmarried pregnancy was a situation that could be managed. It would be wrong to suggest that the servants and townspeople who were the audiences for this popular literature believed the narratives they contain, yet the repetition of tales of survival normalised the idea that an unwed, pregnant woman could manipulate her situation and, despite her circumstances, still arrive at a traditional ‘happy ending’. Such fictions, when taught to single women who were unhappily pregnant, invited complacency which could easily culminate in a birth, followed by either a liminal existence, or infanticide; when taught to men, the fictions invited them not to have a great sense of responsibility for the situation they had created. A woman’s determination to escape liminality, and the female community’s willingness to help her to do so by misnaming the father, is comically told in The Norfolk Lass, or The Maid that was Blown With-Child.45 It shows suspicion about an unmarried, wandering women yet its affectionate and humorous tone suggests understanding and tolerance, and a relaxed attitude to truth. It is one of many works which show a single woman’s strength of will and determination to salvage what she could of her life after becoming pregnant. In this ballad the Maid arrives at a town where ‘She thrived so well, and her body so great / Made all the wives in the Town wonder thereat’. At the 45 Anon, Norfolk Lass.

162 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

church the ‘good Women’ of the town challenge her with being ‘with-Child’, but she indignantly declares her innocence: ‘If I be with-Child into me it is blown’. The girl is ‘examin’d’ by the Women, though whether physically or verbally is unclear, and she continues to deny her pregnancy, complaining to the questioners that she had ‘gotten the same of her Mother before’. Shortly after, the girl is heard groaning in her chamber, and the woman who goes to her finds ‘a dainty Boy laid on the flore’. Seeing the child ‘made the Wifes glad / Asking the Mother who should be the Dad’. Doubtless the women are ‘glad’ both that their suspicions were well-founded and because they find the child alive. The girl does not name the father. However: Next Thursday after to Church it was brought, For to have it Christened, as it did ought: God-fathers, God-mothers, all that it had, They all did agree to the name of the Dad.

Finding godparents, and complicity in placing responsibility for fathering the child with a member of the community, appears to be historical reality. According to Wrightson, godparents were found from among those present at lying-in houses. 46 Children were sometimes placed with an unpopular person47 and marriage enforced, though this was illegal. 48 It was another way of punishing someone the community disliked and of providing upkeep for the child. Although a comic fiction, the ballad describes everyday events surrounding unmarried pregnancy. It encompasses suspicion of a stranger, challenges by the matrons, repeated denials and perhaps self-denial, the suggestion of escape from home to evade detection or eviction, lone birth, an endangered baby, questions about fatherhood, and the withholding of a name. The Norfolk Lass is a tale of a woman manufacturing a satisfactory outcome by securing a route out of her liminal state and back into a community. By the end of the ballad she is established in a community, a father has been selected for her child, and it has been appropriately christened. It suggests a happy outcome achieved by the woman simply brazening out the situation and other women acting as a community to find a pragmatic solution to her predicament. A similarly happy outcome is described in The Skilfull Doctor of Gloster-shire. The ballad tells a preposterous tale. However, its richness of 46 Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in European’, p. 6. 47 Quaife, Wanton Wenches, p. 202. 48 Adair, Courtship, p. 80.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

163

contemporary detail about the ways in which pregnancy might be diagnosed, gives the impression that the story might almost be true, despite the fact that it clearly is not. Accurately diagnosing pregnancy would have been central to unwed women’s lives – and failure to do so would have had an impact on the possibility of infanticide. The ballad is therefore worth considering in some detail for the medical techniques it describes and the questions it raises about marital relationships and the wisdom of ordinary people. It is also highly comic and entertaining. The ballad tells of a Farmer’s attempts to deal with the fact that he has made the Maid pregnant.49 His initial idea is to bribe a young man to marry her, but he refuses ‘For I will neither Reap nor Mow / The Bastard-seed that you did sow’. He therefore tries a doctor, perhaps hoping for an abortifacient. Instead, for £10, he is instructed to ask his wife to take his urine sample to the doctor, who tells her that ‘Thy husband surely is with-Child’ caused by a rare planetary configuration when they had intercourse. The cure, she is informed, is for her husband to take to his bed with ‘Eggs, and some choice meats’ as well as sack, soft pillows and sweet possets. She must then take to him each night ‘a lusty Maid / Which to his Belly must be laid’ and in this manner, with time, the baby will pass from him to the Maid who will then give birth and they can all pretend that everything has been normal. The ballad concludes: The Maid in time was brought to bed, The good wife lay down in her stead:50 The man was of his burthen eas’d, The Child at Nurse, and all are pleased.

Considering this ballad as more than a piece of nonsensical entertainment reveals contemporary realities operating in a fictional situation. These include the man’s attempt to care for a woman and his child by arranging a marriage; the importance of his, and his wife’s, reputation and the financial cost of pleasure – £10 is both the doctor’s fee and the sum proffered as a bribe to the young man. In this ballad, unlike other works, it is the Farmer’s anguish we see, not that of the pregnant woman: ‘his heart poor man did almost bleed / With inward grief and trembling fear’. In the real world he could have been fined for fathering a bastard or required to serve a penance 49 Anon, Skilfull Doctor. 50 The phrase suggests that the wife participated in the deception by assuming the child-bed role.

164 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

for harbouring a pregnant woman. Another revealing feature of this ballad concerns the diagnosis of the man’s ailment which make use of early modern practices for assessing whether someone was pregnant. In the early modern world, urine, which the doctor supposedly uses to diagnose the man’s condition, was central to the diagnosis of ailments, based on observation of a sample and its comparison with the colours depicted on a uroscopy wheel. It is, however, unclear whether urine was used to ascertain pregnancy. Angus McLaren states that it was rare for this to be done, although it could be used to test for sterility by adding it to bran – if the brain sprouted it indicated fecundity.51 The seventeenth-century physician Sudell dismissed using urine as a test for pregnancy, which he discussed in the same terms as its use for ascertaining the sex of the child. He describes both as being among ‘some errors commonly imbraced as truth amongst some women’.52 However, at the end of the seventeenth century medical writers were still describing the appearance of a pregnant woman’s urine in detail. Peachey writes: The urine is white, a little cloud swimming at the top, and many atoms appear in the Urine. Take the Urine of a Woman, and shut it up three days in a glass, if she have conceived, at the end of three days there will appear in the Urine certain live things, to creep up and down.53

Such advice amounts to an early modern home-test for pregnancy which must have lulled some women into a false sense of security and, as it would have encouraged them not to seek marriage with the father or to attempt abortion, could have started them down a road which culminated in infanticide. By the time they realised that the diagnosis had been wrong, it may have been too late to take the latter action. Despite the unreliability of early modern uroscopy, many considered that for medical diagnosis it was important, including patients. Lauren Kassell’s paper on Simon Forman confirms that people expected their urine to be examined,54 but Forman considered that astrology – which the ‘skilfull doctor’ is also shown as using – was the only accurate diagnostic tool. Horoscopes based on planetary positions at the moment of birth go back to the first century BCE, and during the Middle Ages, each period of gestation was believed to be influenced by the changing combinations of 51 McLaren, History, p. 111. 52 Sudell, Mulierum Amicus, p. 84. 53 Pechey, Compleat Midwife’s Practice, p. 54. 54 Kassell, ‘How to Read’, pp. 9, 16.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

165

heavenly bodies.55 Ancient writers thought that astrology could indicate the most appropriate time to sow seed, and almanacs, whose vendors and readers overlapped with those of ballads, continued to carry such information.56 McLaren writes: ‘The powers of procreation were too mysterious ever to be disentangled completely from superstitious beliefs’.57 It is a small step from such theories to the belief that the position of the planets at the moment of intercourse could influence conception. The Skilfull Doctor, being a comic ballad, suggests that the pregnancy has occurred because the farmer and his wife had intercourse at the wrong time. This may be a jibe at the fact that the Catholic church had believed that couples should abstain from sexual activity on many days of the year. James A. Brundage, writing of the medieval period, states: Virtually all of the major penitentials required married couples to abstain from sex on Sundays; a substantial number of them prescribed sexual abstinence on Wednesdays and Fridays as well. A few added to this a requirement of continence on Saturdays.58

The prescription of the ‘lusty maid’ correlates with the late medieval belief that the female body was curative.59 Old men were encouraged to sleep with young women to help their bodies retain the warmth which medical theories stated was lost in old age.60 In Volpone, Mosca’s feigned attempts to find a cure for his master’s feigned illness, lead him to announce: At last, they all resolved That to preserve him was no other means But some young woman must be straight sought out, Lusty, and full of juice, to sleep with him.61

As well as mocking the medical profession, The Skilfull Doctor parodies the period of seclusion and indulgence which women underwent before 55 Algra et al., eds., The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, p. 597.; Riddle, Eve’s Herbs. 56 Burke, ‘Popular Culture’, p. 48; Capp, ‘Literature’, p. 198. 57 McLaren, History, p. 154. 58 Brundage, Law, Sex, p. 156. Other days of abstinence which can be added to this list are when the woman was lactating or menstruating; feast days and fast days; during pregnancy and pentecost, and so on. 59 Solomon, ‘Women in Medicine’, p. 179. 60 Thane, Old Age in English History, p. 53. 61 Jonson, ‘Volpone’, p. II.iii.32.

166 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

and after childbirth. Taken detail by detail, the only real jump in credulity in The Skilfull Doctor is that the wife believes the diagnosis and cure (if she does). While the doctor is depicted as espousing the beliefs of both astrology and uroscopy, his advice is an obviously ridiculous suggestion. Yet his ‘cure’ solves the farmer’s problem. The doctor’s solution removes the child’s care from the parish, which is what communities sought to achieve. It shows the wife as an intermediary in her husband’s treatment and demonstrates women’s involvement in family health, but also suggests that a woman might understand a situation and be complicit in her own duping, as discussed below. It also potentially makes the wife a figure of fun to the ballad performers and their audiences. Can this really be seen as an example of the esteem in which doctors’ diagnoses and advice were held? Kassell writes that: ‘If a patient did not accept the physician’s judgement, a cure could not be effected’.62 Does the ballad mock the foolishness of country people? Or, would a woman in a similar situation have been perfectly aware of the trick but cooperate to avoid the double shame of neither satisfying her husband nor keeping control of her servants? The representation of the farmer’s wife may not suggest gullibility so much as a pragmatic response to the situation. Maxwell-Stuart confirms that there was plenty of ‘fraud […] deception, chicanery and self-delusion’ amongst the practitioners of what he broadly terms ‘the occult’, using the early modern definition of something hidden or secret.63 He adds ‘But people of the early modern period were not stupid. They knew they might be deceived or mistaken, and it is patronising to judge their beliefs and aspirations by pointing to the lowest manifestations of both’.64 At one level, The Skilfull Doctor seems to be merely a foolish, comic ballad. Yet, by suggesting a way out of an impossible situation, such tales could be dangerous, lulling both men and women into a sense of security, much as the extremes of some alternative medicine does today. Comic ballads such as The Norfolk Lass and The Skilfull Doctor blur social reality and fiction. They raise the question of the extent to which people may have feigned belief in impossible situations and accepted expedient arrangements which allowed the survival of an errant woman and her infant, whether she was a stranger, a family member, or a servant. Private, reputation-saving arrangements may have saved many infants.

62 Kassell, ‘How to Read’, p. 12. 63 Maxwell-Stuart, ed. The Occult, p. 1. 64 ibid., p. 3.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

167

Seeking marriage and security Another fear for a single mother was the knowledge that her best option was to find a husband, jostling in a market with her single, morally uncompromised contemporaries. This was not a hopeless task. Ingram writes that marriage opportunities could be limited by scandal but concludes that ‘it is unlikely that suspicion or even proof of immorality was in normal circumstances sufficient to blight an individual’s marriage chances for life’.65 As we have seen, many couples appear to have anticipated marriage and married either before the infant was born, or soon after. Additional research by Richard Adair (on east and north-west England) finds that between 1561 and 1640, between fourteen and twenty-eight percent of women married within ten years of giving birth to a bastard, but it is unclear whether these were delayed marriages to the child’s father, or whether the child had died and no longer presented tangible evidence of past misdeeds.66 Ballads are richly peopled with husband-seeking women. The frequency of such narratives describing fortuitous rescue for the mother and child may suggest that audiences favoured comic rather than tragic songs, or may indicate the wish-fulf ilment fantasy of writers and audiences. Yet narratives in which men are duped into fathering another’s child also suggest men’s anxiety about women’s purity, questions of property, and their own dynastic line. They could also give unmarried, pregnant women false hope of rescue and thereby encourage secrecy about their condition until it was too late to attempt abortion. Some women are rescued under improbable circumstances, such as The Lovely Northerne Lasse who is heard lamenting her situation by a young man who is so moved that he vows to marry her: Thus with a gentle, soft imbrace he took her in his armes, And with a kisse he, smiling, said ‘Ile shield thee from all harmes, And instantly will marry thee’67

65 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 310. 66 Adair, Courtship, p. 81. 67 Anon, Lovely Northerne.

168 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Closer to reality perhaps is the woman in The Countrey Farmer or the Buxom Virgin who relentlessly seduces Ned.68 She offers him her ‘virgin treasure’ if he will marry her, describing her love as a ‘flame of fire’ and adding: I long for to taste of those tender joys, Of those soft kisses and wanton Toys That every Maid in her Wedding enjoys When Lasses with Lovers get lusty Boys.

Ned is won over, but a month after the wedding the buxom ‘virgin’ gives birth to twins. The Country Lass Who left her Spinning-Wheel loses her virginity to the Squire and discovers that being kept by him would be more profitable and easier than spinning.69 Chastised by her mother and warned about pregnancy and social rejection, she answers that: If at length I should happen to breed, I’ll hasten to my old Love with speed, The Miller, young Harry, with him I’ll marry He’ll serve for Cloak in the time of need.

Similarly, in the two-part ballad Joy and Sorrow Mixt Together, the young man expresses delight at the beauty of the woman he has been paid to marry, before later complaining ‘my Wife she proves to be with Barn / The Child it will mee father call’. He warns: ‘Maidens are dangerous fare’.70 In The Witty Westerne Lass is the pregnant woman who mourns her state until she decides to entrap a spouse:71 Her plan is to go to London, have the child and then: I for a maid will passe againe, And need not to cry alacke, and welly. Some tradsman there I will deceive, By my modesty and cariage And I will so my selfe behave, As by some tricke to get a mariage.

68 ———, Countrey Farmer. 69 ———, Country Lass. 70 Climsell, Joy and Sorrow. 71 Guy, Witty Westerne Lasse.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

169

The phrase ‘I for a maid will pass again’ invites male concern about women’s purity, evading the practicalities of proving this, and the ballad does not mention the baby’s fate. The lass’s statement that she will not ‘seeke by woe to overthrow / or wrong the f irst fruits of my belly’ suggests concern for the child, although her intention to ‘smother’ her grief implies infanticide. The ballad says nothing about the challenges of ‘I for a maid will pass again’, a voyeuristic hint at the secret tactics women were thought to adopt. Women’s ability to fake virginity was a subject of street literature, drama and medical texts, which again fuelled suspicion of single women. The Lasse’s ‘by my modesty and carriage’ suggests this was achieved by performance, and as most ballads were performed by men,72 this first-person narrative emphasises femininity as performance, a concept familiar from theatre. Virginity as performance is recommended by the Courtesan’s mother in A Mad World my Masters (1605): Fifteen times thou knows’t I have sold thy maidenhead […] ’Tis nothing but a politic conveyance, A sincere carriage, a religious eyebrow.73

In The Changeling (1622), Beatrice-Joanna rehearses Diaphanta in the performance of virginity to satisfy Alsemero’s suspicions.74 In this work, performance is combined with the bed-trick, a similarly popular motif which moves proof from the performed to the biological evidence of the intact hymen.75 Mara Amster writes: ‘The hymen was the single physical indicator of a woman’s virginity’76 and medical texts reveal the extent to which women were believed to feign physical virginity. In The Midwives Book (1671) Jane Sharp writes of ‘astringent Medicaments [used] when whores desire to be maids’.77 Her matter-of-fact statement suggests belief in their existence and effectiveness, and her non-judgmental tone implies some sympathy for those women – not just whores – who needed to carry out 72 Clark suggests that, as women accompanied peddlers, whose wares included cheap print, they may have assisted in performances. (Clark, Women and Crime, p. 76; Marsh, Music and Society, p. 243). 73 Middleton, ‘A Mad World’, p. I.i.145/156. Other dramatic works mentioning reselling virginity include Marston, ‘The Dutch Courtesan (1605)’, p. II.ii.10.; Dekker, ‘The Honest Whore Part I’, p. 46. 74 Middleton, ‘The Changeling’, p. I.i.165. 75 Desens, Bed-Trick. 76 Amster, ‘Frances Howard’, p. 219. 77 Sharp, Midwives Book p. 268.

170 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

this deception to meet society’s expectations. By contrast, in The Workes, Ambroise Paré (1634) provides a horrified male view on women’s actions: Some, that having learned the most infamous arts of bawdry, prostitute common harlots to make gaine thereof, making men that are naughtily given to believe that they are pure virgins […] for they do cause the necke of the wombe to be so wrinkled and shrunke together […] then they put thereinto the bladders of fishes, or galles of beasts filled full of blood, and so deceive the ignorant and young lecher […].78

Clearly, we are intended to sympathise with naughty lechers who have been mis-sold virgins by deceitful women. Paré believed these physical attributes to be accompanied by performance, his description inadvertently providing a useful manual for literate women who sought to survive the social restrictions of their period: and in the time of copulation they mixe sighes with groanes, and womanlike cryings, and the crocodiles teares, that they may seeme to be virgins, and never to have dealt with man before.

The expectation of bridal virginity was another obstacle for bastard bearers to overcome, and given that it could be feigned by potions or performance, it was another temptation to destroy evidence to the contrary. Although comic in tone, ballads such as The Witty Westerne Lasse and The Loving ChamberMaid suggest that women could return their lives to their previous courses. For unmarried, pregnant women, ballads in which those in a similar situation find a husband suggest an escape from their situation. For men, ballads about pregnant, and apparently virgin brides contain a warning: the seducer can become the seduced, and be tricked in the process. Many in the audience were doubtless horrified by these jolly songs.79 They counterbalance works such as Ladies Fall and Rocke the Babie with their implicit lessons about unmarried pregnancy and death, discussed in Chapter 4. The narratives in The Westerne Lasse, The Country Lass and The Northerne Lasse potentially implanted ideas in the consciousness of the young people who are believed to have made up a large part of their audience.80 They suggest 78 Paré, Workes, p. 1634. 79 Watt, Cheap Print, p. 11; Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, p. 42; Clark, ‘Economics’, p. 199; Capp, ‘Literature’, pp. 199, 256. 80 Marsh, Music and Society, p. 251.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

171

that if pregnancy occurred someone would be found to take the blame and financial responsibility. They warn men about women, and women about men, but they also suggest that the problems surrounding unmarried pregnancy could be overcome. They can be seen as an invitation to abandon pregnant lovers and evict pregnant daughters, on the basis that everything would be satisfactorily resolved. Balladeers used narratives of pregnancy to create subgenres within the form. Tragic ballads described abandoned women driven to infanticide, and comic ballads made light of an unwanted pregnancy by adhering to the comic principles of temporary disruption followed by the restoration of social cohesion and possible harmony. While tragic outcomes were moral and instructive, recurring themes of pregnancyand-rescue make the ballads powerfully subversive. Amy Laggot, who provided a friend with an abortifacient, was mentioned in the previous chapter. As well as confirming the existence of knowledge on abortifacients, their availability and their effectiveness, this archival account shows us that it was possible to have a child outside marriage and to go on to lead an apparently unhampered life within a community. Those in Amy’s current home village appear not to know of her illegitimate child, though she is happy to tell others of it, and it is unclear whether her daughter is the base child to which she refers. If she is, Amy has managed either to marry, or to rear her child alone and organise for her to be respectably apprenticed. Most interesting, though, is Amy’s reference to being laughed at. This reveals village attitudes to unmarried pregnancy, and appears to have been the worst of Amy’s punishments. It is hard to admire Amy as she is represented. She feigns friendship by helping Elizabeth, who apparently trusted her, and then uses the power she has attained to her own ends. She is a gossip, in the modern sense, and is possibly even willing to expose her daughter to the risk of being shunned for being a bastard. The episode suggests that a woman who became pregnant outside marriage made herself vulnerable to censure, though if in Amy’s case that had been no more than being laughed at, she was lucky indeed. It also queries whether it was feasible for a bastard bearer to survive and merge into a community with her past unknown. Accounts which deal with unwed women who become pregnant but nevertheless manage to get their lives back on track create a temptation to see the marriage ceremony as the commencement of a ‘happy ever after’, as in many plays and literary works of the period. This is far from the case. Ingram writes: ‘The marriages of the poor were often extremely vulnerable’.81 There was no guarantee that a bastard bearer’s marriage 81 Ingram, Church Courts, p. 131. See also Cressy, Birth, Marriage & Death, pp. 298–315.

172 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

would be successful and the circumstances under which it was made may have contributed to its difficulties. The community may have disapproved of the marriage particularly if the couple was likely to become a ‘burden’ on the parish. Others may have resented the polluting effect of ‘sullied goods’ in the village, or regretted that a meagre estate might pass to a bastard. The fact that a woman could be guilty of fornication and bastard bearing yet still achieve women’s socially prescribed ambition of a husband and a home, would have been a disastrous example for those trying to instil moral values in their daughters. The network of neighbourly support which should have been available to all women may have been withheld or given grudgingly. Such statements cannot be made categorically, and must appear with ‘perhaps’ and ‘may be’ because equally others in the community might have been pleased for the couple. Personal morals, beliefs and principles would inevitably have come into play contributing, to a greater or lesser extent, to the fear and shame of unmarried, pregnant women.

Wandering When support was not forthcoming from the child’s father or the parish, and when a woman was unable to find employment, the worlds beyond the limen beckoned. Writing of single, pregnant women, Dave Postles observes: ‘virtually all spaces were ideologically denied to them. In this sense, they were – at the point of detection of their pregnancy – always out of place’.82 The bastard bearer could become a wandering beggar although a 1598 statute made this illegal without a licence and ‘The assumption appears to have been that such licences would be granted rarely and reluctantly’.83 Just as people harboured pregnant women, it is probable that they also supported the needy. Yet some families slept in church porches, and some died there.84 The effect of layers of legislation to control the poor was summarised by Sir Robert Cecil, Secretary of State, in an address to parliament in 1601 on the Enclosures Act. He stated: if the poore beinge thruste out of their howses goe to dwell with others, streight we ketche them with the statutes of inmates; if they wander abroad and be stubborne, they are within the danger of roagues; if they be 82 Postles, ‘Surviving’. 83 Hindle, On the Parish? , p. 11. 84 ibid., p. 320.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

173

more humble and vagrant baggars [sic], then they are within this statute of the poore to be whipte and tormented.85

This miserable and potentially dangerous life could lead to permanent liminality. Thomassen cites Turner’s belief that a liminal state may become ‘fixed’ adding that ‘without reintegration liminality is pure danger’.86 For bastard bearers this fixity could mean vagabondage or prostitution, again subjects which attracted writers, doubtless because readers and playgoers were fascinated by these glimpses into other worlds. In his 1641 comedy A Jovial Crew 87 Richard Brome presents a romanticised and idealised picture of a vagabond society with poets, courtiers, soldiers, an acting priest, and a lawyer who, Rosemary Gaby states, ‘have all been reduced to begging by the nature of the times’. 88 This community has its own customs and language, and its members travel with companionship, thrive on charity, and entertain themselves and others with merry songs. Gaby acknowledges that it ‘exposes the sordid realities of the beggar’s meagre existence’, but believes that their ‘spirit of jovial mirth predominates’. 89 Yet Brome’s comic veil conceals the desperate aspects of life on the road, as Julie Sanders suggests. She looks at beggar plays as commentary on monarchy and rule, and states that ‘a melancholic mood lies beneath much of what happens on the surface’.90 This includes the hardship and vulnerability of women, as when the charitable Oldrents comments on the noise coming from his barn where the crew is temporarily residing. He is told by Randall: There’s a doxy Has been in labor, sir. And ’tis their custom, With songs and shouts to drown the woman’s cries, A ceremony which they use, not for Devotion, but to keep off notice of The work they have in hand.91

Randall continues: 85 Quoted in ibid., p. 303. 86 Thomassen, ‘Uses and Meanings’, pp. 15, 100. 87 Brome, Jovial Crew. 88 Gaby, ‘Vagabonds’, p. 411. 89 ibid., pp. 413,409. 90 Sanders, ‘Beggars Commonwealths ’, p. 4. 91 Brome, Jovial Crew, p. II.ii.126.

174 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

She’ll have the bantling at her back tomorrow That was today in her belly, and march a footback With it.92

This is the world which waited for the unmarried, pregnant woman. On the road she was vulnerable sexual prey: Jean Howard suggests women who cross-dressed may have done so for protection. She cites the case of Margaret Wakeley, recorded in the Bridewell records (1601) who ‘had a bastard child and went in man’s apparell’.93 Brome reveals women’s vulnerability when Oldrents’ disguised daughters embark on an escapade of vagabondage,94 and are at risk of rape by Oliver, the Judge’s son. Seeing them, Oliver is smitten by ‘the handsomest Beggar-braches that ever grac’d a Ditch or a Hedgeside’ and he convinces himself their seduction is both acceptable and sensible: Why, Beggars are flesh and blood; and Rags are no Diseases. Their Lice are no French Fleas. And there is much wholsommer flesh under Country Dirt, than City Painting; And less danger in Dirt and Rags than in Ceruse and Sattin. I durst not take a touch at London, both for the present cost, and for fear of an after-reckoning.95

Oliver declares to himself the advantages should the girl become pregnant, and continues by convincing himself that getting her with child is almost a duty: Nor can Beggar-sport be inexcusable in a young Country Gentleman, short of means, for another respect, a principal one indeed; to avoid punishment or charge of Bastardy: There’s no commuting with them; or keeping of Children for them […] The poor Whores, rather than part with their own, or want children at all, will steal other folks to travel with, and move compassion. He feeds a Beggar-wench well that fills her belly with young bones.96

92 ibid., p. II.ii.146. 93 Howard, Stage and Social, p. 96. 94 This is a liminoid experience: ‘a break from normality, a playful as-if experience [which] loses the key feature of liminality: transition’. Thomassen, ‘Uses and Meanings’, p. 15. 95 Brome, ‘Jovial Crew’, p. III.ii.51. 96 Brome, ‘Jovial Crew’ (III.i.258). That infants were used as an aid to begging was popularly assumed, for example: ‘Sometimes I use my Pattens, / and crawl upon all four, / And when my Babes I mention; / I then do get the more’. Anon, Merry Beggars.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

175

The daughters are rescued by Oldrents’ steward Springlove, who assists the girls throughout acting as their guide (or master of ceremonies) in this liminal world. He later proves to be Oldrent’s bastard, the bastard thus preventing further bastardy. The closing scene reveals that Oldrents fathered a bastard on a beggar who, unbeknown to him, was the daughter of a formerly wealthy family which had been impoverished by his father. After employing the romance motif of an identifiable memento as an affirmation of identities, Brome completes the tragedy of this unnamed woman when Oldrents asks whether his former lover is alive, and is told: ‘She died within a few days after / Her son was born’.97 She is not worth mourning or further mention, so again the bastard bearer receives a literary death-sentence. Gaby writes that audiences wanted ‘escape from sordid realities’ and ‘the beggars of Brome’s play, significantly, commit no crimes during the course of the action’.98 However, seen from the perspective of infanticide the play exposes a different picture. The ‘doxy’ who gives birth to a bastard and chooses to wander the countryside after a night of celebration would, in reality, have been moved from parish to parish and Oliver’s attempted rape suggests the danger any wandering woman would have been in.

Prostitution For those who could not eke out a living as a beggar, there was the bleak prospect of prostitution. Griffiths writes that there were some ‘“individual” operations: wives and widows who worked alone, or the more mobile alley and street whore’.99 He finds that the women charged were normally ‘the honest maidservant who was “enticed” from her “true” master’. In some cases, procurement was by the master, or the girl’s parents, and sometimes those charged with prostitution were simply ‘the wives of absent sailors who left them with a paltry sum’.100 Those who were part of a brothel had the advantages, if they can be so called, of a pimp to raise business, some protection from danger, and a place to live.101 A woman would move from her liminal life to being part of a community, albeit a marginal one in which she was almost certainly doomed to disease and an early death. 97 Brome, Jovial Crew, p. V.i.38. 98 Gaby, ‘Vagabonds’, p. 408. 99 Griffiths, ‘Structure of Prostitution ’, p. 44. 100 ibid., p. 49. 101 ibid., p. 45.

176 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Although the last municipal brothel in London was closed in 1546, private establishments appear to have been widespread.102 Griffiths’ research into the industry in the capital has revealed that earnings could be as much as 3s to 10s a visit, though it could be as low as 6d.103 These are extraordinary sums when compared with paltry poor relief payments – subsistence levels were assumed to be £2.12s to £3.18s a year. However, as much as twenty to fifty percent of a prostitute’s fee could go to the brothel keeper.104 Byron Nelson says that the sex workers of early modern England were ‘an inescapable part of urban life’.105 They were certainly a popular subject for writers, Howard describing them as ‘omnipresent’ in city drama.106 Nevertheless, when playwrights included them in their works, they often located the narrative abroad, as in some of the plays mentioned below. This may have been partially because whores were associated with foreignness,107 but also such locations reduced the possibility of being accused of negative social or political comment and allowed writers to discuss English social problems, corrupt government and regicide. Plays such as The Honest Whore Part 1 (1604) and The Dutch Courtesan (1605) suggest that some women operated at elevated social levels and had select clients yet were still subject to revulsion. In the former, Hippolyto attacks the courtesan Bellafront in a series of long, vicious speeches: You have no soul […] For your body Is like the common shore that still receives All the town’s filth.108

Duncan Salkeld observes that in the 1590s, English dramatists ‘portrayed the courtesan as a socially elevated figure belonging principally to tragedy’.109 However, in Shakespeare’s later plays we meet the poor whores of the stews. Nelson writes that in Measure for Measure and Pericles the brothels are ‘treated comically’: yet there is a vast difference between Mistress Overdone and the Bawd. The former has maintained Lucio’s bastard for over a year, has sympathy for Claudio, and appears to interact with her community, while 102 ibid., p. 43. 103 ibid., p. 46. 104 Slack, Poverty and Policy, p. 81; Wrightson and Levine, Poverty and Piety, p. 40. Research based on Terling, Essex in the 1690s. 105 Nelson, ‘Marina, Isabella’. 106 For a literary study of the subject see Salkeld, Shakespeare. 107 Howard, Theater of a City, p. 141. 108 Dekker, ‘The Honest Whore Part I’, p. 44. 109 Salkeld, Shakespeare, p. 97.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

177

the brothel scenes in Pericles emphasise exploitation, disease, commerce, and virginity as a saleable commodity. Although Griffiths warns against thinking of prostitution in terms of subculture, an idea which both Measure for Measure and Pericles support with their intermingling of social levels, he describes it as a separate sphere.110 It is clear from Howard that entering this sphere was related to the practices of ritual. She writes that ‘conversion was often […] quasi-ritualised ceremony’. Part of this was putting on clothes (the ‘what is shown’ of Turner / Van Gennep’s marking on the body) and is seen in Michaelmas Term in which the Country Wench must change her clothes before becoming a ‘gentlewoman’.111 The Bawd, who is the trickster of liminality – the dangerous figure who can emerge at this time – also serves as Marina’s master of ceremonies in Pericles, instructing her how she must behave (Turner’s ‘what is done’).112 The desperate mother who was determined to keep her child fits uncomfortably well into this world with its risks of violence, disease and unpleasant death. It is a depressing prospect, even bearing in mind contemporary, near-optimistic comments such as that from a procuress who said that ‘it is better to doe so than to steal’, and Griffiths’ assertion that commercial sex provided ‘a chance to save money and find lodgings’.113 If this was the route the bastard bearer’s life took, it was still not the end of hope of returning from her liminal state. John Dunton’s 1696 account of London nightlife describes street prostitutes as ‘unfit to make a wife’, the juxtaposition suggesting that such marriages might take place.114 This is supported by Griffiths, who states that women ‘probably’ left the ‘bawdys’ when they married.115 The feasibility of marriage for a woman for whom there would have been assumed to be no hope, suggests that some bastard bearers could find their way back from the worlds beyond the limen. This is sometimes suggested in the drama of the time, though again it may have given a false sense of hope.

Constructing killers Social practices constructed any lone woman as a potential problem and sexually dubious. These feelings were magnified if the woman was unwed 110 Griffiths, ‘Structure of Prostitution ’, p. 54. 111 Salkeld, Shakespeare, pp. I.ii, III.i. 112 Shakespeare Pericles (IV.ii.49). 113 Griffiths, ‘Structure of Prostitution ’, p. 51. 114 Dunton, The Night-Walker. 115 Griffiths, ‘Structure of Prostitution ’, p. 52.

178 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

and pregnant, or had borne a child outside marriage. They were constructed as outsiders and forced into a liminal life, with neither food nor lodging permitted to them. They were forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence, to wander, and perhaps to be forced to live as part of the most desperate groups. Rather than follow this downward spiral, some women killed their infants – an obviously illegal and desperate act, committed in the hope that they could wrest back control of their lives. How often this occurred we cannot know – it is possible to dispose of an infant body without too much difficulty. When this happened – when a woman murdered her child and the crime was discovered, a different kind of construction took place. Authors of street literature used the language of monstrosity to construct the killers as liminal beings who did not merit human – and certainly not womanly – status. Martin Parker’s ballad No Naturall Mother is a mournful and movingly simple tale.116 It is sung posthumously from the grave by Besse ‘Like to a dying Swan / pensively, pensively’, her spirit unable to rest until she has told her story and received forgiveness. She tells us that she was carefully reared before being ‘put to service’ where her ‘carriage was too wild’. When she was ‘got with child’ the ‘father on’t fled’ but, she believes, she manages to conceal her changing shape, gives birth easily, outdoors and alone, and hides the child in straw where it dies. When the crime is revealed, Besse is tried and hanged. By using an intimate first-person narrative, Parker and the singer take us into Besse’s mind and situation, thus reducing the scope to criticise the wrong-doer and, when Besse sings ‘it was smother’d’, he partially disassociates her from the killing, although Besse’s later reference to her ‘strangled Infant’ betrays her involvement in the infant’s death. Instead of focussing on her wrong, he brings her self-recrimination and regret to the fore. She sings of her shame and compares herself negatively to snakes and tigers, who care for their young: ‘The Tyger […] is wondrous tender / And loving to her young […] And can a womans heart / […] So willingly depart / from her own baby’. Whereas in other works discussed below authors use the same creatures to make these killers appear not human, in No Naturall Mother they become an aspect of Besse’s self-understanding. Garthine Walker notes that: ‘It was common enough for those who disposed of dead babies to articulate a lack of affective relation to their infants in a language of bestiality and monstrosity’.117 The doleful tone of the narrative is far removed from the law’s assumption that infanticide was committed by ‘lewd 116 Parker, No Naturall Mother. 117 Walker, ‘Just stories’, p. 101.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

179

women’ with studied motives (Appendix 1). Instead, Parker gives a sense of the bewilderment of women who found themselves in Besse’s situation and suggests that they felt debased by the crime they had committed. Whereas the narrative of No Naturall Mother belies the ballad’s title, Deeds against Nature and Monsters by Kind, about the purportedly true case of Martha Scambler, does not.118 Martha’s monstrosity is emphasised by the fact that her story is one of two ‘deeds against nature’ recounted in this pamphlet. The other (which is placed before Martha’s story), tells of a blasphemous, drunken ‘deformed creature’ who is ‘a Monster by kinde and the dooer of a deed against nature’. The pamphlet is unequivocal in its attitude to his murder of his equally disreputable ‘strumpet’ and the man’s monstrosity is emphasised by his being ‘an unperfect wretch wanting the right shape and limbes of a man’. Having established his theme by telling of the murder of one socially reviled person by another, the author turns to Martha’s story, and the murder of an innocent. In this he fluctuates between damning and sympathetic representations, again suggesting an ambivalent attitude toward the killer. The ballad begins by describing Martha as a ‘lascivious young damsel’, one of the ‘murderous minded strumpets’ and a ‘lewd and close strumpet’. She and others like her are unworthy of their own womanhood: ‘woemen I cannot call them’ (The gendering of those who kill infants is considered in Chapter 7). Like Besse who thought herself less worthy than snakes and tigers, Martha Scambler is repeatedly constructed in animal terms.119 She is ‘more savage than a she-wolf’ and ‘more unnatural than bird or beast’. The animal merges with the monstrous. Frequently the connection is figurative or metaphorical: the woman becomes the thing named. Martha Scambler is a ‘caterpillar of nature’ – a low, creeping and consuming creature and a term used elsewhere to suggest those who corrupt and destroy society. Similarly Martha is a ‘monster of nature’ and Jane Hattersley, who murdered multiple infants and is discussed more fully in Chapters 6 and 8, is a ‘Chimera, with a Lions upper-part in bouldnesse: a Goates middle part in lust: and a Serpents lower part in sting and poyson’. Such a description would have had particular resonances for early modern readers. By the mid-sixteenth century physical deformity, which had previously been 118 Anon, Deeds Against Nature. 119 Some early modern people considered women to be in a near-animal state, and there was a semi-frivolous debate about whether women (and animals) had souls, which was ‘sometimes echoed at popular level’. Lust was thought to make men like animals, and gynaecologists emphasised the animal aspects of childbearing. Thomas, Man, p. 43. Thus, the non-elite, lustful woman who gave birth was already approaching animal status.

180 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

considered a warning from God about mankind’s actions, had become more commonly applied to monstrous behaviour.120 Clark, writing of killers more generally, suggests: ‘They have been, as it were, beside themselves when committing the crimes, taken over by some exterior dehumanising force which has transformed them temporarily into monsters’.121 The animal imagery related to Martha might be expected to be strongest after she gives birth, but here the representation changes and she is constructed in a more sympathetic manner. Rather than being beast-like, Martha’s human feelings are emphasised. She fears the ‘disgrace of the world’, and being a ‘scandall to her acquaintance’. She considers her sin, her shame, and her lost reputation, which cause ‘troubled cogitations’. It seems that for a time, the esteemed role of motherhood elevates her, but when it comes to the child’s destruction, she is again ‘not like a mother, but a monster’. The ‘repentance’ to readers which ends the pamphlet reverts to Martha’s human qualities and, now in her own voice and in verse, she considers her sin, her ‘stained credit’ and loss of good name, the shame to her friends, and the world’s disgrace. While the ‘repentance’ is clearly related to the tradition of female complaint,122 it is hard to account for the use of verse. It seems a direct line to her thoughts, but also draws on popular association between poetry and feigning.123 It may suggest that her remorse has elevated her, or could simply be a device to make the story more literary and powerful, and to give resonance and memorability to her closing advice: Both maides and men, both yong and old Let not good lives with shame be sold But beare true vertues to your grave That honest burials you may have.124

The author thus leaves the reader with the idea of burial, suggesting death, the afterlife and retribution. This echoes the closing sentiments of the 120 Brammall, ‘Monstrous Metamorphosis’. Some readers may also have perceived the tangibility of such composite figures as they were an aspect of medieval art which could be seen in church masonry and in carvings such as misericords. For a discussion of such figures see Camille, Image on the Edge. 121 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 39. 122 Kerrigan, ed. Motives of Woe. 123 See for example Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (I.v.186); As You Like It (III.iii.16). 124 Anon, Deeds Against Nature, p. 2Bv. Those sentenced to death were buried in the churchyard of the parish in which the jail stood, whereas suicides were to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart (Gittings, Death, Burial, p. 72). Gittings writes that Christian burial was only denied to those guilty of treason, ibid., p. 67.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

181

main narrative where, in a sudden switch of tone and concerns, the author addresses his readers with a short prayer: ‘convert us God of Israel, so that we never be endangered with the like perswasion, which God in his mercy grant: Amen’.125 Ultimately, and finally, the tone of Deeds against Nature decides on compassion toward the killer rather than vilification, and readers are invited not to see Martha as a monster, but to pity her as a tragic figure. Like No Naturall Mother and Deeds Against Nature, the 1616 pamphlet A Pittilesse Mother also uses animal imagery when describing an infant murderer.126 The work concerns Margret (sic) Vincent who, after converting to Catholicism, kills her children because her husband will not allow them to join her in her adopted religion. She then attempts to kill herself. As Margret approaches the killings she is ‘deserving no name of Gentlewoman’ and later she is ‘this Creature not deserving Mothers name’. Name or title is something which must be deserved. Stripping away the titles which might have been applied to Margret defines her by what she is not, and creates an absence which is then occupied with the animal terms. The creatures with which she is compared immediately divert the pamphlet toward religion by alluding mankind’s fall in Eden: she is ‘more cruell then the Viper, the invenomd Serpent, the Snake, or any Beast whatsoever’. In addition to its use of animal imagery, A Pittilesse Mother is striking for the multiple ways in which it both stipulates and implies its criticisms of Margret’s faith, linking Catholicism with the devil and indicating that he is Margret’s accomplice. These aspects of the pamphlet are discussed in more detail in Chapter 7. In conclusion, we saw earlier that it is frequently suggested that single women committed infanticide due to their fear of shame and the difficulty of supporting themselves.127 They are often seen as unable to influence their futures and destined to lives of such hardship that some writers believe that this, in conjunction with the punishments described in the previous chapter, contributed to them committing infanticide. However, as Walker points out, although historians portray them as ‘hapless victims of a society that forces them to choose between castigation for “brazen immorality” or murder’, the extent to which the women were able to change their lives is ‘an interpretative matter’.128 Compared to the relative brevity of punishments, daily living was a long-term, unremitting problem for a bastard bearer, and possibly the basis 125 Anon, Deeds Against Nature, pp. A4, A2v. 126 ———, Pittilesse Mother. 127 For example, see Sharpe, Crime, p. 158; Pollock, ‘Parent-Child Relations’, p. 218. 128 Walker, Crime, Gender, pp. 75, 149.

182 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

of the fear which drove some to infanticide. If she was not supported by her family or lover she would have needed parish assistance, but she would not have been deemed among the ‘deserving poor’ and would have received little help. Off icials seemed determined to make her life hard. People, including parents, were discouraged from providing lodging. Finding work, which was difficult for any woman not living under authority, was further complicated by her need to find care for her child and there is no evidence that unwed mothers cooperated to help ensure their and their children’s survival – possibly seeing each other as competitors for scant work and lodging. The types of work available put already vulnerable women into the perilous situations of travelling to peddle goods, or working in victualling. It is unsurprising that Laslett finds evidence of repeaters among the bastard bearers he studied.129 These obstacles of work and lodging could be overcome, but to do so women would have needed strength and determination – to be agents of their destinies rather than victims. Although some people were prepared to risk the opprobrium of the church and to offer shelter, work and even marriage, others were prepared to report the women. The laws were put in place by authorities, but Wrightson suggests that some cases were brought to official attention by ‘common informers’.130 The concept of Christian charity, which widow Joane Cowper displayed when she helped Alice Sumner, appears to have been missing in many. The role of the family was paramount and with their help everything could change. A supportive family or allies could provide lodging, negotiate somewhere to give birth, arrange nursing, adoption or fostering, and negotiate a marriage. Bastard bearers from all social groups could have given birth and then merged seamlessly back into their communities as Amy Lagott appears to have done. Many of them would be invisible in the records. When an unmarried woman found herself with child, what did she believe might happen to her? In parallel with the grim social prospects was the popular culture which suggested a Deus ex machina style of rescue for single, pregnant women. A clever doctor, a gallant lad, a naïve tradesman or former lover, kindly villagers, innocent dupes – there was a cast of imagined characters who might, but more probably would not, come to a woman’s rescue. Between the dream-world and reality lie the desperate acts which some women felt compelled to commit. Fildes has found that of the children 129 Laslett and Oosterveen, ‘Long-Term Trends’. 130 Wrightson, ‘Nadir’, p. 182.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

183

who were abandoned, only twenty-six percent were under four weeks old, which she attributes to the mother’s lying-in (the month-long period of confinement following giving birth) and to women’s failed attempts to care for their infants.131 She states that most were under six months, which suggests that it was social restraints which forced women who had rejected the possibility of killing their newborns eventually to abandon them. Shame, fear of punishment and loss of livelihood doubtless led some women to commit infanticide. For the unpartnered woman coping with pregnancy, the outlook beyond the birth required her to survive the daily grind of finding places to live and work to do. Those who actively decided to commit infanticide may have been partially prompted by awareness of the liminal and precarious world in which they would have to attempt to survive. They would be liminal women – neither maids, widows nor wives – attempting to live in a liminal place: non-people in non-places. After the unhappy outcome of her sexual liaison, there was the prospect of worlds beyond the limen – vagabondage and prostitution. Bastard bearers were obstructed at every turn by restrictions which the authorities imposed, but which ultimately their fellow citizens enforced. Given the community hostility toward unmarried, pregnant women and the penalties which could be faced by those who helped them, the difficulty of finding work or lodging, and the threat of attempting to scrape together a living before finally resorting to prostitution, it is, perhaps, unsurprising that some women committed the desperate act of murdering their infants. A woman who murders is, of course, an outsider – someone whose actions are beyond the norms and boundaries of her society and beyond the comprehension of most people. The authors of street literature, took this a step further by representing them as beyond the human race. They describe them as monsters and devils, liminal creatures with the ability to move between this world and the underworld (the devil’s role is considered in the next chapter). In some instances, women who murder infants are linked to other outsider groups such as religious dissenters, witches or cannibals. Yet, writers were not rigid in this view. They also represent some child killers as mournful, contrite and decidedly human. The surprising amount of compassion they show for them indicates their ability to see beyond the woman’s sexual wrongdoings. Writers sometimes moved between condemnation and empathy within a single work, suggesting an ambivalent attitude toward those single women who were driven to infanticide by their societies’ attitudes.

131 Fildes, ‘Maternal feelings’, p. 148.

184 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Bibliography Primary sources Anon, The Countrey Farmer; Or, The Buxome Virgin (1672–1696) (ESTC R22700033; EBBA 30548; Roxburghe 2.77). ———, The Country Lass Who left her Spinning-Wheel for a more pleasant Employment (1675–96) (ESTC R171557; EBBA 21305; Pepys 3.290). ———, Deeds Against Nature and Monsters by Kinde (1614) (ESTC S115346). ———, The lovely Northerne Lasse (1632) (ESTC S119858; EBBA 30133; Roxburghe 1.190–191). ———, The Merry Beggars of Lincolns-Inn Fields (1685–1688) (ESTC R188566; EBBA 21912; Pepys 4.252). ———, The Norfolk lass: or, The Maid That was Blown With-Child (1672–1696) (ESTC R227371; EBBA 30804; Roxburghe 2.366). ———, A Pittilesse Mother (1616) (ESTC 24757). ———, The Skilfull Doctor of Gloucester-Shire or A New way to take Physick (1684–1686) (ESTC R234220; EBBA 20253; Pepys 1.531). Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron, 1620. Brome, Richard, A Jovial Crew (1641). Edited by Ann Haaker. Nebraska: Edward Arnold, 1968. ———, ‘A Jovial Crew: or, the Merry Beggars (1641)’, In The Dramatic Works of Richard Brome, pp. 341–452. New York: AMS, 1966. Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, 1478. Climsell, Richard, Joy and Sorrow Mixt Together (c.1635) (ESTC S108779; EBBA 30107; Roxburghe 1.170–171). Dekker, Thomas, ‘The Honest Whore Part I’, In The Honest Whore Parts 1 and 2, edited by Nick de Simogyi, pp. 5–109. London: Nick Hern, 1998. ———, ‘Patient Grissel (1603)’, In The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, edited by Fredson Bowers, pp. 208–298. Cambridge: CUP, 1953. Dunton, John, The Night-Walker: or, Evening Rambles in Search of Lewd Women, 1696. Edgar, Thomas, The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights: Or, The Lawes Provision for Woemen, 1632. Greene, Robert, ‘Pandosto (1595)’, In Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, edited by J.H.P. Pafford, pp. 181–225. London: Macmillan, 2005. Guy, Robert, The Witty Westerne Lasse (1634) (ESTC S12644; EBBA 20144; Pepys 1.304–305). HG, Rocke the Babie Joane (1632?) (ESTC S5270; EBBA 20184; Pepys 1.396–397). Johnstone, Hilda, ed. Churchwarden’s Presentments (17th century) Part 1: Archdeaconry of Chichester. Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1947 / 8.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

185

Jonson, Ben, ‘Volpone’, In Ben Jonson: Three Plays, edited by Michael Jamieson, pp. 47–171. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. Marston, John, ‘The Dutch Courtesan (1605)’, In Four Jacobean City Comedies, edited by Gamini Salgado, pp. 31–108. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. Middleton, Thomas, ‘The Changeling’, In Women Beware Women and Other Plays edited by Richard Dutton, pp. 165–236. Oxford: OUP, 1999. ———, ‘A Mad World, my Masters’, In A Mad World my Masters and Other Plays, edited by Michael Taylor, pp. 1–65. Oxford: OUP, 2009. Paré, Ambroise, The Workes of that Famous Chirugion Ambrose Parey. Translated by Th. Johnson, 1634. Parker, Martin, No Naturall Mother, but a Monster (1634) (ESTC S94604). Pechey, John, The Compleat Midwife’s Practice Enlarged in the Most Weighty and High Concernments of the Birth Of Man. London, 1698. Sharp, Jane, The Midwives Book or The Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered, 1671. Sudell, Nicholas, Mulierum Amicus: or, The Womans Friend, 1666.

Secondary sources Adair, Richard, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester University, 1996. Adelman, Janet, ‘‘Born of Woman’: Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth’, In Cannibals, Witches and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance, edited by Marjorie Garber, pp. 90–121. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Algra, Keimpe, Barnes, Jonathan, Mansfield, Joap, and Schofield, Malcolm, eds. The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. Amster, Mara, ‘Frances Howard and Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling: trials, tests, and the legibility of the virgin body’, In The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation, edited by Laurel Amtower and Dorothea Kehler, pp. 211–232. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2003. Brammall, Kathryn M., ‘Monstrous Metamorphosis: Nature, Morality and the Rhetoric of Monstrosity in Tudor England’, Sixteenth Century Journal 27, no. 1 (1996), pp. 3–21. Brundage, James A., Law, Sex and Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990. Burke, Peter, ‘Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century London’, In Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, edited by Barry Reay, pp. 31–58. London: Routledge, 1985. Camille, Michael, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. London: Reaktion, 1992.

186 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Capp, Bernard, ‘Popular Literature’, In Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, edited by Barry Reay, pp. 198–243. London: Routledge, 1985. Clark, Sandra, ‘The Economics of Marriage in the Broadside Ballad’, Journal of Popular Culture 36, no. 1 (2002), pp. 119–133. ———, Women and Crime in the Street Literature of Early Modern England. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. Cressy, David, Birth , Marriage & Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Desens, Marliss C., The Bed-Trick in English Renaissance Drama: Explorations in Gender, Sexuality, and Power. Delaware: Delaware University Press, 1994. Dulit, E., ‘Girls who deny a pregnancy. Girls who kill the neonate’, Adolescent Psychiatry 25 (2000), pp. 219–235. Eccles, Audrey, Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Croom Helm, 1982. Fildes, Valerie, ‘Maternal feelings re-assessed: child abandonment and neglect in London and Westminster 1550–1800’, In Women as Mothers in Pre-industrial England, edited by Valerie Fildes, pp. 139–178. London: Routledge, 1990. Forbes, T.R., The Midwife and the Witch. New Haven: Yale University, 1966. Froide, Amy M., Never Married: Single women in early modern England. Oxford: OUP, 2005. Gaby, Rosemary, ‘Of Vagabonds and Commonwealths: Beggars’ Bush, A Jovial Crew, and The Sisters’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 34, no. 2 (1994), pp. 401–424. Gittings, Clare, Death, Burial and the Individual. London: Croom Helm, 1984. Gowing, Laura, Common Bodies: women, touch and power in seventeenth-century England. New Haven: Yale University, 2003. ———, ‘‘The freedom of the streets’: women and social space, 1560–1640’, In Londinopolis, edited by Paul Griffiths and Mark S. R. Jenner, pp. 130–150. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. ———, ‘Secret Births and Infanticide in Seventeenth-Century England’, Past & Present 156 (1997), pp. 87–115. Griffiths, Paul, Lost Londons: Change, Crime and Control in the Capital City 1550 -1660. Cambridge: CUP, 2008. ———, ‘The Structure of Prostitution in Elizabethan London’, Continuity and Change 8, no. 1 (1993), pp. 39–63. ———, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England 1560–1640. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. Hindle, Steve, On the Parish? The Micro-Politics of Poor Relief in Rural England c.1550–1750. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

187

Hoffer, Peter C., and Hull, N.E.H., Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England 1558–1803. New York: New York University Press, 1981. Howard, Jean E., The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 1994. ———, Theater of a City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Ingram, Martin, Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England 1570–1640. Cambridge: CUP, 1987. Kassell, Lauren, ‘How to Read Simon Forman’s Casebooks: Medicine, Astrology, and Gender in Elizabethan London’, Social History of Medicine 12, no. 1 (1999), pp. 3–18. Kerrigan, John, ed. Motives of Woe: Shakespeare and ‘Female Complaint’. Oxford: OUP, 1991. Kilday, Anne-Marie, A History of Infanticide in Britain, c. 1600 to the Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. King, Walter J., ‘Punishment for Bastardy in Early Seventeenth-Century England’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 10, no. 2 (1978), pp. 130–115. Laslett, Peter, and Oosterveen, Karla, ‘Long-Term Trends in Bastardy in England: A Study of Illegitimacy Figures in the Parish Registers and in the Reports of the Registrar General, 1561–1960’, Population Studies 27, no. 2 (1973), pp. 255–286. Marsh, Christopher, Music and Society in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2010. Maxwell-Stuart, P.G., ed. The Occult in Early Modern Europe: A documentary history. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. McIntosh, Majorie Keniston, Working Women in English Society 1300–1620. Cambridge: CUP, 2005. McLaren, Angus, A History of Contraception from Antiquity to the Present Day. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Peters, Christine, ‘Single Women in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change 12, no. 3 (1997), pp. 325–345. Pollock, Linda A., ‘Parent-Child Relations’, In The History of the European Family, edited by David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli, pp. 191–220. New Haven: Yale University, 2001. Porter, Theresa, and Gavin, Helen, ‘Infanticide and Neonaticide: A Review of 40 Years of Research Literature on Incidence and Causes’, Trauma, Violence and Abuse 11, no. 3 (2010), pp. 99–112. Postles, Dave, ‘Surviving Lone Motherhood in Early-Modern England’, The Seventeenth Century 21, no. 1 (2006), pp. 160–183. Quaife, G.R., Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives: Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth-Century England. London: Croom Helm, 1979.

188 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Riddle, John M., Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Salkeld, Duncan, Shakespeare Among the Courtesans: Prostitution, Literature, and Drama 1500–1650. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. Sanders, Julie, ‘Beggars Commonwealths and the Pre-Civil War Stage: Suckling’s The Goblins, Brome’s A Jovial Crew and Shirley’s The Sisters’, The Modern Language Review 97, no. 1 (2002), pp. 1–14. Sharpe, James A., Crime in Early Modern England 1550–1750. London: Longman, 1999. Slack, Paul, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman, 1988. Solomon, Michael, ‘Women in Medicine and Women as Medicine’, In The Querelle des femmes in the Romania: studies in honour of Friedrike Hassauer, edited by Wolfram Aichinger, Marlen Bidwell-Steiner, et al., pp. 171–182. Vienna: Turia & Kant, 2003. Thane, Pat, Old Age in English History. Oxford: OUP, 2000. Thomas, Keith, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800. London: Penguin, 1983. Thomassen, Bjørn, ‘The Uses and Meanings of Liminality’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009), pp. 5–27. Walker, Garthine, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. ———, ‘Just Stories: Telling Tales of Infant Death in Early Modern England’, In Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women, edited by Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seef, pp. 98–115. London: University of Delaware Press, 2003. Watt, Tessa, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640. Cambridge: CUP, 1991. Wilson, Adrian, Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Wiltenburg, Joy, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany. London: University of Virginia Press, 1992. Wrightson, Keith, ‘Infanticide in European History’, Criminal Justice History 3 (1982), pp. 1–20. ———, ‘The nadir of English illegitimacy in the seventeenth century’, In Bastardy and its Comparative History, edited by Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen, et al., pp. 176–191. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980. Wrightson, Keith, and Levine, David, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling 1525–1700. London: Academic, 1979.

Construc ting Outsiders, Construc ting Killers

189

On-line sources ‘A true and perfect Relation Of the Tryal and Condemnation, Execution and last Speech of that unfortunate Gentleman Mr. Robert Foulks (1679)’. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ [Accessed 1 July 2014]. Nelson, Byron. ‘Marina, Isabella and Shakespeare’s Sex Workers’, http://www. marietta.edu/departments/English/OVSC/Select_Papers/2008/Taft_S&R_2008_ Nelson.pdf [Accessed 19 April 2014].

6

Not the Usual Suspects: Communities and Accomplices Abstract The women who committed infanticide did not live in isolation. Historical records and f ictional 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.1

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 1

Partridge and Sharp, Blood.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch06

192 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

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.2 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. It examines the role of communities by using archival records and street literature concerning infanticide, using ‘community’ to include family, friends, neighbours, employers and all those with whom a person came into contact. It considers the extent to which a community’s actions, or failure to act by over-riding their suspicions about unwed women and pregnancy, enabled those women to commit infanticide. It shows that ballads, pamphlets, and archives provide examples of communities missing opportunities to prevent the crime, largely due to apparent indifference about the events which were unfolding. The second part of the chapter will consider accomplices: those apart from the infant’s mother who were directly involved in the killing

Communities The ballad No Naturall Mother concerns Besse, a young woman who was ‘put to service’ in a new community, away from her family. This was a common occurrence which allowed women to earn a living and perhaps widen their opportunities. Besse appears to have relished the freedoms this offered, but her employers failed to prevent her wild behaviour, her mistress only intervening after Besse has killed her infant, although she suspected the pregnancy: O Besse I am afraid, thou hast done evill, Thy Belly that was high, Is fallen suddenly.3 2 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 10. 3 Parker, No Naturall Mother.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

193

This simple narrative suggests that Besse was a servant with just one other close person in her life. It captures the isolation of a girl living away from her home without others in whom she dare place her trust. Her employer, who is quick to judge and act once the child is born, does nothing to prevent the inevitable course of events, thus failing a vulnerable servant through apathy and disregard of the signs of her pregnancy. If an out-of-control servant was an indication that an employer had failed to manage a household correctly, a servant who murdered would have appeared a far more serious wrong. Perhaps a crime of such magnitude could be dismissed as due to the servant’s uncontrollable wickedness, but this is not the image of Besse which the author creates. A valid way to read this narrative is that the mistress, while not directly guilty of the crime, was certainly in some measure culpable by failing to offer help to Besse when she suspected that she was pregnant. There are many ways in which Thomas Brewer’s pamphlet The Bloudy Mother can be discussed. It was mentioned in the previous chapter in relation to Jane Hattersley’s attempt to hide her unwanted pregnancy, and will be further discussed in Chapter 8, because the role of Adam Adamson, her master and lover, is so prominent in this work. In this chapter, the pamphlet is considered in relation to the community which surrounded Jane during her multiple pregnancies and acts of infanticide. Sandra Clark points out that the pamphlet is ‘peopled by a host of watchful neighbours’ and interprets this as an indication that it is not the failure of policing which enables infanticide to take place, but that it is an indication of the ‘unconquerable wickedness of the human heart’. 4 Similarly, Susan C. Staub suggests that Jane’s control of Adamson, indicated by the extent to which he caters to her demands and desires, is an inversion of the accepted master / servant relationship. Brewer’s narrative, like other works discussed below, shows the role of the community in these cases of infanticide and, I suggest, indicates their culpability. Brewer alludes to the neighbours, law enforcers, and family who came into contact with Jane: real people who commit real errors by ignoring increasingly obvious indications of the imminent crime. The first instance of a society disregarding facts is when Jane becomes pregnant and goes to a family called King. They do not suspect her and the situation is only realised when Jane meets a neighbour’s wife as she is leaving the house with the living but concealed child, which is rescued. Her hostess subsequently sleeps with her, ‘mistrusting she would do some mischiefe to that unhappy issue’ but the infant is found dead soon after Jane is left alone with it for the 4 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 49.

194 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

first time.5 Nevertheless, Goodwife King and the constable conclude that it was accidentally overlain, despite the fact that overlaying was frequently considered a concealed method of infanticide, as discussed in Chapter 2, and despite the fact that Jane had previously concealed her pregnancy. The ease with which the claim of ‘accident’ was accepted, although Jane was clearly suspected of intending to commit infanticide, places some responsibility for the crime with the law enforcers and the Kings. After these events, Jane returns to Adamson, and when she is suspected to be pregnant a second time she is ‘searched by women and found to be so’ but her denials are believed and she murders the child.6 Again the author shows a community allowing an opportunity to prevent the killing to slip by. When she is in labour a third time, her cries are heard by a neighbour against whom Jane shuts the door; the neighbour spies through a keyhole, thinks she sees the afterbirth, and believes she hears an infant’s cry. She fetches the constable, but when she returns ‘all was most cunningly cleard by her cunning keeper’.7 Both Jane and Adamson oppose the accusations and are believed, and the crime is only discovered after neighbours overhear arguments between the couple in which incriminating threats are made. When they are tried, Adamson persuades Jane to admit responsibility for the deaths, claiming that he will obtain a reprieve for her. He does not do so, although Jane is described optimistically hoping it will arrive even when the noose is placed around her neck. Jane’s guilt is unquestionable and Brewer acknowledges this in his use of animal terms to describe her, as discussed in the previous chapter. However, as the trajectory of his narrative is toward Jane’s futile hopes on the scaffold and Adam’s public and excruciating death, it seems he was not convinced that she should be totally reviled. Although the communities within which Jane moved did not carry out the physical murders of her infants they enabled them to take place by looking the other way and Brewer attributes a considerable share of responsibility to them. Their actions are thus depicted despite the fact that, as we have seen from archival sources, early modern people were vigilant for behaviour which was considered inappropriate. Identifying sexual misconduct was part of this habit of observation, communities being ever keen to avoid the cost of supporting a mother and her illegitimate child. As a result, a woman could be suspected even when there was no real indication that she might be pregnant. One such case occurred 5 Brewer, Bloudy Mother, p. B. 6 ibid., p. B2. 7 ibid., p. B2v.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

195

in the village of Felpham, Sussex, where Richard Edwards reported that he heard William Deane tell Adam Page, ‘the Parson’ and John Couper that he (William Deane) ‘saw such filthiness betwixt the said John Couper and the servant mayd […] that Deane thought she might be with childe’.8 Such prurience can be comic to modern sensibilities, and in this case the accusation is merely a combination of hearsay and supposition. But at a practical level, watchfulness could have helped to ensure that infants’ fathers became financially responsible for them, and, more importantly, may have prevented women from concealing pregnancy and ultimately resorting to infanticide. Early modern people seem to have been ever-watchful, as in the case of Adamson and Hattersley. Yet the habit of prurience appears to have existed alongside an ability to overlook the possibility that an infant murder was imminent, or perhaps had already occurred. For those people who had more money, resourcefulness and general good fortune, there were established ways of disposing of unwanted infants. As we have seen, some women ran lying-in houses, where the services for unmarried women included not only their care before and during childbirth, but also dealing with the problem of the unwanted child, a service which could easily cover for infanticide. The community as a unified, functioning body was central to early modern life and failing to participate in it, or lack of neighbourliness, was evidence of bad citizenship. As such, it is frequently mentioned in pamphlets. Mary Crompton was a nurse who took children into her care and subsequently starved them to death. The crime is of itself sensational, but the horror of it is emphasised by the gruesome descriptions of the bodies. Readers are told they were ‘liker the Carkasses of Catts or Doggs than Humane Creatures, all their skin being off, as likewise their eyes and part of their Flesh eat with Vermin, stinking in a lamentable manner’.9 The tale was told in ballads and several pamphlets10 and one of the factors which made Mary an object of suspicion was her lack of neighbourliness. She was ‘very private, not in the least associating herself with any of the Neighbourhood’ and her house was kept ‘private and obscure from neighbours’.11 Although the publication describing the downfall of Rose Warnes is not street literature, it is included here because it gives a different insight into 8 Johnstone, ed. Presentments, p. 33. 9 Anon, Cruel Midwife, p. 6. 10 ———, Injured children; ———, Cruel Midwife; ———, Bloody Minded Midwife; ———, Midwife’s Maid’s; ———, Midwife of Poplar’s; ———, Particular and Exact Account. 11 ———, Cruel Midwife, pp. 3–4.

196 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

community responsibility for infanticide.12 The author, John Horn, tells us that Rose Warnes was ‘of good parentage’ but ‘through decay and poverty […] fell into temptation and so into sin’. References to her children and her own comment about ‘turning aside to another then my Husband’ tells us that Rose is married, though this is not pursued in the text. The author writes of Rose that ‘falling with child adulterously, and being delivered in secrete, she caused it to be cast forth’.13 Rather than being a thrilling tale of the murder and the crime’s discovery, The Efficacy of the True Balme is the story of a sinner’s struggle to arrive at contrition. However, the author’s comments place Rose within a wide community of people. He tells her: I have observed that you have been of latter times very seldom in the Company of your faithful friends and negligent when you have been with them, of minding and giving ernest heed to that which might have kept you from this.14

As well as these moral-sounding friends, Rose also moved within a different group. Horn tells her that he has observed that she was ‘oft in evil vain and wanton company, and having fellowship with them in such vanity filthyness and foolish talking’, however, he states that he overlooked this because he did not completely believe the reports and because he thought it resulted from ‘the fear of want and hoping of getting some advantage, or relief by such friendship’.15 It seems that evil and wanton company and ‘filthynesse’ are acceptable if they advance a poor woman, an attitude which overlooks what Rose might have to do for this ‘advantage, or relief’. Horn acknowledges that he has failed her: ‘truly I must take shame to myself […] that I have not been more watchful nor more laid to heart what I have observed and heard’, thus warning readers to be more conscientious in their care. The work shows the complex nature of community in its depiction of Rose as a woman who was part of two separate groups of people. As well as ‘vain and wanton company’ there were others referred to as her ‘faithful friends’. Yet, when she suspected herself ‘with childe’, she was reluctant to tell them. Instead, she was ‘filled with shame and horror’ and ‘knew not how to break the ice’ because when with them she ‘met with such powerful reproofs as made her afraid and ashamed of them’. These friends had shown 12 Horn, Efficacy of the true balme. The work is possibly fictional. 13 ibid., p. A3. 14 ibid., p. 4. 15 ibid., pp. 4, 5.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

197

her ‘pitty and kindness’ but Rose perceives their friendship as conditional. The work suggests that, to prevent infanticide, communities needed to gauge the appropriate balance between observing and acting, the danger of not reproving, and the equal danger of expressing disapproval. In this case, if Rose’s friends had appeared less reproving, and if Horn had acted on his fears and observations, Rose might not have killed her child. The number of publications about Mary Crompton’s crime, and the amount of interest that appears to have been shown in Rose Warnes’ moral decline and her ultimate killing of her child, gives some indication of the extent to which communities were interested in the actions of its members. In both works there is a sense of people ‘talking behind their hands’, without any action being taken. This impression is borne out by two Sussex Coroners’ inquests. They convey a sense of how early modern communities related to secret pregnancy and dead infants, and how rumour could lead to suspicions which reverberated among a group of people. While a lot is said in these inquests and in the subsequent notes which Hunnisett has appended, they are frustrating because they are so exceptional and yet so much remains unrecorded. The known story begins on 22 July 1656 when the Hastings Coroners, acting on the advice of one of the community, disinterred infant remains, just as described in the street literature cases of Jane Hattersley and Mary Crompton. It is recorded in English in unusually graphic detail in a style which merges with that of early modern news writing. It reads: Inquest on viewe of a dead bastard child of Elizabeth Cruttenden, late maidservant of Thomas Waller, gent., secretly buried. Goeing upp to the house of Thomas Waller, gent; scituat in the parish of Mary Magdalen and digging in the gardein of the said house under the ground cell of an outhouse there by the directions of one Joane Stedman, widdow, about a two foote under the said cell they found in a cloath the bones of a young child, the scull with haire uppon and one of the kidneyes not consumed, there lately buyried; but whose the said child was and howe it came to its death the jurors aforesaid knowe not.16

Despite the gaps and uncertainties which permeate this case, it is illuminating. It is assumed that the victim is a maidservant’s bastard, the form of the crime which dominated early modern consciousness and continues to dominate academic debate. It is unclear about the meaning of the statement 16 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 112 #438.

198 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

‘whose the said child was […] the jurors know not’, which could cast doubt over the child being Elizabeth’s or equally may refer to the unknown father. As mentioned in the previous chapter, another possibility is that this was a stillbirth to a married woman whose spouse had buried it because they were unable to afford the funeral or were unwilling to part with their child. The accusation of Elizabeth Cruttenden is not pursued. Elizabeth has clearly moved on, but is neither summoned to appear nor sought in order to face the accusation, as far as the record relates, though the reference to ‘late’ may mean that she is dead, rather than that she was formerly Waller’s maidservant. The body might have remained hidden for generations, but for the instructions of widow Joan Stedman to dig in the appropriate place. The account shows that it was possible to give birth and conceal a body in almost total secrecy, as Jane Hattersley is said to have done. It demonstrates that a community could be quick to assume the guilty party when an unexplained and unreported infant death was discovered, in this instance possibly encouraged by the 1624 Infanticide Act a generation earlier. The community complied with the cultural stereotype by assuming the culprit was an unmarried maidservant. The depth of the grave may indicate that someone helped the mother, as it seems improbable that a newly-delivered woman could dig a two-foot deep hole, suggesting those with assistance could conceal their crime and escape prosecution. This case from 1656 is an exception in the Sussex records and it becomes more remarkable when considered in conjunction with a second exceptional inquest. In this case an enquiry was carried out, and the Coroners met, despite the fact there was no corpse to be investigated. The case is again from Hastings and the events occurred a mere decade after the discovery of the infant’s body in Thomas Waller’s outhouse. The record states that on 20th April 1667, the Coroners’ jurors met at Hastings ‘to inquire into the death of an unknown child’.17 A week later a jury of thirteen married women was empanelled. ‘They were all sworn and are noted as having appeared. They returned that they knew nothing’. On 13 May another group of women served as witnesses, and the account states: ‘The verdict of the coroner’s quest given us in charge concerning the death of a child. Wee have made diligent search and enquirie theireof and canne finde no discovery theireof and this wee all say’. This perplexing case is inconclusive and ultimately appears to be no more than an enquiry into nothing. But it reveals something of the suspicion of infanticide which could lurk in a community, that a hint or rumour could 17 ibid., p. 122 #475.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

199

grow into a genuine matter for enquiry, that the possible death of an infant was considered a serious matter, and that in matters of childbirth, women’s special knowledge and experience gave them a power which was both unusual and highly public. However, there are also frustrating gaps in its information: Who started the rumour? Why did they make the claim? And why was the community so convinced of its veracity? And of whom was this ‘diligent search and enquirie’ made? Among the jury of thirteen women who knew nothing were the wives of two of the jurors. This overlap, alongside the recurrence of some jurors surnames between the two cases, gives the sense of a close community within which there were people of standing whose wives were respectable matrons whose knowledge and honesty was respected, as was that of their other family members. Joan Steadman, who advised where people should dig in the 1656 case, was among the witnesses in the second case. Presumably it is the same person as only ten years separated the two inquests and no distinguishing identifiers are attached to her name, which invites the question, did she have a special role? Was she the local midwife or someone frequently in attendance in the birthing chamber, who knew more about the original case than she said at the time? Was she troubled by the events she witnessed previously, which were certainly gruesome? In another sense altogether, it is as if Joan is a conduit across the decades, through whom a folk memory is starting to form. Such cases capture the suspicion which lurked in communities, and shows that individuals could be aware of what had taken place – no matter what her role had been in the 1656 case, Joan Steadman knew where the body lay. The case shows a rumour growing and a scandal brewing, and in many ways it appears to be a continuation of the watchfulness and suspicion which lies behind many of the Churchwardens presentments. Was the case particularly shocking and exceptional at the time? It is the only example in the records of an inquest without a body (with the exception of people lost at sea), so perhaps it was. The scribe uses English to record both cases which again invites the question, why? Did his Latin simply let him down or did he have some other reason, such as wanting to ensure that the record could be readily understood? These questions cannot be answered, and once again there is a frustrating combination of revealed and unrecorded information in what may have been one, and possibly two, cases of infanticide. But what we certainly do see in these records is the power of matrons in maintaining community respectability. They served as juries and witnesses for the Coroners’ Court in the 1667 case and would

200 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

have been involved in naming suspects in 1656.18 Elsewhere they checked for signs of pregnancy or recent childbirth. Whatever the circumstances surrounding the secret burial of one infant, and what was behind the later rumour of a body, cannot be known, but the cases show that an infant body could be concealed and that communities could have suspicions which they did not act upon. Mary Cook’s murder of her young daughter was another case which captured the interest of early modern communities.19 Three accounts of her crime were published. The first of these, The Cruel Mother, is a seven-page pamphlet taking the reader from a description of Mary’s crime to her death by hanging on 2 March 1670.20 The second, Blood for Blood, was written ‘to fulfil the will of the poor creature which was executed’.21 This opening description of Mary as a ‘poor creature’ announces that authors’ approach to the perpetrator will be unlike that seen in other works about infanticidal mothers. It is written in four parts: a sermon; a description of the crime, which forms most of the work; a description of the state of Mary’s conscience in prison; and ‘some passages omitted in the former Narritive’. Being a longer and perhaps more considered account of this crime, Blood for Blood has the space and scope to examine the events more fully than The Cruel Mother. It is, in essence, an expansion of the earlier work. A third publication, Inquest after Blood, is a fourteen page collection of abbreviated reports ‘Published for the Satisfaction of some and to prevent the Mistakes of others’.22 It contains an assortment of Coroners’ inquests on murders, suicides and accidental deaths as well as details of legal cases which were variously punished by death, branding or whipping, thus placing it between a series of court reports and a news pamphlet. The account of Mary Cook’s murder of her daughter is among the crimes described but, being far shorter than its predecessors, it has none of the background or rationale provided by the earlier works. From these three narratives we learn that Mary was a housewife aged about thirty-seven with three (or eight in one account) children, the youngest of which she loved deeply. She was prone to melancholy, which made her susceptible to the devil’s influence, and felt her relations were unkind to her, or did not love her. She attempted suicide several times, but each attempt was thwarted. Fearing what would become of her young daughter should 18 Oldham, ‘History of the Jury’; Wilson, Ritual, p. 163; Gowing, Common Bodies, pp. 43, 71. 19 Although she was a married woman and her case could therefore be discussed in the next chapter, it is included here because of the emphasis it places on community culpability. 20 Anon, The Cruel Mother. 21 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, p. A2. 22 Anon, Inquest after Blood.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

201

she die first, Mary determined that the infant should pre-decease her, and so she cut the child’s throat. She then called her husband to see what she had done. She did not deny the crime and was condemned and hanged. This brief summary distils the essential facts which are consistent across the narratives, but cannot do justice to the long description of the woman and her crime in Blood for Blood, which approaches a novel in its chilling detail, manner of description, suspense, and emotional intensity. Staub writes that the existence of three works on this one crime: ‘suggests the extent to which seventeenth-century England was grappling with its construction of motherhood’.23 She goes on to discuss the narrative from a feminist perspective and sees Mary’s actions as attempts to assert her own agency. An example she gives is that after Mary’s husband has been away from home for several hours and then says he must go out again Mary says ‘If you do, I will cast the child into the fire’. At this threat he complies with her wishes, and stays home. Yet his compliance, and the fact that he had previously ‘knocked down all the nails and hooks in the cellar’ after Mary’s attempt to hang herself, can also be seen as the action of a husband who is caring and fearful for the safety of his wife and family rather than despotic. An alternative explanation for the existence of three publications on the one case is that not only were the people of the seventeenth century grappling with ideas about motherhood but they were similarly grappling with ideas about melancholy from which, the writers repeatedly assert, Mary is suffering. Readers are told that Mary was ‘of a very silent melancholy temper’;24 she was ‘a melancholic subject’ and ‘much dejected in spirit and deeply afflicted with melancholy’.25 Partridge and Sharp write that Mary was of ‘a melancholic temper […] common business became a burden, and fears arose in her as to wants’ and a ‘great pressure of melancholy discontent overwhelmd her’.26 After the crime she was ‘as an amazed woman, half dead’27 and she speaks of ‘her own miserable life which was so burdensome to her’ and she was ‘so overwhelmed with melancholy as one bereft of senses’.28 Melancholy had been lengthily considered in Richard Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.29 Andrew Brink, in an essay which sets out Burton’s originality and relevance to modern psychiatry, notes that he was ‘astute enough to see 23 Staub, Nature’s Cruel, p. 53. 24 Anon, The Cruel Mother, p. 3. 25 ibid., p. 6. 26 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, pp. 10, 14. 27 ibid., p. 16. 28 ibid., pp. 16, 19. 29 Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy.

202 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

that reactive depressions are usually associated with some sort of loss’ and may arise from any one of three causes, including ‘insufficient affection’.30 Burton describes the emotions which a melancholic may exhibit, many of which apply to Mary Cook. They include ‘Fear, sorrow, suspicion, rustic bashfulness, discontent, cares and weariness of life’. But, Brink points out, Burton was also ‘receptive to medieval claims that devil possession causes the disorder’.31 Theories of the devil’s association with melancholy are closer to the view expressed by Sandra Clark in her study of these works. Clark, in her examination of representations of women’s crime in street literature, focusses in particular on the devil’s ability to influence the behaviour and actions of those who were melancholy.32 Certainly The Cruel Mother and Blood for Blood repeatedly mention temptation by the devil to which Mary’s melancholy made her vulnerable. According to Partridge and Sharp it was ‘the Anvil that the Devil delights to forge upon’. During the account of Mary’s life we hear of her husband, children, father, neighbours and ‘many creditable persons who have known her of a child’33 – a community of family and friends, but their failure toward her runs through The Cruel Mother and Blood for Blood. At the start of the former work the author questions the role of Mary’s relations in her crime. He writes: we will leave to her Relations (who are more nearly concerned) to consider how little, or how far they might contribute to the encrease of her melancholly Spirit, and so hasten her to this Ruine. We will not charge them with any thing, only relate what she hath after in private and publick confessed to several that are ready to give a very just account.34

While this author does not directly charge Mary’s relations with being responsible for her actions, the comment and its early placement on the first page of the narrative makes the writer’s opinion on the subject clear, and colours subsequent reading of the pamphlet. In these pamphlets, the frequency of references to Mary’s relationship with the community in which she lived suggest that the crime could have been prevented if people had been more caring and diligent. In Blood for Blood, the authors write that Mary says that she had been ‘a fortnight sick and weak, and no one took 30 Brink, ‘Depression and Loss’. 31 ibid., p. 767. 32 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 55. 33 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, p. 9. 34 Anon, The Cruel Mother, pp. 3–4.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

203

care what she wanted’,35 that ‘it was done because she was weary of her life, her Relations slighting her’ and that she was ‘discontented, and thought her Husband and Relations did not love her’.36 When describing Mary’s journey to Newgate after her trial, the authors again emphasise the community’s culpability for her action: She suddenly turned back and looking at her Relation,37 used these words, with a doleful countenance: O, if you had been more careful to look after me, you might have hindred me from doing this; the application we commend to whom soeer concerned, and thought it very meet to be inserted, that such a word from a dying woman might not die with her.38

They return to the point when describing her imprisonment, when Mary repeats that she killed because of the ‘great Discontent’ she had ‘upon her apprehension of exceeding unkindnesses of her Relations unto her, although she had never been undutiful unto them’.39 They continue: It is not the design of this Narrative to accuse them, only to desire they may cal to mind, and lay to heart, and repent of their neglect of duty towards her, wherein they shall any of them be conscious unto themselves of remissness; and that all others who shall reade this sad Relation, may take warning thereby, so to discharge their relative duties, that they do not expose their Relations unto Temptations. 40

The account of the days and moments before Mary’s hanging is particularly detailed, and again crowded with people. We learn that ‘many strangers that were with her did with prayers and tears commend her condition to God’, and she was fastened to the gibbet with ‘thousands of spectators beholding her with a general compassion’.41 After Mary is hanged the closing sentence of the pamphlet brings readers’ attention back to the good life she had led and those who failed to help her: 35 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, p. 10. 36 ibid., p. 18. 37 This is the only time relation is used in the singular rather than the plural. Staub interprets this as meaning that Mary Cook is referring to her husband, rather than a wider group of relations. 38 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, p. 20. (The sermon has signature numbers; modern pagination (from 1) is used for main narrative). 39 ibid., p. 34. (Due to a typesetter’s error, page numbering jumps from 22 to 33) 40 ibid., p. 35. 41 ibid., p. 48.

204 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

She was buried in Great Bartholomews Church-yard, being accompanied by a great many Neighbours and Strangers, to perform their last office of love for the dead, that had given them no cause while living, but in this great transgression. 42

The representation of Mary Cook in The Cruel Mother and Blood for Blood has little in common with the manner in which other infant murderers are described. The harshest comment about her is to her ‘obdurating and impenetrable heart’43 The authors of these two pamphlets demonize the crime of infant murder though not its perpetrator. It is the crime which is a ‘babarous act’, ‘a great sin’ and ‘a horrid murder’ and while the authors write of ‘her horrid fact [sic] which she had unnaturally done’ and believe it is a ‘hainous, and we think almost unparalleld [sic] murder’ there is never a direct attack on Mary. 44 Instead she is written of with compassion. Jane Hattersley, Martha Scambler and Margret Vincent are giant presences who each dominates her narrative and seems to control it. In comparison, Mary Cook appears to move dazedly through her narrative, existing as a shadowy presence in the story of her own life and death – a woman who is reduced and diminished by her crime, not made large by it. We are told that after she calls her husband to witness their infant’s body: as an amazed Woman, half dead, cast her self down upon a low seat, with her bloody hands on each side covered with part of her upper garment, and her head leaned against a Chest of Drawers, did thus with an affreighted countenance respose herself. 45

This is a description of a depressed woman who is detached from her crime and reality, and one who has been let down by her community. Such was the notoriety of this case that rumours were quickly attached to it, presumably by the same communities as had failed Mary during her lifetime. It was said that the devil had appeared to her, that she had attempted to kill another of her children which was at nurse, and that she had been troubled about religion. The claims, which were refuted by the authors of Blood for Blood, show the associations which early modern communities made with the crime of infanticide: the devil, women’s murderous 42 ibid. 43 Anon, The Cruel Mother, p. 6. 44 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, pp. 44, B42. 45 ibid., p. 16.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

205

nature, and the internal conflicts caused by religious uncertainty. These rumours appear to be an attempt to demonise Mary in a way in which The Cruel Mother – the first of these pamphlets to be published – does not. They suggest a community’s attempts to construct Mary as a less than ordinary woman, in order to make it easier to come to terms with an infanticide committed by a married woman, and the role they have been ascribed in this killing. They also allow us to see the extent to which a notorious person could become a device to which wider anxieties could be attached.

Accomplices: ‘feloniously aiding and abetting’ When a woman found herself unhappily or unwillingly pregnant one possibility was to say or do nothing in the hope that the problem would go away. For some, expedient miscarriages doubtless saved their reputations while, as we have seen, others may have achieved the same ends with herbal concoctions or physical violence. Yet others may have continued to hope for marriage with their lover or some other form of rescue described in the romantic stories told in popular ballads. It is easy to imagine how easily time may have slipped by and how soon the woman’s pregnancy became visible. Yet even at this stage it might be possible for them to be shielded from the events which were unfolding. 46 For those who were able to admit to themselves that they were pregnant there was the choice of telling a conf idante, or remaining silent in the expectation of undergoing lone childbirth, with little by way of subsequent plans. When the 1532 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina established an edict which stated that infanticide was a capital office committed by unwed women to hide their shame, it is unsurprising that that secrecy became an important component in the establishment of guilt which culminated, in France, in the requirement that all unwed women made a declaration if they became pregnant. No such stipulation existed in the English Infanticide law when it was eventually introduced in 1624, but the implication of surreptitious behaviour is contained in the Act’s vocabulary with its emphasis on secrecy, privacy and concealment, and in the requirement for a witness in cases where it was claimed that the infant was born dead. For this reason, among others, if an unmarried woman became pregnant she was well advised to tell someone. Preparing linen for the infant, making the situation known, and having someone with her at the birth were among the ways an unmarried 46 Dulit, ‘Girls who deny’.

206 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

woman could reduce the chance of being accused of infanticide if the child died. Yet, for some women, telling others that they were pregnant could lead to their being encouraged to kill the infant, with their confidante becoming an accomplice in the crime. These people are quite different to the communities who allowed the crime to take place largely through negligence or apparent indifference. Accomplices are those who appear to be present at the time of the death, directly involved, and perhaps even responsible for the killings. Alongside these real ‘flesh and blood’ people who were known to the pregnant women were others who should also be considered under the heading of accomplices. These are imaginary and non-existent figures who the women said encouraged them to kill, or who were responsible for the crime, including the devil. Kilday notes that ‘Judicial authorities were reluctant to expose the existence of accomplices as it very obviously negated charges of concealment, which was so central to indictments, and thus convictions’. 47 Nevertheless, accomplices did exist. They appear in literature and in Sussex Coroners’ inquests, sometimes as a named person and at others merely the sense of a shadowy presence at the time of the birth. In June 1589 Mary Mowser: gave birth to a live female child at Southover and immediately afterwards she and her mother, Agnes Mowser […] murdered the child, Mary disembowelling her with a knife worth 2d which she held in her right hand, of which she immediately died, and Agnes being feloniously present aiding and abetting her. 48

Both women pleaded not guilty. Mary was found guilty, pleaded pregnancy but was found not to be so, and was hanged. Her mother was acquitted. Similarly, when Alice Baker of Ringmer was indicted at the Sussex Assizes in March 1579 for killing her newborn, her mother was named as an accessory. 49 Alice was found guilty, but her mother’s verdict was ‘ignoramus’: we do not know. The record of the August 1588 inquest on Ursula Farmer’s newborn daughter states that she killed her by ‘throwing her with both hands into a well containing water whence she immediately died and Alice [her mother] being feloniously present aiding and abetting her’.50 At the Assizes, both women pleaded not guilty and were acquitted. 47 Kilday, Infanticide, p. 66. 48 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 97 #387. 49 Cockburn, ed. Sussex Indictments : Elizabeth I, p. 140. 50 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 94 #369.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

207

Similar stories appear in popular literature which describes women driven to kill their children by their parents or other third parties who realised the expediency of disposing of a perceived problem. One such case is that of Alice Shepheard from Salisbury, which is described in the 1591 pamphlet Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers.51 When Alice tells her mother and grandmother about her pregnancy, they appear to take control of the situation. They hire a midwife and later Alice is ‘delivered of a man childe, whose neck they presently broke, and secretly buried it in the Churchyard’. This may have been because they believed the infant should have a form of Christian burial so that they could sense that it belonged to a Christian community, or because the churchyard was considered a practical place to conceal the corpse. The pamphlet reports that people perceived that the child was ‘but new born, and therefore concluded that it was the childe of some strumpet, and that she had murdered it’. It thereby indicates that the association between bastardy and infanticide pre-dated the 1624 Infanticide Act by a generation. Alice is suspected and when she, her mother, grandmother and the midwife are ‘sent for’ they all claim the child was stillborn. The truth comes to light when the midwife’s attack of conscience is overheard. She confesses, and the women are recalled and sent to prison ‘until the last assizes, where they received the doome of judgement by death, which of duetye they had deserved for so wicked a deed’. An almost identical account is given in the ballad The Wicked Midwife, in which a nameless young woman becomes pregnant but, while her lover is happy to marry her, her mother forbids it: ‘Seven yeeres longer you shall carry / Before any young man you marry.52 Telling her daughter ‘thou shalt not come to any shame’ the mother promises to provide for her. However, she does this by bribing a midwife to deliver and kill the newborn but, after she refuses to pay her for her services, the midwife reveals the body to neighbours. This prompts the mother to blame the daughter, and the daughter is hanged. It seems the mother and midwife also die, though the ending of this ballad, whose only surviving copy was cited in the Introduction, is sadly damaged. Despite the similarity of these two accounts, Alice Shepheard’s crime is presented as a true story, whereas The Wicked Midwife ballad is not. Yet they both leave the reader with uncertainties. In the former case, this derives from the approach of the pamphlet’s author who, like those who wrote about Mary Cook, shows his compassion for Alice. Rather than being subject to 51 Anon, Sundrye Strange. 52 ———, Wicked Midwife.

208 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

vitriol, she is described as ‘a young damsell […] with childe, and yet never married’, and even a ‘maid’, giving her innocence despite her sexual activity, and suggesting the difference between her physical person and her moral person. The Wicked Midwife paints vivid and consistently delineated characters who are polarised into those who are good and those who are evil. In this ballad the lovers are represented as honest young people who wish to marry, but are thwarted by the actions the older generation – the girl’s mother and the midwife she bribes. The exaggeration with which the latter is described gives her a folkloric dimension in a story involving plots, betrayals, deceits, the ghoulish digging up and hiding of the infant body, and its revelation as false evidence of the daughter’s guilt. Yet, as in the pamphlet concerning Alice Shepheard, the ballad raises a question about whether justice is being served. By emphasising the wickedness of the midwife the ballad title reduces the role of the girl’s mother, yet both mother and midwife are equally culpable for the infant’s death. Although the midwife commits the murder, buries the child, and exhumes its body, it is the girl’s mother who appointed and bribed her, who placed the exhumed body beneath her daughter’s bed, and accused her of the murder: ‘Quoth she, my Daughter is most vild, / For she hath murthered her Child’. The infant’s mother is tried and hanged but the fate of her mother is less clear. From the extant legible text, it appears that the midwife drowns herself. A factor which makes The Wicked Midwife particularly potent is the deterioration of the ballad which has resulted in the destruction of parts of the illustration and the text. These losses have the effect of emphasising how little of the essential information has survived about the events being described. It draws attention to our ignorance about the confusing events, particularly in situations in which a mother persuades her daughter that it would be better if her infant were to die. It is hard to interpret the motivation of a mother who encourages or helps her child to kill, but the brief facts recorded in the inquests invite readers to question the dynamics of the birth chamber and raise the questions. What happened? How did it happen? Partially it may have been possible for the situation to arise because, by this date, people appear to have been ascribing to themselves notions of lawfulness and unlawfulness.53 Carol Loar, who uses Coroners’ inquests rather than legal or theological sources to investigate ideas of conscience, finds that by the end of the sixteenth century conscience had become understood to be ‘the right or duty of individuals to make moral decisions based on what their own conscience 53 Walker, Crime, Gender, p. 211.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

209

told them’.54 The events described in ballads and pamphlets which appear so shocking can also be better understood in the light of Stanley Milgram’s controversial research which showed that people will engage ‘in behaviour which they disvalue and see as antithetical to personal and social ideals’ when instructed to do so by an authority figure.55 The pressures put on a young woman by a parent to kill her child because it would be the most beneficial resolution to the situation, may have been hard to resist. The mothers who persuaded their daughters to kill, or who murdered the newborns themselves, comply with Szakolczai’s description of tricksters who, he states, are ‘universal and very archaic’ figures who ‘can suddenly become dangerous and take over’, in liminal situations ‘where certainties are lost, [and] imitative behaviour escalates’.56 The comments and actions of these mothers who appear to have encouraged their daughters to kill, may have been subtle. They may have been indirect, like those of the chorus in Euripides’ Medea who tell her how difficult life will be for her and her children after she has been abandoned by Jason: Alas, alas, you pitiable woman, Wretched in your sufferings. Wherever can you turn? Where can you find a host to welcome you, What home, what country To shield you from disaster? For the god has brought you, Medea, To an overwhelming sea of woes.57 (357)

Later, after Medea has said that she will kill her children, they appear to challenge her to carry out her threat, despite the fact that she earlier said ‘Let no one think of me as weak and submissive’: You will not be able To wet your hand in their blood With unflinching heart. (863)

54 Loar, ‘Under Felt Hats’. For a fuller discussion of conscience in this period see also Thomas, ‘Cases of Conscience’. For women and conscience see Crawford, ‘Public Duty’, ibid. 55 Milgram, ‘Liberating Effects’. 56 Szakolczai, ‘Liminality’, p. 154. 57 Euripides, ‘Medea’, p. 260.

210 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Medea demonstrates not a specific truth but the generic truth that when women confided in third parties the confidante might encourage them to commit murder. For some, turning to a family member in the hope of assistance may have ultimately led to their conviction for infanticide as that person may have considered that preventing the young woman’s shame, or protecting the reputation of the family, more important than the life of a child. Just as it is difficult to imagine the events in the birth chamber which led to murder, it is similarly difficult to imagine how the jury was persuaded that Ursula and Alice Farmer, who the inquest describes as having thrown Ursula’s newborn daughter into a well of water, were acquitted after pleading not guilty.58 However, given the potential to be flexible when interpreting the law, a personal conscience which was answerable only to God, uncertainty about how truly ‘human’ a newborn was, and social hostility to bastard bearers and their children, it would have been expedient, and not too difficult, for a woman to construct for herself or another the ‘permission’ to deal with the situation in her own way, and not difficult for communities and law enforcers to take a tolerant approach to suspected killers. Yet it seems wickedly unjust that Mary Mowser and Alice Baker, as the mothers of the newborns, are assumed guilty despite the fact that they had just given birth and the fact that the older, stronger and more experienced person would have been able to prevent the death, and possibly more capable of causing it. It suggests the ease with which an unmarried woman could be assumed guilty, and the similar ease with which the role of ‘aiding and abetting’ could be overlooked.

Devilish influences The devil was also was often named as an accomplice in connection with infanticide, though this appears to have been more common in street literature than in legal documents. Of the one hundred surviving Coroners’ inquests from Sussex which are related to infanticide, only one account mentions the devil. The 1624 case tells us that in the small hours of 24 February, Joan Barnett gave birth to a child which died within half an hour.59 She concealed the body during the day and in the evening ‘threw it down on the rocks into the sea’. When asked why she had done this she replied ‘that it might 58 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 94 #369. 59 ———, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 63 #254.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

211

not be known and that the devil had put it in her mind’. When a woman made such a claim she may have been reducing her responsibility for her actions by blaming someone – anyone – she could think of. It was a way of expressing self-interest. In literature, however, the devil is frequently named as the one who incites women to kill, as part of the association which existed between the supernatural and infant deaths. The devil was thought to walk the earth seeking out victims, and women were seen as easy prey to his wiles. The belief was, Clark says, ‘accepted as an aspect of their inferior spiritual constitution’.60 The devil was also linked to witches, who were thought to use infant bodies in their ceremonies – a popular association which was alluded to in literature. The brew in Macbeth includes ‘Finger of birth-strangledbabe’ (IV.i.30) while in The Witch, Hecate gives Stadlin the child’s body: ‘There, take this unbaptised brat; / Boil it well, preserve the fat’, the on-stage embodiment of the child implying truth and emphasising horror.61 As both witchcraft and infanticide were commonly considered to be women’s crimes, the associations which early modern people made are easy to understand. Little wonder, then, that early modern writers took advantage of these connections to add a diabolic frisson to already shocking stories. Clark writes that the devil was ‘the one explanation which could be readily drawn on in popular crime-writing because it was generally accepted without question, to account for actions and behaviours which otherwise seemed far outside the normal’.62 By repeating the links between the devil, women and murder, writers put across a moral warning about being watchful for his influence which resulted in writing which was both sensational and didactic. Thus, in Deeds against Nature Martha Scambler is described as killing her child ‘by the perswasions of the Divill’, and in her ‘Repentance’ at the end of the work she says she was ‘blinded by the devil’. Similarly, the devil is named frequently throughout The Cruel Mother and Blood forBlood and the melancholy which prompted Mary Cook kill her infant was believed to make people vulnerable to his wiles. Readers are told that ‘she was of a very melancholy temper, which is the Anvil that the Devil delights to forge upon’ and he ‘pursues her like a roaring Lion, seeking to devour her’.63 Belief in the devil’s constant presence would have been encouraged by his visual representation in street literature, including some of the works describing 60 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 38. 61 Middleton, The Witch, p. I.ii.18. 62 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 40. 63 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, pp. 10, 13.

212 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Image 4: Woodcut from the title page of A Pittilesse Mother (1616). The image enables the nonliterate to ‘read’ its narrative. (reproduced by permission of Houghton Library, Harvard University)

infanticides. He is portrayed in a particularly flamboyant form on the title page of A Pittilesse Mother. Naomi J. Miller suggests that this account implies that the tragedy ‘resulted from a woman’s misguided attempt to direct her husband’,64 yet the image and the text place the devil at the centre of this narrative. He is named repeatedly in this account and is pictured in a domestic room, handing Margret the physical means of killing her infants, but he is holding an extra rope, perhaps the one with which she will be hanged or will attempt to hang herself. Or, as he is looking at the reader, perhaps it is for others who listen to him. In this pamphlet Catholicism and the devil are merged so that he becomes the physical embodiment of the religion which the author considers responsible for the infants’ deaths. Margret’s faith and its ‘Romaine Wolves’ are synonymous with the devil who entices her to kill. The author warns ‘how soone are our mindes (by the Devils inticement) withdrawne from gooodnes’ and writes of his ‘trembling feare’ when he thinks that this 64 Miller, Changing the Subject, p. 71.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

213

‘unhappy Gentlewoman was bewitched with a witchcraft begot by hell and nursed by the Romish Sect’.65 We are told ‘by the fury and assistance of the Divell, she inacted this wofulll accident’, and that she was ‘assisted by the Devill’; readers are warned not to listen to the ‘charming persuasions’ of ‘Romaine Wolves’.66 The faith provides Margret with the motivation to kill so that her children are not brought up in ‘blindnes and darkesome errours’ and her action, according to the pamphleteer, was approved by her adopted religion because it was ‘merritorious, yea, and pardonable to take away the lives of any opposing Protestants’. Why she did not also attempt to kill her husband is unclear, but could be explained by the fact that she is described as believing that her action would allow the children to become saints. This defines Margret’s actions as being, like Mary Cook’s crime, a so-called altruistic act. Psychologists Theresa Porter and Helen Gavin write that the belief in altruistic infanticide ‘comes from the continual myth that women are always loving mothers, even during murder’.67 Certainly, many of the cases of infanticide by married women which are discussed in the next chapter assume that the mothers kill to protect their children. Margret, however, is an ‘obstinate Papist’ who wears a crucifix and has ‘other reliques’ about her, and in prison she is offered an English Bible which she ‘with great stubbornesse threw from her’.68 Despite the pleadings of the constable who has her in custody en route to the Sessions, Margret only repents her crime after the last-minute intervention of ‘certaine Godly Preachers’. As well as being a signifier of alien groups or beliefs, the devil can also be a manifestation of the killer’s unconfronted desire – a ‘wish fulfilment mechanism’ in Staub’s term. Writing of the child-murder pamphlet Murther Will Out, Dolan states that Satan is used to ‘portray the voice of self-interest and practical concern’ and describes the text as presenting ‘self-assertion as violent and as prompted by demonic possession’.69 In these examples, writers construct the devil as a third party who can be accused and, in the case of Margret Vincent, as part of the vilification of both her and her religion. Yet, based on the fact that the devil is referred to only once in Sussex Coroners’ inquests, it seems that if women believed they could blame the devil’s influence in partial exoneration of their crime, it was a defence which they were reluctant to use in court. 65 Anon, Pittilesse Mother, pp. A2, Bv. 66 ibid., pp. A3v, A2v. 67 Porter and Gavin, ‘Infanticide’, p. 106. 68 The date of the pamphlet (1616) and the emphasis on ‘English Bible’ may imply a reference to the recently-published King James’ edition (1611). 69 Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, p. 140.

214 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Image 5: Hidden crime: detail of title page of The Wicked Midwife (1640). The loss of part of the image provides today’s reader with an ‘interpretative space’. (© British Library Board.17915.7; Early English books tract supplement interim guide / BR f 821.04 B49[41] Image published by permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission)

At the start of this work, lines from the ballad The Wicked Midwife were used to introduce the idea that we cannot be certain about the accuracy or completeness of the information which survives on any historical subject, particularly one as weighted with secrecy as infanticide.70 By chance, the illustration which accompanies this ballad makes a similar point. It depicts a domestic room with a window and bed, with some objects on a shelf, perhaps a jug, a plate and a candle, and something undecipherable on the floor. What can be distinctly seen is part of a figure with horns and wings. It is clearly the devil, though no mention is made of him in those parts of the ballad which survive. The missing section of the illustration, which might have shown the events, suggests the hidden actions in a birthing chamber. The illustration eerily shows that we cannot know what was said and done in the secrecy of a family in which a newborn child was killed. In conclusion, although unwed women who became pregnant would have felt isolated by being neither maid, widow nor wife, they would have lived within communities which might have been a source of support, but this was 70 Anon, Wicked Midwife.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

215

not what the social norms required. According to the Sussex Churchwardens’ Presentments, people were ever-watchful for wrongdoers, particularly sexual misdemeanours. Yet literary works such as No Naturall Mother and The Efficacy of the True Balm show that watchfulness does not prevent killing, while in the pamphlet The Bloudy Mother, Brewer depicts those with whom Jane Hattersley came into contact as gullible people who overlook their own doubts, ignore their suspicions, and readily accept Jane’s word. Partridge and Sharp who wrote of Mary Cook’s murder of her young daughter show that her relations failed in their duty toward her. It seems that the circumstances which led to infanticide included community apathy and credulity, and indifference. The ballads, plays and archival records discussed above reveal that in early modern England people had complex and inconsistent attitudes toward infanticide. They were uncertain how to react to the crime, particularly in the case of newborn or very young children. Those who recorded the events, whether as news or as song, sometimes described the women as monstrous or animal, such as the ‘monster of nature’ Martha Scambler and the ‘Tygerous Mother’ Margret Vincent. Others, including Besse and Alice Shepheard, were treated with compassion by writers. Representations could fluctuate within a single work, as if the writers themselves were still working out their own attitudes toward those who took infant life. Some authors seem indifferent to the deaths of infants and are content to use infanticide as a basis from which to discuss other (apparently more serious) wrongs, including Rose Warne’s wayward life and Margret Vincent’s religion. Communities frequently appear not to have been unduly concerned about the crime, overlooking opportunities to prevent it. If people such as Besse’s mistress or Jane Hattersley’s neighbours had acted differently, their newborns may not have died. In addition, individuals or groups may have encouraged women in difficult situations to commit the crime. Such people appear in the Coroners’ inquests and are described as aiding and abetting, though their exact role in the killing is unclear.

Bibliography Primary sources Anon, The Bloody Minded Midwife (1693) (ESTC R172788; EBBA 22227; Pepys 5.10). ———, The Cruel Midwife (1693) (ESTC R174412; Wing C7419A). ———, The Cruel Mother (1670) (EBBA Wing C7420). ———, The Injured Children or The Bloudy Midwife (1693) (ESTC R188289; EBBA 20808; Pepys 2.193).

216 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

———, Inquest after Blood (1670). ———, The Midwife of Poplar’s Sorrowful Confession (1693) (ESTC R188574; EBBA 20807; Pepys 2.192). ———, The Midwife’s Maid’s Lamentation (1693) (ESTC R188575; EBBA 22241; Pepys 5.24). ———, A Particular and Exact Account of the Trial of Mary Compton (1693) (ESTC R181482). ———, A Pittilesse Mother (1616) (ESTC 24757). ———, Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers (1591) (ESTC S2242). ———, The Wicked Midwife (1640) (ESTC 17915.7). Brewer, Thomas, The Bloudy Mother (1609) (ESTC S124650). Burton, Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621. Cockburn, J.S., ed. Calendar of Assize Records: Sussex Indictments: Elizabeth I. London: HMSO, 1975. Euripides, ‘Medea’, In Medea and Other Plays, edited by James Morwood, pp. 1–38. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Horn, John, The Efficacy of the True Balme, 1669. Hunnisett, R.F., ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1558–1603. Kew: PRO Publications, 1996. ———, ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1603–1688. Kew: PRO Publications, 1998. Johnstone, Hilda, ed. Churchwarden’s Presentments (17th century) Part 1: Archdeaconry of Chichester. Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1947 / 8. Middleton, Thomas, The Witch. Edited by Elizabeth Schafer. London: A&C Black, 1994. Parker, Martin, No Naturall Mother, but a Monster (1634) (ESTC S94604). Partridge, N., and Sharp, J., Blood for Blood (1670) (ESTC R234717).

Secondary sources Brink, Andrew, ‘Depression and Loss: A theme in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)’, Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 24 (1979), pp. 767–772. Clark, Sandra, Women and Crime in the Street Literature of Early Modern England. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. Crawford, Patricia, ‘Public Duty, Conscience, and Women in Early Modern England’, In Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England, edited by John Morill, Paul Slack, et al., pp. 57–76. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Dolan, Frances E., Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550–1700. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1994. Dulit, E., ‘Girls who deny a pregnancy. Girls who kill the neonate’, Adolescent Psychiatry 25 (2000), pp. 219–235.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Communities and Accomplices

217

Gowing, Laura, Common Bodies: women, touch and power in seventeenth-century England. New Haven: Yale University, 2003. Hoffer, Peter C., and Hull, N.E.H., Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England 1558–1803. New York: New York University Press, 1981. Kilday, Anne-Marie, A History of Infanticide in Britain, c. 1600 to the Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. Loar, Carol, ‘‘Under Felt Hats and Worsted Stockings’: The Uses of Conscience in Early Modern English Coroners’ Inquests’, Sixteenth Century Journal XLI, no. 2 (2010), pp. 393–414. Milgram, Stanley, ‘Liberating Effects of Group Pressure’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1, no. 2 (1965), pp. 127–134. Miller, Naomi J., Changing the Subject: Mary Wroth and Figurations of Gender in Early Modern England. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1996. Oldham, James C., ‘History of the Jury of Matrons’, Criminal Justice History 6 (1985), pp. 1–64. Porter, Theresa, and Gavin, Helen, ‘Infanticide and Neonaticide: A Review of 40 Years of Research Literature on Incidence and Causes’, Trauma, Violence and Abuse 11, no. 3 (2010), pp. 99–112. Staub, Susan C., Nature’s Cruel Stepdames: Murderous Women in the Street Literature of Seventeenth Century England. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2005. Szakolczai, Arpad, ‘Liminality and Experience: Structuring Transitory Situations and Transformative Events’, International Political Anthropology 2, no. 1 (2009), pp. 141–172. Thomas, Keith, ‘Cases of Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England’, In Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England, edited by John Morill, Paul Slack, et al., pp. 29–56. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Walker, Garthine, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. Wilson, Adrian, Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.

7

Not the Usual Suspects: Married Women 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.1

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 1 Shakespeare Macbeth, I.vii.56.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch07

220 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

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. As infanticide in early modern England was strongly associated with single women, in cases of suspicious infant death married women were seldom indicted for the crime unless there were obvious signs of violence on the body.2 Although unwed women were doubtless the most frequent perpetrators of infanticide, there are several reasons why their preponderance in historical records may be an exaggerated impression. Most significant among these is that, for cases after 1624, the Law had stipulated who the culprits were: ‘lewd women that have been delivered of bastard children’.3 The definition denies even the possibility that a married woman might commit a similar crime and, as it was less likely to be suspected, the death of a married woman’s infant could have passed without notice, particularly as overlaying was such an acceptable explanation. An alternative reason for the low incidence of indictments for infanticide by married women is the law of Couverture which stated that man and wife were one, thus making the husband responsible for his wife’s crimes. This did not apply to murder, but the implications of Couverture, for example in cases of coercion, were not fully understood even by those who advised Justices of the Peace. Carol Z. Wiener suggests that, as a result, Justices resorted to the ‘legal fiction’ of the married spinster. 4

2 Kilday, Infanticide, p. 64. For references to violence see Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 106; Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, p. 132. 3 See Appendix 1. 4 The use of the term spinster was changing in the early modern period, and records often described women as both spinster and wife. For a discussion see Wiener, ‘Is a Spinster an Unmarried Woman?’; Baker, ‘Male and Married Spinsters’. In cases of infanticide, according to Valerie C. Edwards, if the woman was married the crime was seen as murder and the burden of proof rested with the Crown; if the woman was single she could fall under the remit of the 1624

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

221

These ‘legal fictions’ are apparent even among the hundred or so cases concerning infant and child death in the Sussex archives.5 One such was Sibyl Elyett, who is recorded in the inquests as having broken the neck of an unknown male infant and is described as ‘spynster, wife of William Elyett’.6 Another inquest records that in 1616 ‘Isabel Woodgat of Denton, spinster, wife of Robert Woodgat’ killed her husband’s young servant with wounds inflicted by ‘staves, small staves, straps and hot tongs’. Apparently, she carried out this cruelty over a period of time.7 Hunnisett records that at the Assizes ‘the inquest was declared void because insufficient, presumably by reason of its vagueness’. Isabel was nevertheless charged with murder, though as she was ‘at large’ at the time of the Assizes the outcome was merely that ‘her arrest was ordered’. Other cases include that of ‘Elizabeth wife of Henry Sparshall’ who is described as having thrown her newborn son into a well and at the Assize was referred to as ‘spinster, alias Elizabeth wife of Henry Sparshall’. After pleading not guilty, she was acquitted. A third reason for the low number of recorded infanticides by married women is the complicity of neighbours, as suggested in the previous chapter. The desire to punish an unmarried woman for her sexual misconduct may have been replaced with understanding of the financial difficulties which an extra infant might cause to a family. Mary McLaughlin writes of the harshness of life ‘at the limits of subsistence’, and states that ‘children were by far the most common victims of the parental negligence and despair, of the abandonment, exposure, and even infanticide, which must be counted among major threats to young life’.8 Hoffer and Hull’s comment that ‘For the overburdened cottager family with perhaps one too many off-spring already, infanticide might have seemed a matter of survival’ is again relevant.9 Behind such ideas is what Porter and Gavin call ‘the continual myth that women are always loving mothers, even during murder’. Yet this does not alter the truth that an extra child required not only subsistence but also care, and could thus prevent the mother carrying out the paid work which was essential for the family’s survival. She may have felt driven to deal with Infanticide Act, which assumed the guilt of unmarried women whose pregnancy was concealed and whose child subsequently died. Edwards, ‘The Case of the Married Spinster’, ibid. 5 It is possible that the men and women themselves were unclear about their marital status when confronted with legal formality if their marriage had been based on exchange of words of present consent, as discussed in Chapter 4. 6 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 6 #25. 7 ———, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 41 #171. 8 McLaughlin, ‘Survivors’, p. 119. 9 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 115.

222 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

the situation in the most pragmatic way.10 Nor does it mean that such an action would have been taken without heartbreak. Damme, writing of the medieval period, says that ‘the taking of an infant’s life, while certainly not condoned, was understood’.11 These issues, and the desire not to punish a family for the death of an infant whose status as a person was uncertain, may have contributed to informal acceptance of the crime as long as no-one was too aware of it – a community endorsed ‘white lie’.12 When married women were charged with infanticide, they were more likely than single women to be considered to have been ‘temporarily insane’, a plea which could allow for acquittal.13 In 1657 ‘Frances wife of John Edwards’ killed their natural son ‘while of unsound mind’.14 At the Sussex Assizes she was described as ‘Frances Edwards […] spinster, alias Frances wife of John Edwards’. The insanity explanation was not used for single women though, as we have seen, archival and literary accounts suggest something of their complex mental states. The early modern assumption appears to have been that no ‘sane’ married woman would have had a motive for infanticide. Thus, women of ‘good reputation’ – a term which could not apply to an unmarried woman who had borne a child – were more likely to be found not guilty on grounds of insanity. Alternatively, a married woman’s child might be assumed to have been stillborn, as in one of the Sussex inquests from which we learn: ‘About midnight on 12 Oct Mercy Drowling wife of Richard Drowling of Dallington gave birth to a dead female child’.15 Why the coroner was summoned for what was far from an uncommon event is unclear – perhaps someone suspected something amiss, or the parents wanted to ensure that they were not wrongly accused. The apparent rarity of infanticide by married women made it a more interesting subject for street literature than cases of infant murder by single women, partially because, as a number of commentators have observed, writers favoured sensational and exceptional stories. Infanticides by unwed women were, as Clark suggests, ‘too mundane’ to excite much interest.16 Such cases merely enabled warnings about sexual morality, whereas those concerning married women touched on something far deeper. They 10 Porter and Gavin, ‘Infanticide’, p. 106. 11 Damme, ‘Infanticide’, p. 6. 12 The extent to which communities assented to ‘white lies ‘, including those which may have disguised infanticide, is discussed in Lamb, ‘Taken by the Fairies’. 13 Rabin, ‘Bodies’. 14 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 114 #445. 15 Damme, ‘Infanticide’; Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 64 #287. 16 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 335; Staub, ‘Early Modern Medea’.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

223

described a crime which threatened the concept of the unity and sanctity of the family and marriage by corrupting the familial bond which was one of the stabilising features of society.17 A handful of works about infanticides by married women appeared in the second half of the seventeenth century. This does not seem to indicate that the crime had become more frequent though it does have the effect of making it appear more commonplace than it was. However, pamphleteers were probably simply picking up on a popular theme and taking advantage of this new opportunity. Certainly, within society, there was growing interest in married women’s behaviour, prompted by the changing power structure within marriage, their increased visibility at the pawn, the gallery of shops at the Exchange where they could exercise their economic power, and in theatres.18 It is unsurprising that this might have been matched by growing curiosity about their actions in the birth chamber. Yet, it seems that pamphleteers believed that these stories needed more than the killer’s married status to make the works attractive to audiences as they frequently included other shocking elements, which of course further distorts the true picture of infanticide. These pamphlets describing infant death at the hands of married women variously include multiple infant deaths, particularly violent methods of killing, or other crimes such as mariticide. They also use bold headlines, and shocking, dramatic images such as sprawling infant bodies, the presence of the devil or, in one instance, a decapitated child. This sensationalism is often accompanied by deeply disturbing and moving descriptions of married women’s actions immediately before and after the murders. While buyers may have been attracted to a work by its shocking image or title, the text they bought did not always support this ‘Shock! Horror!’ first impression. Although infanticide by married women appears to have been regarded as a particularly sensational crime, their husbands were frequently represented as marginal figures to the extent that the woman’s married status seems barely relevant to the crime. As we have already seen in A Pittilesse Mother Margret Vincent’s spouse exists merely as an obstacle to changing their children’s faith, and the pamphlet becomes a warning about the evils of Catholicism.19 Other works also suggest that both the crime of infant murder and the culprit’s married status are incidental to subjects which are 17 ———, ‘Early Modern Medea’. 18 Howard, Theater of a City, pp. 35, 73, 128; Gowing, ‘Freedom of the Streets’; Howard, Stage and Social, p. 73. 19 Anon, Sundrye Strange; ———, Pittilesse Mother.

224 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

considered more important by the writer, with the result that infanticide is reduced to incidental information. John Horn’s The Efficacy of the True Balme, concerning Rose Warnes, was mentioned in the previous chapter. She is described as a poor married woman, who was tried and sentenced to death ‘upon strong presumption of her murther of her infant’.20 Horn recounts Rose’s decline from respectability, to failing to attend to her friends, to wanton company – a pattern which is typical in these accounts.21 He adds: Falling with child adulterously, and being delivered in secret, she caused it to be cast forth which God (in severity against her so hainious sinning, yet in mercy to her soul) would have come to light and there by brought her to shame and suffering. (A3)

Despite the existence of a husband and children, this work tells neither a tale of monstrous motherhood nor a family tragedy. The crime of which Rose is accused, and for which she is eventually hanged ‘upon strong presumption’ is incidental to what appears to be Horn’s main purpose which is to describe her decline from small errors to ‘hainious’ sins, and his long but ultimately successful attempts to bring her to contrition. This is a confrontation between himself, as the force of good, and Rose, as the force of sin.22 It is written in a voice of sadness during her repeated failures to arrive at true repentance, but also Horn’s constant references to himself (‘I went to see her’, ‘I went another time to see her’, ‘I told her’), show his perseverance. The work abounds with Horn’s self-satisfied pride: he is so pleased with his ultimate victory that he indulges in a punning epigram which, in its neat appropriateness, begs the question whether the entire work is fiction: Rose Warne thy name was, oh that thou hadst been, Rose Warned thou such mischiefs hadst not seen, But being not Rose Warned by thy fall Thou art Rose Warne a warning unto all. (G6, p.71)

In Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers the death of an infant, and possibly more than one, is again of secondary importance. Mistress Padge, 20 Horn, Efficacy of the true balme. 21 Clark, Women and Crime, p. 38. 22 John Horn[e] was a deacon and priest who had refused the oath of uniformity in 1662 and was thereafter ‘ejected but tolerated’; Cooper, ‘Horne, John’.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

225

having been forced to marry against her will, hires men to kill her husband in connivance with her lover.23 We learn that on the night of the murder: Mistress Padge lay not then with her husband, by reason of the untimely birth of a child whereof she was newly delivered, the same being dead borne: upon which cause, she then kept her chamber, having before sworn that she would never beare child of his getting that should prosper; which argued a most ungodlye minde in the woman, for in that sort she had been the death of two of her own children. (B3)

This staggeringly casual comment is the author’s only mention of infant death. What is he suggesting? Is he implying that loathing of her husband prompted her to kill her recently-born child and that others have been similarly treated? That the wife destroyed her husband’s children by abortion? Is the comment simply made to exaggerate her wickedness? The author’s focus on the husband’s murder certainly implies that multiple infanticides were less horrific crimes, suggesting the ambivalence toward infant life, as discussed in Chapter 3. As we saw in the previous chapter, in the tragedy of Mary Cook who murdered her infant while apparently suffering from post-natal trauma, the husband is given a real presence: we see him attempting to reduce his depressed wife’s ability to commit suicide, and called to bear witness to the crime she has committed.24 This appears to be a representation of a caring spouse. In contrast, in the works discussed below, the husband is central to the unfolding events though not the one who kills the infant. (Men who killed infants are discussed in the next chapter).

Vengeful women Despite its distance in time and place, Euripides’ depiction of Medea and the motives and mental processes of a married woman who kills her children is regarded as so accurate that she has provided a model for modern psychiatry and psychology. Subsequent clinical work has resulted in the eponymous mother’s name being given to a mental condition – the Medea Complex – whereby a mother seeks to kill her children as an act of revenge against their father and to punish him. Robert M. Gordon writes that the complex involves 23 Anon, Sundrye Strange. 24 Partridge and Sharp, Blood.

226 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

a mother who is ‘still pathologically tied to her (ex)husband. She has a great deal of rage […] rooted in part with a wish to destroy her child. She is unable to let her children separate from her’.25 The association between Euripides’ play and the condition is discussed by Monica Cyrino from the perspective of motive. She compares her findings with the observations of psychiatrists working with patients who had killed their children, or are obsessed with trying to harm them.26 She states that Euripides had ‘an uncanny insight into the tangled psychology of the abandoned woman’s motives for child-murder’,27 and believes that Jason’s abandonment of Medea led to her sense of shame which, Cyrino considers, is the principal cause of her actions.28 Early modern women who had been abandoned resemble Medea, and the recent cases considered by Cyrino, in that they see themselves as having no other options: they are in an ‘emotional exile’, echoing Medea’s ‘There is no other way’.29 But Medea also kills to injure Jason. ‘This would be the best way to hurt my husband’, she says.30 The child serves as a physical manifestation of the person who has deserted the woman. The children and Jason have merged in Medea’s mind so that the pain inflicted on the children is inflicted on their father: Jason: So why did you kill them? Medea: To cause you pain. (1398)

In support of recent data which shows that, in the west, boys are more often victims of infanticide than are girls, Porter and Gavin pose the rhetorical question ‘Is the male infant somehow symbolic of the woman’s male sex partner?’31 Such a belief would help to explain why accounts of early modern infanticide by single women show that mothers included throwing as part of their infanticidal act, and why bodies were left in privies and on rubbish dumps. The child is unwanted, shunned and rejected, just as the woman had been, and the woman enacts her rejection through the child. She exerts her power in a way she could not over the man.32 Robert Tyminski, in a 25 Gordon, ‘Medea Complex ’, p. 210. 26 Cyrino, ‘When Grief is Gain’. 27 ibid., p. 7. 28 ibid., p. 3. 29 Euripides, ‘Medea’, p. 814. 30 ibid., p. 816. 31 Porter and Gavin, ‘Infanticide’, p. 104. 32 Excluding the Sussex cases which were definitely of older children, those Coroners’ and Assize records which record both age and gender show 37 female, and 48 male cases. In cases where newborns are thrown, nine are male and five are female.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

227

paper discussing the Medea myth and clinical cases in which the Medea complex was manifested, includes an overview of the reasons which have been given by psychoanalysts for her murder of her children. They include ‘maternal aggression toward the father, feeling existentially threatened by the baby, maternal omnipotence, intolerable feelings of shame in the mother, and the mother’s insatiable thirst for vengeance’.33 The women described in the ballads and pamphlets discussed below may not have heard of Medea, yet their emotional response to their situations and their destructive actions are echoes of the classical figure. However, the women described in early modern pamphlets seem more subtle in their emotions. While there are clearly elements of Medea’s killing for punishment and revenge, their crimes are prompted by other emotions, making these women strikingly three-dimensional and credible. The ballad The Unnatural Mother, begins by being sung from the grave by Jane Lawson after she has drowned herself and her ‘two poor Babes’ in a well.34 It later becomes a third-person narrative. Jane was prompted to kill after a rare argument with her usually caring spouse, which was sufficiently heated to prompt neighbours to intervene, and culminated in his striking her. Having been struck, she may have been motivated by shame and debasement, anger, or a sense of marital injustice, yet her action is against her children and herself. Jane Lawson’s narrative is that of an early modern Medea who appears to kill the children and herself to injure her husband, although Medea does not kill herself. Jane’s actions, might be explained by what Dolan calls the ‘fluid boundaries between parent and child’, linking the murders with self-destruction, with the result that killing the child is paramount to killing part of the self.35 Another possibility is that the murders are ‘altruistic suicides’ which arise, Hoffer and Hull state, when women feel they ‘cannot abandon their children when they commit suicide’.36 Yet behind such ideas is again what Porter and Gavin call ‘the continual myth that women are always loving mothers, even during murder’.37 In the single-page account The Distressed Mother the author writes with extreme pathos of Katherine Fox’s clear-minded decision.38 Her husband is profligate and violent. Through ‘riotous Living’ he has consumed his fortune and when she goes to him in a ‘Publick House’ to ‘seek Relief from 33 Tyminski, ‘Medea Complex’. 34 Anon, Unnatural Mother – Lawson. 35 Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, p. 142. 36 Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 149. 37 Porter and Gavin, ‘Infanticide’, p. 106. 38 Anon, Distressed Mother.

228 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

his hands, for her, and her poor Children’ he beats her ‘as he thought, he had left her Dead, and past Recovery’. At home the children speak piteously of their hunger: ‘Mother, said one, a little Food, or I die Mam’.39 To end their suffering Katherine cuts their throats: ‘Better it is to Die with one Stroke than to languish in a continual Famine’. When her husband returns and sleeps, she cuts his throat too: ‘Thou shalt Die, thou negligent Man, since thy ill Government hath been the Ruine of me and my Children’. Mr. Fox’s withdrawal of emotional and practical support of his family is an echo of Jason’s abandonment of Medea. The chorus reminds her: Alas, alas, you pitiable woman, Wretched in your sufferings. Wherever can you turn?

Katherine Fox’s fear for how her infants will survive after she is hanged for the murder of their father is similar to Medea’s fears for her children’s future. Yet, whereas Katherine’s action can be seen as an example of a so-called altruistic killing by showing that she is a caring mother even in murder, Medea’s is revenge against Jason. As Dolan states, rather than defining themselves against the child, women kill from anger directed at other family members, which certainly applies to Medea.40 Katherine’s use of the same weapon to kill her husband and their children links the deaths by uniting their blood and thus emphasising their blood connection. The pamphlet, written after Katherine’s arrest but before sentencing, ends with her ‘Admonitions to the numberous Spectators, which tended, That Wives should beware of too much Fury, and Husbands to be more circumspect in their Families’. While Katherine admits the fury which led to the deaths, the final criticism is of her spouse. As pamphlets were authored works and did not give the genuine words of the condemned, these words may indicate what the reaction to murders such as these may have been. Through Katherine, the author emphasises the duty of a father to care, and implies that Katherine’s husband had some responsibility for his own death and that of his children. Bloody Newes from Dover also concerns a woman who uses a knife to kill her child. 41 Mary Champion, like Margret Vincent, kills her infant because 39 Dolan writes that children are always represented as ‘innocent lambs, submissive sacrifices who prattle and smile’; Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, p. 141. 40 ibid., pp. 140, 144. 41 Anon, Bloody Newes. (Unnumbered pages)

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

229

of religious difference, although Bloody Newes contains elements of dark humour, in contrast to the shocked and sensational tone of A Pittilesse Mother. The murder comes about because Mary’s husband wants their infant christened but Mary, an Anabaptist, does not. Her solution, worthy of Jacobean revenge tragedy, is to take ‘a great knife and cut off the Childs head’. When her husband returns home, she announces ‘Behold husband, thy sweet Babe without a head, now go and baptize it; if you will, you must christen the head without a body: for here they lye separated’. Such statements, with their combination of the comic and the horrific, were familiar to early modern audiences and they can, as Nicholas Brooke points out, readily co-exist. 42 Shakespeare’s early play Titus Andronicus (c.1594) demonstrates this both during the discussion about whose hand should be sacrificed, (III.i.160) and in Titus’ laughter when presented with his sons’ heads. (III.i.265). 43 Bloody Newes participates in the practice of treating the body as a locus of punishment, including amputation, but decapitation makes Mary’s crime particularly significant. 44 Regina Janes writes: ‘Like other detached body parts, ambulatory hands or forlorn feet, a detached head is a sign we privilege […] It can enter into a variety of discourses and its meanings will derive from the discourse(s) of which it forms a part’. 45 In this work the head’s significance arises from it being the strongest personal identifier so that, through familial similarity, it emphasises the link between parent and child. In addition, it is the seat of knowledge, in this case contested knowledge (or belief) about salvation and, as this pamphlet shows, it is the contested place of baptism. The decapitation in this pamphlet is additionally shocking because beheading is usually carried out by men. 46 The fact that a woman carries it out is a reversal of traditional male / female roles, which echoes the role reversal which the husband exerted when he attempted to thwart the mother’s role as religious educator. Whereas decapitation is usually a punishment inflicted on the perpetrator of a serious crime, such as treason, and is in part an act of humiliation, here the punishment is inflicted on an infant, a symbol of purity and innocence, as the means through which to punish the man. As if the narrative of this work were not shocking enough, 42 Brooke, Horrid Laughter. 43 Such dark humour was an aspect of Grand Guignol, discussed in Chapter 9. 44 Foucault, Discipline, pp. 10, 14. 45 Janes, ‘Beheadings’, p. 250. Cited in Robertson, ‘Getting ahead’. The sight of disembodied heads was not uncommon in early modern England. Heads of executed prisoners were displayed, and were frequent in theatrical performance. A contrivance for achieving this on stage (Scot, Discoverie. Facing p. 353) is reproduced in Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642, p. 183. 46 For a study of the history of severed heads see Larson, Severed.

230 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Image 6: Woodcut from Bloody Newes from Dover (1646). The image leaves no doubt about the rights and wrongs of religion. (© British Library Board. Wing (2nd ed., 1994) / B3267; Thomason / E.375[20]. Image published by permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission.)

it is illustrated with a lurid woodcut. The dismembered head, with the infant’s expressionless face and the throat gushing blood, takes the centre of the image. It is offered to the husband as if it were a gift, while the flung body, and the knife which ominously points to the husband, all contribute to announcing the dramatic uniqueness of this narrative. And, by labelling the couple as ‘Presbyterian’ and ‘Anabaptist’ the publisher ensures that even passers-by who do not buy the pamphlet, are reminded of religion’s rights and wrongs. These partially f ictionalised accounts provide the kinds of insights and details which were not recorded in archival accounts and, by feeding the imagination, help us to raise questions and envisage circumstances. For example, the historical case of Joan Homewood is similar to that of Katherine Fox in that she kills her children, though in Joan’s case she then commits suicide rather than murdering their father. The inquest provides

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

231

no supporting detail. We are told that on 11th July 1606 the coroner and his jurors held an inquest on four bodies. The record states: On 15 July [sic] Joan Homewood, sen. late of East Grinstead ‘spynster’ murdered her children, Richard, Thomas and Joan jun., at East Grinstead with a knife worth 1d which she held in her right hand and with which she ‘did cutt their throates’, giving each of them a wound 1 inch long and 1 inch deep of which they immediately died; and afterwards, on the same day, she feloniously killed herself at East Grinstead, cutting her own throat with the same knife and throwing herself into a pond full of water and drowning herself. 47

Although Joan is described as ‘spynster’, a note to the inquest states that they were the children of Richard Homewood. Was he her husband, or another relative? Why did she commit this crime? Was this a case of revenge? The situations described in pamphlets raise questions. Was it the tragic end to marital discord? If so, did it concern hardship, religion or some other difference? As with events in birthing chambers in which infants apparently die during childbirth, we are left with a lacuna in our knowledge. The crimes of Joan Homewood, Katherine Fox and Mary Champion are perhaps more shocking because they use knives to kill their infants, rather than one of the forms of ‘deadly embrace’such as smothering or strangling which women usually used. Knives, like swords, are traditionally male weapons and thus their use suggests a denial of womanliness. This is reinforced by their phallic resonances which makes them additionally incongruous. Yet knives were also part of women’s daily lives, as Garthine Walker shows, giving their use in infant murder a different perspective. Referring to a case of infanticide in which a woman (Katherine) gives birth to a stillborn child and uses a knife to dig a grave in which to bury it, Walker writes: Knives were very personal things in early modern society. Katherine would have eaten her food with this knife; she would have carried it with her, about her person, every day, wherever she went. […] [It] is part of a discourse of domesticity – of food preparation, of eating, of cutting threads or flowers. It was almost certainly with this knife that Katherine cut the umbilical cord earlier. 48 47 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 12 #54. 48 Walker, ‘Just stories’, p. 103.

232 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Thus, the use of a knife in infanticide links the horrific with the everyday, in a manner similar to pamphlet images of killings in the home, where the killer is surrounded by the furniture, fabrics and implements of daily life. It emphasises the corruption of domestic space by locating the danger of infant murder in any marital home. Bloody Newes from Dover and Mary Champion’s decapitation of her child might seem to be another sensational pamphlet about revenge, but the description of Mary in prison ensures it is more subtle: Many wofull expressions are heard to proceed from her, being very penitent for her unhappy Crime, her Conscience being much troubled and her eyes sad and distracted, by beholding such strange Visions. For she can no wayes fixe her eyes upon any thing, but presently (she conceives) the poore Babe to appear before her without a head.

Here, the author appears to recognise the complexity of the crime, the psychological state that might have prompted it, and shows the mental punishment that can ensue. Other pamphlets also describe the tormented states of wives, as we saw in Blood for Blood (discussed in the previous chapter) concerning Mary Cook who killed her infant when suffering from a ‘great pressure of melancholy discontent’ believing that her family did not care for her. 49 Similarly, A true and perfect relation tells of Mary Philmore who drowns her nine-week old infant in a pail of water, at her second attempt.50 The insight which the author gives into an early modern marriage is surprising and hauntingly moving. He describes a caring husband who had been awake with her in the night ‘because she had been ill, and taken a Sweat’. After some ‘wrangling words’, while he is sleeping she takes the baby from his arms, replacing it with the older child so that he will not notice. After drowning the infant, she confesses to the godmother and then ‘pursu’d by the terror of her guilty conscience’ she ‘wandred up and down like a dissatisfied or rather distracted Woman’ until late at night when ‘she sate herself down upon a Dunghill and there continued till about Two of the Clock on Monday morning, when the Watch coming by apprehended her’. There could hardly be a clearer image of misery and abjection or a sharper contrast to the earlier detail of the infant sleeping in its father’s arms. Earlier the ballad describes Mary as a ‘kind Wife to her Husband, and careful Mother of her Children’, 49 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, pp. 10, 14. 50 Anon, True and Perfect Relation.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

233

and it ends by describing her care of the murdered infant until the moment of his death. The author writes that the Coroner’s Inquest found the case to be ‘wilful murther’. Despite her infant’s death, Philmore is ultimately described with the same sympathy as Mary Cook en-route to the scaffold. The genuine compassion in these accounts of infanticide by married women suggests society’s confusion about how to react when a wife committed the crime. They are a clear contrast to the pamphlets which describe the actions of single women such as Jane Hattersley, Martha Scambler and the married Margret Vincent who was papist and believed to be influenced by the devil – wrongs which appear to have negated any benevolence toward her, despite her married status. At the other end of the spectrum is Elizabeth Kennet’s horrific murder of her newborn, described in the single page account The Unnatural Mother.51 Elizabeth’s husband is a good spouse ‘one that is well to pass, and has likewise the Repute of a very honest Man, and always very kind unto Elizabeth’ and he wonders that she does not ‘provide things for the Child against she was brought to Bed’. Her answer, which is sinister with hindsight, is that ‘he need not trouble himself, for she was provided well enough’. Elizabeth gives birth alone, and it is thought that ‘she wrapp’d the Child in a Cloth and flung it in the Fire’. After discovery, she accuses a neighbour of drowning the infant then claims that the bones found in the fire are ‘Bones of Lamb which she had the day before’, finally admitting the crime but stating ‘it was a Monster […] having two Heads, and she was asham’d the World should see it’. The combination of fire, with its associations with hell, and Elizabeth’s repeated lies, destroys the reader’s ability to feel the sympathy they might have had for the other women described above. Her crime is described as ‘one of the Cruellest and most Unnaturallest [of] the Age’. There is always the possibility that this is a fictional account, yet it is factually, linguistically, and visually unsensational, which gives the impression of truth, despite the fact that the crime it describes is far more horrific than any of those by single women. In summary, while Medea and ideas of revenge and rage go some way toward allowing us to understand the crimes of Jane Lawson, Katherine Fox and Mary Champion, modern theories about perinatal psychology might also contribute to how we see these crimes. The distress and detachment of Mary Champion hallucinating in her cell after decapitating her child and Mary Philmore seated on a dunghill seemingly waiting to be arrested suggest both post-natal trauma and the effect of their actions. Elizabeth 51 ———, Unnatural Mother – Kennet.

234 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Kennet’s failure to prepare for the child she is expecting implies pregnancy denial, as described by Porter and Gavin who write of women who are ‘cognitively aware’ of their pregnancies but do not alter their behaviours or form any prenatal attachments, and ultimately murder the newborn.52 Rage, revenge and perinatal conditions were not the monopoly of married women, but when writing about single women these were not the authors’ focus. Narratives about married woman and infanticide describe companionable marriages and shared parenthood – remarkably modern-seeming relationships in which things go terribly wrong, or they describe despotic husbands whose wives feel driven to commit a desperate and violent act. They thus convey the many motives for infanticide, including marital disharmony, misguided altruism, revenge arising from a spouse’s cruelty or indifference, depression, and financial hardship.

Death and the maternal breast According to Lucinda M. Becker, an element of pamphlets which describe crimes committed by women was ‘undermining the power of women as mothers in a patriarchal society by demonstrating how unfit some women were to have any association with children’.53 In addition, Deborah Willis writes that there was increasing ‘ambivalence about mothers, maternal power, and the maternal function’.54 These anxieties came to the fore in discussions about the rights and wrongs of maternal breastfeeding. As we have seen, for centuries the church had feared the possibility of mothers disguising infanticide as accidental overlaying during nursing. These social anxieties about death and the maternal breast were so commonplace that they fed into literature, including Shakespeare.55 In 1 Henry VI, La Pucelle’s father wishes she had died as an infant: ‘I would the milk / Thy mother gave thee when thou suck’dst her breast, / Had been a little ratsbane for thy sake!’ (V.vi.27) The idea recurs later in the writer’s career in Lady Macbeth’s ‘Take my milk for gall’ (I.v.47). In addition to these aggressive forms of infant 52 Porter and Gavin, ‘Infanticide’, p. 105. 53 Becker, Death, p. 83. 54 Willis, Malevolent Nurture, p. 17. 55 In view of Shakespeare’s references to the dangers of maternal breastfeeding, it is worth noting that his wife, Anne Hathaway, breastfed at least one of her children. The fact is recorded, in Latin, on her tombstone in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. It translates as: ‘Breasts, O mother, milk and life thou didst give’. The use of Latin, while prestigous, would have meant that few women received the benefit of this message.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

235

death at the maternal breast, Shakespeare also captured the idea of ‘deadly embrace’ while a mother fed her child: Here could I breathe my soul into the air, As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe Dying with mother’s dug between its lips. (2 Henry VI, III.ii.395)

Despite the early modern suspicion that the maternal breast could be the locus of death, contemporary writers argued that the mother was the only suitable person to nurse her infant. Therefore, there was a corresponding anxiety about the employment of wetnurses which, Willis states, became the subject of ‘heated debate’56 despite the fact that women of all social levels had used their services for centuries. However, as Valerie A. Fildes points out, ‘attacks on wet nursing only really began in England after the Reformation’.57 From this time, the subject was discussed, in a virtually univocal manner, in sermons, medical books and conduct manuals, by authors such as Guillemeau, Paré, Elizabeth Clinton, Countess of Lincoln, the Church of England clergyman Henrie Smith, and the early fifteenth-century Venetian senator Francesco Barbaro, whose De re uxoria was translated into English by ‘a person of quality ‘ and published in 1677.58 These endorsements of maternal breastfeeding were accompanied by a range of literature about the wrongs and evils of employing a nurse. Felix Wurtz’s The Children’s Book (published in Basel in 1563 and ‘Englished’ in 1656) is a pessimistic catalogue of the woes and illnesses which can befall a child, with corresponding advice. He describes his book as: Treating of infirmities and defects of new born Children, and of the faults and abuses, which wet or dry Nurses commit among and against little Children; and of Medicins and Cures, of such Children which receaved hurt in that way.59

Surprisingly, in The Nursing of Children, at the top of Guillemeau’s list of anxieties about nurses is that ‘the child could be changed and another put in his place’ thus alluding to myths and fears about changelings.60 56 Willis, Malevolent Nurture, p. 18. 57 Fildes, Wetnursing, p. 68; Rackin, Shakespeare, p. 40. 58 Guillemeau, Nursing. Paré, Workes; Clinton, Nurserie. Smith, Sermons; Barbaro, Directions. 59 Wurtz, An Experimental Treatise, pp. Xx2, p. 339. 60 In the medieval period, a child who was weak, sick or cried a lot could be regarded as a changeling. People tried to force the fairies to take it away and return the parents’ own child

236 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

The substitution of infants was a popular folkloric myth which is central to many romances, but its sinister aspects are described in the pamphlet A True Relation.61 This tells of Abigall Hill who undertook to nurse parish infants who she allowed to starve, borrowing neighbours’ children to show to the overseers so that she continued to be paid. Other works also fuelled the anxiety about wetnurses. The story of Mrs. Atkins, who appeared as a ghost to reveal the burying place of infant corpses, was the subject of a ballad and many refutations in news periodicals.62 The case of a Mary Crompton, ‘the midwife of Poplar’, who starved and allowed at least eight infants to die, was similarly told in several ballads and a pamphlet.63 Readers are warned: You mothers that have Children sure, you nere will Money give, That you for that may never more your Child see while you live.64

It was also feared that a nurse might kill a child by accidental overlaying. Guillemeau warns: ‘the child, being wholly left to the discretion of the Nurse, may by some ill chance be stifled, overlaid, be let fall’.65 Traces of such accidents appear in memorials to dead children. The death of one-month old Anne Consant who ‘died suddenly at nurse’ is prosaically recorded,66 but the moving Elegie Upon the Death of my pretty Infant-Cousin M[ist]ris Jane Gabry, who died within the Month, not without some suspicion of being Overlaid by her Nurses captures the emotions which such deaths caused. The possible responsibility of the nurses is both expressed and repressed by the anonymous author, who like other writers on premature child death, emphasises the infant’s innocence. He tells us that:

by ‘beating, scalding with boiling water, and by intimidating it by pretending to burn it’. Or the child might be left at the junction of three roads, the parents only returning to it when it cried. Methods of curing sick children similarly threatened their lives through fire, savaging by animals, or cold. Shahar, Childhood, p. 132; Damme, ‘Infanticide’, p. 6; Thomas, Religion, p. 731. 61 Anon, A True Relation. 62 ———, Midwives Ghost. For a summary of newspaper refutations see Rollins, ed. The Pepys Ballads, p. 31. 63 Anon, Injured children; ———, Bloody minded midwife; ———, Midwife’s Maid’s; ———, Midwife of Poplar’s; ———, Cruel midwife. 64 ———, Injured children. 65 Guillemeau, Nursing, p. Ii2v. 66 Fildes, Breasts, p. 195. For more on memorialisation see Phillippy, ‘Comfortable Farewell’.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

237

We shall not load thy Nurses with complaints Whose very sin might serve t’increase the Saints. There may be loss, not guilt, without the Will; Sometimes the Innocent the Innocent kill.67

Mothers feared such accidents by wetnurses. Writing in 1654–67 of her daughter’s early life, Alice Thornton recalls that ‘She had many preservations from death in the first yeare, being one night delivered from beinge overlaide by her nurse’ who had ‘fallen asleep with her breast in the childes mouth, and lyeing over the child’.68 Paré insists that mothers are ‘farre more vigilant and carefull in bringing up and attending their children’ yet there is no reason why a child might come to more harm from overlaying by a nurse than by its mother.69 Both Shahar and Fildes point out that nurses had every reason to take care of infants to protect both their incomes and their reputations.70 It is worth noting that some works show that using a wetnurse could remove an infant from the dangers of the family home. In both Thomas Middleton’s The Yorkshire Tragedy and the pamphlet The Pittilesse Mother, infants are saved from murderous parents by being at nurse.71 Although employing wetnurses was widely disapproved, many writers advised on the selection of a nurse, a task which may have fallen to the child’s father.72 As well as guidance on her appearance, health, character and morals, they provided copious information on the desired quality of her milk. Guillemeau writes: ‘The choice of good Milke is, that it be of a middle substance, that is to say, such as shall be neither too watrish, or too thicke’.73 He continues: ‘As for the quantity of Milke: a Nurse should rather have too much than too little’, and so on. Paré similarly entitles a chapter ‘Of the choice of Nurse’, which lists ten physical qualities that should be sought, in addition to her being ‘of good habit’ and ‘quicke and diligent in keeping the childe neate and cleane’. Other paragraphs advise on her character and morals, as it was believed that her characteristics could pass to the child.74 67 Anon, An Elegie. 68 Thornton, Mrs Alice Thornton, p. 91. 69 Paré, Workes, p. 907; Guillemeau, Nursing, p. Ii2v. 70 For an overview of the laws on this subject see Shahar, Childhood, p. 130; Fildes, Wetnursing, p. 100. Maternal overlaying was considered in Chapter 2. 71 Middleton, ‘Yorkshire Tragedy’.; Anon, Pittilesse Mother. 72 John Dee clearly chose his children’s nurses. Fildes, Breasts, p. 156. 73 Guillemeau, Nursing, pp. Ii2, p. 5. 74 Paré, Workes, pp. 906, 908, 909.

238 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Choosing not to nurse Writers opposed to the use of wetnurses gained momentum when they turned their criticism to the character and nature of the mothers who did not nurse. By using modes of expression similar to that of sensational pamphlets about infant and child murder, serious medical and moral works implied that infanticide and denying the maternal breast were essentially the same thing. This link between failing to nurse and destroying the (unborn) child was already being made in the second century. The Roman writer Aulus Gellius makes a direct link between these two denials of womanhood: Many of those unnatural women try to dry up and check that sacred fount of the body, the nourisher of mankind, regardless of the danger of diverting and spoiling the milk, because they think it disfigures the charms of their beauty. In doing so they show the same madness as those who strive by evil devices to cause abortion of the fetus itself which they have conceived […]. But since it is an act worthy of public detestation and general abhorrence to destroy a human being in its inception […] how far does it differ from this to deprive a child, already perfect […] of the nourishment of its own familiar and kindred blood?75

This sentiment was taken up by Guillemeau in his 1612 work The Nursing of Children. According to him: Aulus Gellius did not amisse in putting no difference betweene a woman that refuses to nurse her owne childe; and one that kills her child, as soone as shee hath conceived; that shee may not bee troubled with bearing it nine moneths in her wombe.76

Paré calls on Aulus Aurelius, the author of De Medicina around the start of the first century CE. He states: Those that doe not nurse their owne children cannot rightly be termed mothers: for they doe not absolutely performe the duty of a mother unto their childe […]. For this is a certaine, unnatural, imperfect and halfe kinde of a mothers duty, to beare a childe, and presently to abandon or put it away as if forsaken.77 75 Gellius, Attic Nights, p. 355. 76 Guillemeau, Nursing, p. Ii2. 77 Paré, Workes, p. 908.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

239

These references to abandoning, putting away and forsaking, with their undertones of abjection, are the language of infanticide. Rose Warnes ‘being delivered in secret, […] caused it to be cast forth’; Martha Scambler ‘made away with the fruit of her own womb’and Margret Vincent’s children were ‘made away by their owne mother’.78 This is just one of the ways in which those who argued against women who did not breastfeed their children, and those who wrote about women who committed infanticide, used a similar vocabulary of expression. Another was their emphasis on the unwomanliness and unnaturalness of denying the breast and killing an infant, the two criticisms often merging. The idea of unnaturalness (prodigiosae mulieres) was used by Aulus Gellius and, as quoted above, Paré also describes the use of wetnurses as ‘unnaturall’.79 In pamphlets, Jane Hattersley is described as an ‘unnatural mother’, Margret Vincent ‘most unnaturally at one time murthered two of her owne Children’ and is ‘a creature not deserving a mothers name’, and the author of Deeds against Nature writes of Martha Scambler and others like her ‘woemen I cannot call them’.80 The ballad about Jane Lawson, who killed her children and herself to punish her husband, and that concerning Elizabeth Kennet who threw her newborn on the fire, are both titled The Unnatural Mother.81 Yet, despite the arguments in favour of maternal breastfeeding and against the use of wetnurses, some wives were forbidden to breastfeed by their husbands. They were motivated, it has been suggested, by belief in negative effects on the wife’s health, figure and beauty, the desire to maintain her at maximum fertility to ensure multiple heirs,82 and to ensure that she and her breasts were sexually available to her husband. Among such wives was Elizabeth Clinton, Countess of Lincoln, whose distress at this proscription is recorded in her work on the benefits of maternal breastfeeding. Her text, with its repeated use of biblical references, places the publication as one which is learned and intended for re-reading, study and contemplation. She writes of the ‘true naturall affection’ of a woman feeding her own child, saying that to do otherwise is ‘monstrous unnaturalness’, and states that it is ‘unnatural to thrust away your own children’.83 As discussed in Chapter 5, pamphleteers used animal imagery in their works about infanticide: Martha Scambler is ‘more savage than a she-wolf’ and ‘more unnatural than either bear or beast’, and Margret Vincent is a 78 Anon, Deeds Against Nature. 79 Paré, Workes. 80 Anon, Pittilesse Mother. ———, Deeds Against Nature. 81 ———, Unnatural Mother – Lawson. 82 Fildes, Breasts, p. 102; Rackin, Shakespeare, p. 127; Paster, Body Embarrassed, p. 204. 83 Clinton, Nurserie, pp. B.2 page, 3 C.v page 10, D.12 page 19.

240 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

‘Tygerous Mother’. Those who criticised the use of wetnurses similarly made links and comparisons between animals and those who did not nurse their own children, constantly returning to the idea of premature infant death. Guillemeau warns mothers that by using a wetnurse their child ‘may by some chance be stifled, over-laid, be let fall, and so come to an untimely death’. He then adds ‘or else may be devoured, spoiled, or dissfigured by some wild beast, Wolfe or Dog, and then the Nurse fearing to be punished for her negligence, may take another in its place’. 84 The spectre of changelings has echoes of the midwives’ oath, which includes the instruction that stillborn infants should be buried in a place safe from hogs, dogs and other beasts.85 In Guillemeau’s text, the horrendous and painful death theoretically reserved for sinners, the unnatural reversal of the consumer / consumed paradigm, the defiled body, and the fear of changelings all merge to form a multi-faceted argument against wetnurses, inducing fears in mothers and associating non-nursing mothers with killing mothers. The image Guillemeau uses of devouring, spoiling, and disfiguring is also seen in street literature. The author of A Pittilesse Mother reminds us that: the Caniballs that eate one another will spare the fruits of their owne bodies, the Savages will doe the like, yea every beast and fowle hath a feeling of nature, and according to kinde will cherish their young ones […] and shall woman, nay a Christian woman […] be more unnaturall then Pagan, Caniball, Sauvage, Beast or Fowle.86

In a sermon promoting maternal breastfeeding, Henrie Smith adopts a similar image of animals’ superiority to women in treatment of their young: Every beast and every foule is bred of the same that did beare it, onely women love to bee mothers, but not nurses. Therefore if their children prove unnaturall, they may say thou folowest thy mother, for shee was unnaturall first in locking up her breasts from thee, and committing thee forth like a Cuckow to be hatched in a Sparrowes nest.87 84 Guillemeau, Nursing, p. Ii2v. 85 Cited in Forbes, Midwife, p. 146. 86 Anon, Pittilesse Mother. 87 Smith, Sermons, p. 58. In this sermon Smith takes as his text 1 Peter 2.2: ‘As new borne babes desire the sincere milke of the word, that ye may growe thereby’. de Bèze, Geneva Bible.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

241

Barbaro writes of the importance of breastfeeding: ‘That which we perceived in the terrible Bear and savage Beasts is also a great argument (if they would imitate them) to induce women to employ their greatest care in adorning [sic, but possibly ‘adoring ‘] their Children’.88 Elizabeth Clinton, Countess of Lincoln also takes this approach to women who do not nurse their own children, stating that ‘God hath not done so much for the[m] as to worke any good, no not in their nature, but left them more savage then the Dragons, and as cruell to their little ones as the Ostriches’.89 Even women incapable of breastfeeding received little sympathy from writers such as Henrie Smith, whose sermon attacking women who refuse the breast also heaps guilt on those unable to breast feed. He writes: But whose breasts have this perpetuall drought? Forsooth it is like the gowte, no beggars may have it, but Citizens or Gentlewomen. In the ninth chapter of Hosea, drie breasts are named for a curse: what lamentable happe have Gentlewomen to light upon this curse more then other? Sure if their breasts bee drie, as they say, they should fast and pray together, that this curse might be removed from them.90

Why was there so much similarity between the discourses which opposed wetnursing and sensational accounts of infanticide? Answers can be found in early modern physiological, cultural and religious ideas. Physiologically, humoral theory saw blood and milk as the same substance. Guillemeau asserts: ‘The milk is nothing else but blood whitened, beeing now brought to perfection and maturity’.91 Paré writes that the infant should be fed by its mother because her milk ‘is nothing else but the same bloud made white in the dugges, wherewith before it was nourished in the wombe’.92 Mary E. Fissell discusses this association with particular reference to infanticide, women’s dairy work, and the Eucharist. In her comments on infanticide she states that:

88 Barbaro, Directions, pp. I.v, 114. 89 Clinton, Nurserie, pp. B.4v, page 8. The comparison to ostriches is drawn from the Bible reference to the bird deserting her eggs after laying (Job, 39,13–16). In reality, the dominant female of the male’s harem of up to seven mates discards eggs laid by weaker females when it is time to cover them in their communal nest. 90 Smith, Sermons, p. 59. 91 Guillemeau, Nursing, p. Ii2. 92 Paré, Workes, p. 907.

242 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

the connection between blood and milk […] echoes infant feeding practices as a way of demonstrating the perverse nature of these mothers who kill. Instead of spending their own blood in the form of breast milk, they shed the blood of their children.93

This blood / milk connection means that the refusal to breastfeed and the killing of the infant amount to essentially the same thing through the idea of shedding blood and wasting milk. The similarities in metaphorical language take the connection between the nurse-nourished child and the mother-murdered child beyond the stage of the newly conceived foetus, and extend it to the newborn. Denying the infant the blood (milk) which had hitherto fed it in the womb becomes aligned with starvation; destroying, wasting or spilling the milk becomes little different to destroying, wasting or spilling the blood of the child, whether literally by the use of a knife, or metaphorically by stopping its flow. This idea appears in Elizabeth Clinton, Countess of Lincoln’s Nurserie: If it be unlawfull to trample under feete a cluster of grapes, in which a little wine is found; then how unlawfull is it to destroye and drie up those breasts, in which your owne child […] might finde food of syncere milke, even from Gods immediate providence, untill it were fitter for stronger meat?94

The use of a wetnurse wastes the mother’s milk which belongs to the child and the infanticidal mother wastes the infant’s (metaphorical) blood but, from the perspective of humoral theory, the substances are the same. Refusing to nurse the child, as Aulus Gellius and Guillemeau say, becomes little different to killing the child but, whereas they refer to the unborn child, the similarities of expression in pamphlets extend this assertion to the newborn. Culturally, the fact that nursing an infant was part of woman’s role as the carer and nourisher of children was constantly reinforced by images of Charity which depicted the virtue as a breastfeeding woman – the opposite of denial. Charitable deeds were a central part of a woman’s role. The fact was emphasised in conduct books such as William Gouge’s Of Domesticall Duties, which instructs women that ‘workes of charity must be done, and almes must be given of such things […] as we have, or which are in our 93 Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, p. 84. 94 Clinton, Nurserie, p. 17.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

243

power to give’.95 Denying the breast to the infant thus becomes associated with the denial of the fundamental social duty to give charity. However, changing attitudes to the poor which meant alms should only be given to the ‘virtuous’ or ‘deserving’,96 combined with the growing dominance of small family units, reduced the number of people from whom charity, in the broad sense of kindness and benevolence, could be expected. Lack of familial charity was glimpsed in the pamphlet describing Mary Cook’s crime: ‘if you had been more careful to look after me, you might have hindred me from doing this’.97 There were also fewer opportunities for individuals to carry out charitable deeds. Taken in conjunction with the fact that employing a wetnurse diluted the family group, either by bringing an outsider into the intimacy of the family or by removing one of its number to a different location, suggests that the presence of a breastfeeding mother in the home offered a domestic image of the charity which was declining elsewhere and also gave esteem to the role of motherhood. In religious terms, in post-Reformation England, the association of Virgo lactans images with Catholic idolatry meant that they were fewer in number, though the idea lingered in literary imagery,98 and, as Rackin notes: Medieval images of the lactating Virgin, of the Church allegorized as a nursing mother, and of souls sucked at the breast of Christ, which associated breast milk with charity and spiritual sustenance, were still current in the Renaissance and still powerful.99

Images of the pelican pecking her breast, or feeding her young with her blood, was one of the most common of all Renaissance emblems. As well as appearing in fine art, it was represented on headcloths, lace, furniture and household items such as towels and cushions. Thus, it would have been a familiar image recognised by people in even quite humble occupations.100 Like images of Charity feeding infants, depictions of the pelican gave men and women a constant reminder of the self-sacrificing mother and the 95 Gouge, Domesticall Duties, p. 305. 96 Thomas, Religion, p. 642. 97 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, p. 20. 98 Grindlay, ‘‘Some out of Vanity will call Her the Queene of Heaven’: Iconography of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin in post-Reformation England, 1580–1616’ (PhD, UCL, 2013). 99 Rackin, Shakespeare, p. 122. 100 For images of the pelican on domestic objects see Braidwood, ‘The Medieval Pelican’; ‘Victoria and Albert Museum collections’.

244 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

succouring mother. When a woman gave her infant up to a nurse, particularly if she was employed outside the family home, these ideas were removed from the domestic sphere. Discourses concerning the rights and wrongs of maternal breastfeeding and popular pamphlets and ballads about infanticide drew on similar imagery and terminology. References to abandonment, suggesting abjection, criticisms of mothers as unnatural and unwomanly, the use of animal imagery, and the idea of devouring, carry within them suggestions of the liminality discussed in Chapter 3. The existence of diatribes about denying the maternal breast can be partially explained by contemporary physiological, cultural and religious ideas while the ideal of the virtuous nursing mother was subject to constant visual reinforcement through imagery in fine art, and on personal and domestic items. In a society in which companionate marriage was increasingly seen as the basis of family formation, and the self-contained and self-sufficient Protestant family was regarded as the ideal, people may have drawn comfort from the idea of the infant maternally nourished in the home, as the ballad The Injured Children states: For ’tis a comfort for to see the Mother Nurse its Child And then no Midwives Cruelty can ever you beguile.101

Through shared languages of expression, literature in different genres constructed an association between women who did not breastfeed and women who committed infanticide, thus suggesting a potential for murder in all married mothers. The idea of the dangers associated with the breastfeeding wife and the potential of married women to be infant murderers occurs most memorably in Lady Macbeth’s lines, which opened this chapter. The play returns repeatedly to the idea of the slaughtered child, from Lady Macbeth’s ‘take my milk for gall’, to the apparitions which appear to Macbeth, which include ‘a bloody child’, and the ‘finger of birth-strangled babe / Ditch-deliverd by a drab’, which forms part of the witches’ brew. Lady Macbeth’s vivid image of her infanticidal fantasy, and the dramatic killing of Lady Macduff and her children which is movingly mourned by Macduff in a later scene, are dramatic aspects of a play which, as Wintle and Weis observe, continually

101 Anon, Injured children.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

245

returns to ideas of children and infants, and places infanticide at the centre of its analysis of what it is to be human.102 As well as participating in discourses about infanticide and child murder, Macbeth centres on questions of gender.103 Adelman states that the play ‘gives us images of a masculinity and a femininity that are terribly disturbed’, as in Lady Macbeth’s ‘Unsex me here […] / Stop up the th’access and passage to remorse’ (I.v.41), which, Adelman suggests, may be an attempt to ‘undo reproductive functioning’.104 This questioning of gender appears to be a prerequisite for Shakespeare to link women with infanticide. The gender of the witches, who use dismembered and bloody infants in their brew and their prophecies, is challenged: ‘You should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so’ (I.iii.45). Similarly, in Titus Andronicus, Tamora’s response to having given birth to Aaron’s child, ‘a joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue’ is to demand that he ‘christen it with a dagger’s point’ (IV.ii.70). But again her gender was earlier challenged by Lavinia’s pleas for her protection: ‘O Tamora, thou bearest a woman’s face’, and ‘No grace, no womanhood’ (II.iii.136, 82). Similarly, Lady Macbeth fears that Macbeth is ‘too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness’ to kill Duncan (I.v.16)., later asking ‘are you a man’ (III.iv.57) and describing him as ‘unmanned’ when he believes he sees Banquo’s ghost (III.iv.73). Before these characters commit or contemplate infanticide, Shakespeare represents them as neither fully male nor fully female. Lady Macbeth’s reference to infanticide is so notorious and has been the subject of so much academic discussion, that it is worth considering in more detail. She says: 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 (I.vii.56).

Marguerite A. Tassi states that the lines show ‘the malevolent maternal will to kill one’s own progeny’ and ‘a wife’s steely relinquishment of maternity and progeny for the sake of her marital bond’,105 whereas Stephanie Chamberlain argues for the importance of what the child signifies.106 Another viewpoint is offered by Burrow, who suggests Lady Macbeth is ‘attempting to transform 102 Wintle and Weis, ‘Macbeth’, pp. 129, 140. 103 The subject of the gendering of the Macbeths is discussed in ibid.; Adelman, ‘Born of Woman’; Rackin, Shakespeare. 104 Adelman, ‘Born of Woman’, p. 97. 105 Tassi, Women and Revenge, p. 62. 106 Chamberlain, ‘Fantasizing Infanticide’.

246 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

herself into an ancient Scottish equivalent to Seneca’s Medea’.107 However, ‘would have’ is a conditional statement in the past with no chance of fulfilment. As Coleridge clarified centuries ago, Lady Macbeth is claiming she would have done ‘that which was most horrible to her feelings’ rather than break an oath and that she ‘considered no tie so tender as that which connected her with her babe’.108 The blood-steeped imagery of the sleepwalking scene, in which she recalls the massacre of Macduff’s family, suggests her inability to have killed, and her infanticidal claim again exists in a liminal, dream or fantasy world, not an embodied one. From the perspective of the present study, the significance of Lady Macbeth’s claim is three-fold. First, it suggests the potential for such an act by a married woman, thereby underlining their potential as killers. Second, it indicates that there was a social association between the breastfeeding mother and the murderous mother. Third, it demonstrates that fears about infanticidal wives merged with those concerning the deadly breast. Tracts which criticised mothers who did not nurse their own children shared rhetorical features with sensational pamphlets about infant murder, and subverted the traditional image of the breast as a symbol of charity and nourishment by turning it into a potential site of death. This rhetorical similarity is seen in shared motifs of casting forth or making away, of unwomanliness or unnaturalness, of animality, and of devouring or disfiguring the nurtured infant. This may have been associated with changing attitudes to charity and the family, and a nostalgia for pre-Reformation imagery. The idea of the deadly breast recurs in Macbeth, but here Lady Macbeth’s ‘Come to my woman’s breasts, / And take my milk for gall, you murth’ring ministers’ (I.v.47) reverses the beliefs of those works which discourage the use of wetnurses by constructing the maternal breast as death-inducing. Rackin suggests that in Macbeth Shakespeare seems to advocate maternal breastfeeding ‘as a distinctively female activity which expresses the gendered gentleness that is the natural disposition of all women in every time and place’.109 Yet this is a corruption of the image of maternal nurture. In conclusion, archival accounts may exaggerate the dominance of single women as perpetrators of infanticide, in part because confusion about the law of couverture may have resulted in some married women being described as spinsters. In addition, there seems to have been little perception of why a married woman could commit such an act, an attitude which was 107 Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity, p. 191. 108 Cited in Shakespeare, Macbeth. notes p. 42 109 Rackin, Shakespeare, p. 115.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

247

compounded by the 1624 Infanticide Act which stipulated that it was carried out by ‘lewd women that have been delivered of bastard children’. This may have contributed to married women not being indicted. Nevertheless, some married women did murder their infants. When they did, the crime was sometimes the subject of pamphlets which, valuably, provide insights into what drove them to such a desperate act. According to these works of popular literature they were driven by a number of motives including marital disharmony, poverty, revenge, religious difference and domestic cruelty. Some murders of very young infants within marriage almost certainly escaped notice having been perceived to have been the result of accidental overlaying, though no such deaths were investigated in Sussex according to the surviving Sussex coroners’ inquests. Although there had been concerns about the danger of maternal overlaying since the 13th century and ealier, paradoxically there was also a mass of literature which condemned the use of wetnurses. The aversion to the practice is suggested by the vast range of literature on the subject which wrote of women who used nurses in the same terms as were used of those who committed infanticide. This strict censure of married women was part of a wider anxiety about the role and actions of women, whether married or single. Writing of street literature, Susan C. Staub notes that there was ‘a cultural preoccupation with women’s behavior and, because the violence depicted is predominantly domestic, [it] points toward growing instability within the institution of marriage’.110 She also writes of the change in the status of women, something which Jean E. Howard considers in terms of their increasing visibility and economic power. The belief in a sacred bond between mother and child, and evidence that it could be broken, were matters of patriarchal concern, particularly when the child was the legitimate carrier of the family line through its blood.

Bibliography Primary sources Anon, The Bloody Minded Midwife (1693) (ESTC R172788; EBBA 22227; Pepys 5.10). ———, Bloody Newes from Dover (1646) (ESTC R201352). ———, The Cruel Midwife (1693) (ESTC R174412; Wing C7419A). ———, Deeds Against Nature and Monsters by Kinde (1614) (ESTC S115346). 110 Staub, Nature’s Cruel, p. 8.

248 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

———, The Distressed Mother or Sorrowful Wife in Tears (1690) (ESTC R226661). ———, An Elegie Upon the Death of my Pretty Infant-Cousin (1672) (ESTC R221004). ———, The Injured Children or The Bloudy Midwife (1693) (ESTC R188289; EBBA 20808; Pepys 2.193). ———, The Midwife of Poplar’s Sorrowful Confession (1693) (ESTC R188574; EBBA 20807; Pepys 2.192). ———, The Midwife’s Maid’s Lamentation (1693) (ESTC R188575; EBBA 22241; Pepys 5.24). ———, The Midwives Ghost (1680) (ESTC R234336; EBBA 20763; Pepys 2.145). ———, A Pittilesse Mother (1616) (ESTC 24757). ———, Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers (1591) (ESTC S2242). ———, A True and Perfect Relation of a most Horrid and Bloody Murtehr (sic) (1686) (ESTC R42433). ———, A True Relation of the Most Horrid and Barbarous Murders Committed by Abigall Hill (1658) (ESTC R209883). ———, The Unnatural Mother Being a Full and True Account of one Elizabeth Kennet (1697) (ESTC R187648). ———, The Unnatural Mother Being a True Relation of one Jane Lawson (1680) (EBBA 20806; Pepys 2.191). Barbaro, Francesco, Directions for Love and Marriage in Two Books. Translated by A person of quality, 1677. Clinton, Elizabeth, Countess of Lincoln, The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie. Oxford, 1622. de Bèze, Théodore, The Geneva Bible (1576). Euripides, ‘Medea’, In Medea and Other Plays, edited by James Morwood, pp. 1–38. Oxford: OUP, 2008. Gellius, Aulus, The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. Translated by John C. Rolfe. III vols. Vol. II (Book XII). London: Harvard University/Heinemann, 1982. Gouge, William, Of Domesticall Duties, 1622. Guillemeau, Jacques, The Nursing of Children, bound with Child-birth or The Happy Delivery of Women, 1612. Horn, John, The Efficacy of the True Balme, 1669. Hunnisett, R.F., ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1558–1603. Kew: PRO Publications, 1996. ———, ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1603–1688. Kew: PRO Publications, 1998. Middleton, Thomas, ‘The Yorkshire Tragedy’, In William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, pp. 472–502. London: Palgrave, 2013. Paré, Ambroise, The Workes of that Famous Chirugion Ambrose Parey. Translated by Th. Johnson, 1634. Partridge, N., and Sharp, J., Blood for Blood (1670) (ESTC R234717).

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

249

Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. The Pepys Ballads. VIII vols. Vol. III, 1666–1688. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930. Scot, Reginald, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584. Shakespeare, Macbeth. Edited by K. Muir. London: Macmillan, 1984. Smith, Henrie, The sermons of Maister Henrie Smith gathered into one volume, 1597. Thornton, Alice, The Autobiography of Mrs Alice Thornton of East Newton, Co. York. Cambridge: CUP, 2000. Wurtz, Felix, An Experimental Treatise of Surgerie In Four Parts, 1656.

Secondary sources Adelman, Janet, ‘‘Born of Woman’: Fantasies of Maternal Power in Macbeth’, In Cannibals, Witches and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance, edited by Marjorie Garber, pp. 90–121. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. Baker, J.H., ‘Male and Married Spinsters’, American Journal of Legal History 21, no. 3 (1977), pp. 255–259. Becker, Lucinda M., Death and the Early Modern Englishwoman. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Brooke, Nicholas, Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy. London: Open Books, 1979. Burrow, Colin, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity. Oxford: OUP, 2013. Chamberlain, Stephanie, ‘Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England’, College Literature 32, no. 3 (2005), pp. 72–91. Clark, Sandra, Women and Crime in the Street Literature of Early Modern England. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. Cyrino, Monica, ‘When Grief is Gain: The Psychodynamics of Abandonment and Filicide in Euripides’ ‘Medea’’, Pacific Coast Philology 31, no. 1 (1996), pp. 1–12. Damme, Catherine, ‘Infanticide: The worth of an infant under law’, Medical History 22 (1978), pp. 1–24. Dolan, Frances E., Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550–1700. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1994. Edwards, Valerie C., ‘The Case of the Married Spinster: An Alternative Explanation’, American Journal of Legal History 21, no. 3 (1977), pp. 260–265. Fildes, Valerie, Breasts, Bottles and Babies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 1986. ———, Wetnursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984. Fissell, Mary E., Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Forbes, T.R., The Midwife and the Witch. New Haven: Yale University, 1966. Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punishment: the Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1977.

250 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Gordon, Robert M., ‘The Medea Complex and the Parental Alienation Syndrome’, In The Mother-Daughter Relationship: Echoes Through Time, edited by Gerd H. Fenchel, pp. 207–225. Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1998. Gowing, Laura, ‘‘The freedom of the streets’: women and social space, 1560–1640’, In Londinopolis, edited by Paul Griffiths and Mark S. R. Jenner, pp. 130–150. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Grindlay, Elizabeth J. ‘‘Some out of Vanity will call Her the Queene of Heaven’: Iconography of the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin in post-Reformation England, 1580–1616’, PhD, UCL, 2013. Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642. Cambridge: CUP, 1992. Hoffer, Peter C., and Hull, N.E.H., Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England 1558–1803. New York: New York University Press, 1981. Howard, Jean E., The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England. London: Routledge, 1994. ———, Theater of a City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Janes, Regina, ‘Beheadings’, In Death and Representation, edited by Sarah Webster Goodwin and Elizabeth Bronfen, pp. 242–262. Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 1993. Kilday, Anne-Marie, A History of Infanticide in Britain, c. 1600 to the Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. Lamb, Mary Ellen, ‘Taken by the Fairies: Fairy Practices and the production of popular culture in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Shakespeare Quarterly 51, no. 3 (2000), pp. 277–312. Larson, Frances, Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found. London: Granta, 2014. McLaughlin, Mary M., ‘Survivors and Surrogates’, In History of Childhood, edited by L. DeMause. New York: Psychohistory Press, 1974. Paster, Gail Kern, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1993. Phillippy, Patricia, ‘A Comfortable Farewell: Child-loss and Funeral Monuments in Early Modern England’, In Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood, edited by Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh, pp. 17–37. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Porter, Theresa, and Gavin, Helen, ‘Infanticide and Neonaticide: A Review of 40 Years of Research Literature on Incidence and Causes’, Trauma, Violence and Abuse 11, no. 3 (2010), pp. 99–112. Rabin, Dana, ‘Bodies of evidence, states of mind: infanticide, emotion and sensibility in eighteenth-century England’, In Infanticide: historical perspectives on child murder and concealment, 1550–2000, edited by Mark Jackson, pp. 95–110. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Rackin, Phyllis, Shakespeare and Women. Oxford: OUP, 2005.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Married Women

251

Robertson, Lynne M., ‘Getting ahead in a warrior culture: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the problem of identity’, Connotations 7, no. 1 (1997), pp. 33–43. Shahar, Shulamith, Childhood in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge, 1990. Staub, Susan C., ‘Early Modern Medea: Representations of Child Murder in the Street Literature of Seventeenth-Century England’, In Maternal Measures: Figuring caregiving in the early modern period, edited by Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh, pp. 333–347. London: Ashgate, 2000. ———, Nature’s Cruel Stepdames: Murderous Women in the Street Literature of Seventeenth Century England. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2005. Tassi, Marguerite A., Women and Revenge in Shakespeare: Gender, Genre, and Ethics. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2011. Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. Tyminski, Robert, ‘The Medea Complex – Myth and Modern Manifestation’, Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche 8, no. 1 (2014), pp. 28–40. Walker, Garthine, ‘Just Stories: Telling Tales of Infant Death in Early Modern England’, In Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women, edited by Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seef, pp. 98–115. London: University of Delaware Press, 2003. Wiener, Carol Z., ‘Is a Spinster an Unmarried Woman?’, The Americal Journal of Legal History 20, no. 1 (1976), pp. 27–31. Willis, Deborah, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1995. Wintle, Sarah, and Weis, René, ‘Macbeth and the Barren Sceptre’, Essays in Criticism XLI (1991), pp. 128–146.

On-line sources Braidwood, Elizabeth. ‘The Medieval Pelican’, http://donna.hrynkiw.net/sca/ pelican/index.html [Accessed 10 May 2012]. Cooper, Sheila McIsaac. ‘Horne, John (bap. 1616, d. 1676)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/13790 [Accessed 19 May 2018]. ‘Victoria and Albert Museum collections search’. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/ [Accessed 10 May 2012].

8

Not the Usual Suspects: Men Abstract The early modern assumption was that infanticide was committed by unmarried women to avoid shame and punishment, yet archival sources show that men were frequently responsible for the killings, or directly involved in them. Such versions of the crime were also described in news pamphlets and ballads, which reveal a variety of motives. They include men who destroyed the unborn child of their pregnant lovers, as well as those who ended the lives of newborns and of very young children. Motives may have been poverty, loss of future, and the sexual shame of clergy, or incest. The means by which men killed were particularly physically violent, and may have involved beating, striking, crushing, or bloodshed. Keywords: Fathers and lovers who murder; Clergy who kill; Drunkenness; Physical violence; Sexual Shame

Thomas Cranley of Homestreet ‘yoman’, murdered a recently born live male child […]. He violently ‘did croushe’ the child’s head with his hands, of which ‘croushing’ he immediately died.1

The sins of the fathers Thus far, this research has focussed mainly on women, but men killed children too. The hundred or so Sussex inquests dealing with suspicious infant deaths include eighteen cases in which men either killed infants or are believed to have had direct involvement the death of a newborn or young child (See Appendix 7). They show that men killed infants in the womb, newborns, and older children. A similar picture is painted in the ballads and pamphlets which describe cases in which men kill infants. This literature suggests that the men who committed these crimes were from all social levels, and they killed for a range of motives. 1

Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 104 #417.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch08

254 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Francis E. Dolan writes that literary accounts of infanticide ‘scrutinize all of the circumstances, perpetrators, and motives for which the law cannot account’.2 Certainly, motives are largely missing from the Sussex archival accounts for all crimes, though informed conjecture can go some way toward filling out these lacunae. Just as infanticide by married women appears to have interested the authors of popular literature, so did child killing by men. As with the accounts of the female crime, ballads and pamphlets reveal something of the possible events which led to the killing, and social attitudes toward this kind of infant murder. When women killed, it was seen as a denial of womanliness, a betrayal of the bond of motherhood, and a corruption of the unity of the family. By contrast, the factor which most links the different accounts of infanticide by men is that their crimes are portrayed as bloody and violent, as are those cases recorded in the coroners’ inquests.3 Street literature also suggests that poverty, shame, and fear of discovery applied to men as well as to women, but we also see enforced marriage, alcohol, money and marital infidelity as playing a role. While none of this can be taken as truth – authors were writing to meet the interests and expectations of audiences – they do provide a perspective on the crime. In particular they give us a viewpoint on attitudes to the unborn infant, and into early modern marriage and its power structures. Beyond domestic infanticide, monarchical power, which can be traced back to Herod and the Massacre of the Innocents, continued to be represented in drama. In archival accounts, men are often seen at the edges of the crime and are sometimes described as ‘aiding and abetting’. Similarly, they exist at the edges of academic discourse and are generally the subject of only brief discussion, if they are mentioned at all. Yet for every frightened, poor or abandoned woman who killed her illegitimate newborn, there was a father who had left her with the sole responsibility for subsequent events. This chapter investigates this frequently under-examined aspect of infanticide and questions some of the assumptions which underlie current academic discourse on infanticide. It reveals that the weight of archival and literary evidence suggests the frequency of the direct or indirect involvement of husbands, lovers and others. It also examines the extent and reasons for men’s infanticide implied in street literature, discusses the manner in which the crime was communicated, and shows the connections between early modern representations and those which preceded them. The archival cases 2 Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, p. 126. 3 This does not appear to apply in the eighteenth century. See Kilday, Infanticide, p. 70.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

255

I discuss below, and the literary works I examine, show that infanticide by men was often more violent, hypocritical and devious than that committed by women. With a crime prompted by complex and overlapping motives, there is a danger in categorising works, but nevertheless this chapter draws out dominant themes. Those discussed below include the destruction of the unborn child by killing its mother, and reasons for this, which include alcohol, money, and the desire to escape from unhappy relationships. It will examine the murder of newborns and older children and the motives of money and sexual shame. Finally, it will look at anxieties surrounding dynasty, and show that men used infants as a weapon against individuals or societies.

The unborn child In Chapter 3 we saw that the pregnant wife could become structured as a quasi-goddess, set apart from her household, and attended by female celebrants who made special dietary offerings to her and to her revered condition. Alongside this nurturing of women with child were the dangers they and their infants faced during pregnancy, labour, and the weeks that followed. Archives and street literature show another aspect of dangerous pregnancy in accounts of pregnant women who were murdered by the men with whom they were associated, the assailant taking the inseparable lives of mother and child. The eighteen Sussex coroners’ inquests which mention infant deaths directly involving men include the case of Henry Pellyng whose wife was ‘close to giving birth’ when he assailed her with an axe in the middle of the night. 4 He was convicted but found to be ‘lunatic’ and appears to have died in prison. Alice Smyth, a pregnant spinster, was attacked by Roland Medowe, aided and abetted by Nicholas Gower.5 Medowe stabbed her in the neck and throat, ‘cutting and opening her abdomen and removing a child from her womb’. Both men were hanged. Hunnisett’s notes to another case tell us that Francis Myles was indicted for killing Joan Myles, apparently his brother’s wife.6 He was charged with:

4 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 5 #24. 5 ibid., p. 100 #398. 6 ———, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 139 #542.

256 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

killing Joan late wife of Thomas Myles of Rye, baker, who was then pregnant with a female child, in the market-place at Rye […] throwing her upon a piece of wood called a brake and then striking her on the abdomen with his knee giving her a wound […] of which she languished at Rye until 19 July and then died.

From the inquest we learn that a dead child was found in her womb, the surgeon reporting to the jury that ‘the child’s skull was broken in one place and bruised in another and that the right side of the head near the ear was bruised in 3 places, and the skin was off’. A mass of witnesses were called in this case but the indictment for the killing of Joan was rejected. Although the injuries to the infant’s body were part of the evidence, no charges were brought on this death. Destruction of the unborn child also appears in both elite and popular literature. In ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, after Giovanni has killed Anabella, who is pregnant with his child, he enters with her heart on a sword. The language, with its interwoven references to heart, wound, and nine months, suggests that the heart merges with the foetus and symbolically represents it, so that the bloody object can be seen as one, the other, or both simultaneously.7 Street literature suggests that infanticide by murdering the pregnant woman was not uncommon, and could be prompted by marital disharmony, alcohol, or money. Pamphlets describing the murder of pregnant wives show the simmering anger and suspicion which could lurk in early modern marriages. The pamphlet A Full and True Relation offers a scenario in which enforced marriage leads to the woman and child’s deaths. We are told that William Barwick’s wife was pregnant when they wed and that it was ‘very probable that being then constrained to Marry her, he grew weary of her’.8 The pamphlet states that going out of the house, he ‘drill’d his Wife along till he came to a certain Close […] where he found the Conveniency of a Pond, [where] he threw her by force into the Water’. Having drowned her and concealed the body, he later claims that she had gone to stay with his uncle. Her corpse is discovered after a ghost appears to her brother-in-law which ‘seem’d to Dandle something in her Lap, that look’d like a White-Bag’, which suggests an infant. The apparition, statements from neighbours and the forensic evidence of ‘several Bruises on her Head, occasioned by the Blows the Murderer had given her to keep her under Water’ condemn Barwick. Similarly, Thomas and Mary Watson had lived in disharmony for 7 Ford, ‘’Tis Pity’, p. V.vi.10. 8 Anon, Full and True Relation, pp. 1, 2.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

257

some time: ‘He had often threatened his Wives Death, and […] she herself had said oftentimes […] that she was afraid her Husband would be the Death of her’, which implies domestic violence.9 Watson is a weaver and Mary, despite being heavily pregnant, helps him by delivering his work and taking cloth to the dyers, perhaps indicating marriage partnership, or possibly enforced work during pregnancy when she should have been sequestered at home. The crisis results when he is ‘jealous’ of her ‘imbezzling’ his money after she pawns some cloth ‘for Money to supply her present Necessity’. After confrontation in the street, and despite the intervention of neighbours, he stabs her and both she and the child die. The nameless couple at the heart of Bloody News from Clerkenwel[l] also lived miserably together: ‘he was generally a very bad Husband, and froward and unkind to his Wife, who yet loving him very well, endeavoured to take no notice of it’.10 During one of his frequent absences as a journeyman cooper she sells clothes to buy food for their children. Despite her being ‘great with child’, when she asks for money to buy physic from the apothecary for their sick child, he knocks her to the ground with an adze, a tool of his trade, ‘and then continued striking backwards and forwards till he had given her several mortal wounds[…] and left the mangled body weltring in it’s [sic] own Gore upon the Floor’.11 When neighbours arrive he is pacing the room with another of their children ‘as if in Triumph for that Hellish victory’ and they rescue the child ‘before he had done it any harm’.12 At his trial he says he was ‘sorry for nothing but that he had not dispatcht some more of them’. The vivid descriptive language lets readers visualise these violent events, and juxtaposes the man’s mania and the good neighbours with whom they can identify. Alcohol is also frequently an aspect of men’s violent destruction of the unborn child, often alongside another marital problem. Alcohol possibly prompted the journeyman cooper’s violent and murderous outburst, the author writing that it was ‘probable an Ale-house had taken up the greatest part of his time’.13 Robert Foulkes, who is discussed below, states that he spent ‘too much of my time, too much of my Money in publick Houses, […] and drank to intemperance’.14 We are also told that when Nathanial Smith and his pregnant wife return from the alehouse he: 9 ———, Sad and true relation, p. 6. 10 ———, Bloody News. 11 ibid., p. 6. 12 ibid., p. 7. 13 ibid., p. 5. 14 Foulkes, Alarme, p. 11.

258 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Demands the Coin she took that day. She being with Child, and fretful too, What he commands she would not do; Which, with his drink, began a rage, Nothing but Murther could asswage.15

The fury builds and he stabs her and the ‘little Infant in the womb / Received there both Life and Toomb’. Smith is tried and executed for his crime. The social freedom of women in these works also led to suspicions of infidelity and contributed to their danger. Mary Watson’s going abroad to distribute her husband’s cloth could have led to doubts about her sexual morality. Jean E. Howard writes: ‘Those who sold goods could be suspected of also selling themselves and the city afforded women numerous opportunities to lead public lives that involved being visible to many people, including strangers’.16 This may be implied in The Bloody Butcher when the author writes: This Butchers Wife did keep a Seat I’ th Market-place to sell her Meat; And was by all report that’s made, A careful house-wife in the Trade.17

Howard writes: ‘there are strong semiotic parallels between a chaste woman placed at the door of a shop to attract trade and the widely reported practice of positioning whores at the thresholds of brothels for the same purpose’.18 The references to the seat in the marketplace, the wife’s selling of her ‘meat’, and the reference to ‘the Trade’, seem deliberately ambiguous. John Marketman, a sea surgeon, had been ‘debauched and distempered in Drink’ when, noting his wife’s absence after he takes ‘a nap’, he leaps to the conclusion that she is ‘at least too familiar’ with a neighbour.19 As in The Winter’s Tale, the jealousy explodes onto the scene from nowhere. The author writes: where Jealousie once finds entertainment in the heart of any Man or Woman, there is little hopes of any quiet life, and often begets ardent desires of secret Revenge, which oftentimes launches forth into such extreams.20 15 Anon, Bloody Butcher. 16 Howard, Theater of a City, p. 128. 17 Anon, Bloody Butcher. 18 Howard, Theater of a City, p. 129. 19 Anon, True Narrative, p. 2. 20 ibid.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

259

Marketman hunts down his wife, and killing the unborn child is a specific part of his intent: ‘his passion was so violent that nothing could asswage it but the loss of her own and her poor Babes life’.21 He stabs her with a blow which ‘proved fatal to both Husband Wife and Child’. Rather than being polemic, anti-alcohol pamphlets, these works imply that no thinking man would murder his pregnant wife, and that such a crime requires disconnection from their sentient world. Drunkenness is used to separate the men from their brutal crimes in a manner similar to Henry Pellyng, who murdered his pregnant wife but was judged ‘lunatic’.22 Thomas Pettitt suggests that ‘murdered sweetheart’ narratives were part of the ‘ambient mindset’ and that ballads about the subject ‘stand at the intersection of the themes of love and violence’.23 However, in murdered sweetheart ballads, the killing is prompted by the infant’s imminent existence and what it could mean for the man: enforced marriage, hardship and disgrace. In contrast, pregnant wives are murdered because of their perceived behaviour. Despite the ‘in rerum natura’ debates discussed in Chapter 3, such killings are written of as double murders, and two of the works discussed above give the unborn child life. Again these are highly visual and emotive accounts, suggesting horror, describing the inhumanity of the killers, and inviting revulsion in the readers. They also reveal attitudes to the murder of unborn infants. After William Barwick drowned his pregnant wife he ‘had the Cruelty to behold the Motion of the Infant, yet warm in her Womb’.24 Thomas Watson’s infant ‘was Drowned in its Mothers Blood or else struck to the Heart with the aforesaid Dagger’.25 These lines relocate the unborn child from the womb to the world, emphasising the death of the infant as well as the mother. They demonstrate the vulnerability of infants from the moment of conception, a fact which remains true today.26

Newborn and very young infants We have seen that men killed unborn infants. They also murdered newborn and very young infants, or were present at the death, or strongly implicated 21 ibid., p. 3. 22 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 5 #24. 23 Pettitt, ‘Journalism’, p. 75. 24 Anon, Full and True Relation, p. 2. 25 ———, Sad and True relation, p. 6. 26 Baird, ‘Domestic Abuse’, p. 181. Research shows that twenty percent of domestic violence begins during pregnancy.

260 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

in it. One of the most tragic of the Sussex coroner’s inquests concerns the Barnerde family. It states that on 17 February 1553 the Coroner and fifteen jurors met to hold an inquest on two bodies.27 The record tells us: Richard Barnerde of Hellingly copulated with his daughter Joan, who conceived and gave birth to a girl in her father’s house in Hellingly without the company of women. Afterwards, between 8 and 9 am on 13 February Richard took the infant in his hands, hid her under ‘a towbe’28, placed ‘a byttell’ [sc. a beetle or mallet] worth 1d on her chest and murdered her. The next day, reflecting on his horrible crime, he went to a well in a close called the Grove at Hellingly and feloniously drowned himself.

Hunnisett’s detailed note to the case describes subsequent events. From this we learn that two members of the Devenysse family, one described as esquire and the other as gentleman, and other rioters: broke and entered Barnerde’s house after his death, expelled his 3 children (the oldest being not more than 12) and took away his goods and chattels, viz. silver spoons, feather-beds, bolsters […] brass, pewter, corn and other goods worth about £14.

This heart-rending account demonstrates how events – in this case both incest and infanticide – could reverberate through a community. It encompasses the anger and the sense of contamination which such crimes engendered. But the culprit here is a man, and his wrongs are amplified by members of the community, who participate in inflicting disaster and an unknown destiny on three young children while opportunistically enriching themselves. While the Barnerde case is exceptional, the killing of infants by men, and the extreme violence of such killings, is not rare. Remaining solely with the Sussex archives and cases involving infants whose age is measured in weeks or months rather than years, we learn that Thomas Cranley was accused of crushing a newly born infant’s head.29 A yeoman’s wife gave evidence against him, but he was released after claiming that the child was killed by ‘John at Death’, one of the fictitious names used in Sussex and elsewhere when finding a prisoner not guilty because an unknown person committed the 27 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1485–1558, p. 47 #165. 28 Possibly a tub. 29 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 104 #417.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

261

crime.30 Other pseudonyms, such as John Nok and Tom Staff, also suggest violence and transgression. Such names, which are always male, constitute ghostly figures in the archives, masking events by merging factual accounts with fiction and folklore. There were other ways for men to escape the noose. Richard Jones, a labourer, was accused of killing his 8–week old daughter by ‘violently striking her with his right hand on the left side of her head and giving her ‘one mortall bruise’ of which she immediately died’.31 At the assizes, his ‘wife alias Elizabeth Jones, spinster’ was charged with aiding and abetting him.32 He pleaded benefit of clergy and was acquitted, and Elizabeth was discharged.33 Other Sussex evidence of men accused of killing infants includes the case of John Swyft who gave fatal ‘nipes and bruises’ to his six month old son, Francis, and was imprisoned on suspicion of murder, but did not stand trial.34 However, sometimes justice was exacted for the deaths of these young infants. At the Horsham assizes in March 1666, three people gave evidence against Henry Beale for murdering his daughter ‘when she was lying asleep in a cradle in his dwelling-house, by clutching her in both hands, violently striking her on the chest, stomach and abdomen and giving her a bruise of which she immediately died’.35 He was hanged. Robert Willard, a butcher, was sentenced to death in 1567 for beating to death the male child of Joan Marden, spinster.36

Aiding and abetting The cases discussed above suggest the slippery nature of justice when an infant was killed by a man. This is endorsed by accounts which show that, when newborns were killed, men were often accused of being present or 30 Knafla, ‘John at Love’. 31 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 132 #512. 32 The ‘legal fiction’ of the married spinster was discussed in the previous chapter. 33 At this point in history, Benefit of Clergy refers to the proviso in English law that clergymen were exempt from the death sentence. Ways of proving eligibility changed over time and eventually anyone who could read could make the plea. Proving literacy usually required the accused to read Psalm 51, which became known as the ‘neck verse’. The proviso presented an enormous loophole as anyone, including the labourer Richard Jones, could memorize the Psalm. As women could not be of the clergy, they could not use the plea, though they could claim to be pregnant – Benefit of Belly. For a comparison of the two pleas see Walker, Crime, Gender, pp. 197–201. 34 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 19 #81. 35 ibid., p. 119 #466. The accounts are inconsistent about the age of the infant stating half a year, 15 and 50 weeks. 36 Cockburn, ed. Sussex Indictments : Elizabeth I, p. 46 #214.

262 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

aiding and abetting. They seem to lurk in the shadows and escape severe punishment. At the trial of widow Ann Comber in 1657, John Puttocke was accused of being ‘feloniously present aiding and abetting her so that they both murdered the child’.37 Ann was hanged, but Puttocke was charged with unlawful intercourse with her and committed to jail for three months. In 1574, both Anthony Fisher and Joan Marshe were tried for having killed her infant and buried it. They were found not guilty.38 Other archival records concerning men and infanticide also suggest the uncertainty which surrounded events. In 1592 an inquest was held on an infant said to have been born ‘mute and dead of the body of Mildred Barnes’.39 Hunnisett’s account of the case suggests that the circumstances were thought questionable. At the inquest Mildred, Robert Awcocke, her master, and his wife were required to appear at the Assizes to answer charges against them. At the trial no charges were made against the Awcockes, but Mildred was remanded on suspicion of felony. She was later ‘delivered by proclamation’. 40 In May 1621 Mary Hemsley was suspected of infanticide after giving birth in Nicholas Reynoldes’ house. 41 At the assizes Reynoldes was charged with ‘feloniously inciting’ Mary to commit the felony, and his wife Katherine Reynoldes was charged with ‘feloniously comforting and aiding [Mary] […] knowing she had committed the felony’. Mary pleaded not guilty and was acquitted, but suspicion lingered around both Katherine and Nicholas Reynoldes who were bailed to appear again. Nicholas was later delivered by proclamation, but there is no further record of Katherine. In another inquest we learn that Margaret Pollard gave birth to a live male child in January 1678. 42 The account states that: on the same day, she, William Pollard late of Edburton, ‘laborer’, and Jane his wife alias Jane Pollard late of Edburton, ‘spinster’, murdered him there: Margaret violently striking him on the back of the head with ‘a bedstaffe’ […] and giving him ‘one mortall bruise’ of which he immediately died; and William and Jane being feloniously present aiding and abetting her.

37 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 113 #442. 38 Cockburn, ed. Sussex Indictments : Elizabeth I, p. 104 #515. 39 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. 111 #450. 40 The phrase is obscure but clearly means that the suspect was freed. Jones, ‘Gender and Petty Crime’. 41 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1603–1688, p. 55 #225. 42 ibid., p. 128 #496.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

263

Killing a newborn by striking is so typical of men’s method of killing that it raises a question about who gave the fatal blow. William Pollard died a natural death in jail before the Assizes, but his wife was convicted and hanged and Margaret, the infant’s mother, was acquitted. Such cases emphasise the impossibility of knowing exactly what happened, and create uncertainties about the extent and reasons for the man’s involvement, and who ultimately was responsible for the deaths. They also leave the impression that men ‘got off lightly’ by pleading benefit of clergy or by being found guilty of a lesser charge. We have seen that it is beyond question that infanticide was frequently committed by men or that they were closely involved in the crime. The eighteen Sussex archival cases of the killing of newborn or very young children which mention varying levels of male involvement, represent a significant fraction of the total. This is only part of the picture. Every one of the cases discussed in previous chapters dealing with the actions and fates of unmarried women involved a man as the father of the child she was accused of killing. They may be largely invisible in the archives, but they were present in the women’s lives.

Money and motive We have seen that single women are believed to have abandoned or murdered their infants because they feared they would be unable to survive financially. In street literature, lack of money caused by squandering, and the suspicion or greed it could engender, is also an aspect of infanticide by men. The pregnant Mary Watson was killed because her husband suspected her of embezzlement.43 In Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers ‘one Lincolne’ kills three of his children (age unspecified) as part of a plot which will enable him to marry a rich widow. 44 In other works, loss of money is part of downward spirals involving fathers’ debauched and profligate behaviour which culminates in infant murder. The Unnatural Father describes John Rowse’s decline from financial security into penury, caused by his adultery, ‘Ryot, excessive drinking & unproportionable spending’ and subsequent duping by a friend.45 Welcomed back by his wife after abandoning her for his lover he recognises that ‘he had nothing left him but poverty and beggery, 43 Anon, Sad and true relation. 44 ———, Sundrye Strange. 45 Taylor, Unnatural Father, p. A3v.

264 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

and that his two Children were like to be left to go from doore to doore for their living’. 46 Finding a pretext to send his wife away, he drowns his two daughters in a stream of ‘excellent spring water in the Seller of his house’, carefully lays out the bodies and covers them with a sheet. This work suggests a slow, methodical, premeditated crime, and is chillingly described. We see planning and organisation, in a manner similar to William Barwick’s murder of his pregnant wife, though with Rowse the account gives a sense of a man suffering mental disconnection from his actions. The true case of Walter Calverly, who also lost his fortune and killed his children in a public and dramatic manner, is told in A Yorkshire Tragedy and the pamphlet Two Unnaturall and bloodie murthers.47 In the former, the unnamed and undeveloped characters – ‘wife’, ‘husband’ – are reminiscent of morality plays. These, Henry Hitch Adams states, were the antecedents of such domestic tragedies from which ‘gradually the abstract vices and virtues assumed the characteristics of men and women of the middle class’.48 Calverly is characterised as a Herod-like figure (see below) who does little but rant until, in an isolated moment, he recognises the effect of his profligacy on the family line: I am mad to think the moone was mine; Mine and my fathers and my forefathers – generations, generations: downe goes the howse on us, down, downe it sincks. Now is the name a beggar, begs in me! that name, which hundreds of yeeres has made this shiere famous, in me, and my posterity runs out. 49

His solution is to end the shame by murdering his family. Both the play and ballad account include dramatic scenes of confusion, struggle and violent slaughter in which two infants are murdered. The pamphlet describes the physicality of the killing in strong, emotive language, which captures some of what would be seen in stage performance. We hear that Calverly holds the body of one child aloft, throws the maid downstairs and struggles with his wife for the child she is holding ‘which she sought to preserve with words, teares, and all what a mother could do from so tragicall an end’. He stabs at the child in her arms, killing it and wounding his wife. Both Rowse and Calverley’s narratives inculcate ‘lessons of morality and religious faith in citizens […] by 46 ibid., p. Bv. 47 Middleton, ‘Yorkshire Tragedy’; Anon, Two most unnaturall 48 Adams, English Domestic, p. 54. 49 Middleton, ‘Yorkshire Tragedy’, p. Sc.IV.54.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

265

Image 7: Woodcut from The Unnatural Father (1621). The man’s gaze links with the viewer, perhaps suggesting the possibility of preventing the crime on which he is embarked. (© British Library Board. STC (2nd ed.) / 23808a. Image published by permission of ProQuest. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission.)

offering them examples drawn from the lives and customs of their own kind of people’.50 Adams states that this puts them into the category ‘homiletic tragedy’ in which, he states, writers use the ‘common man as protagonist for a tragic story’.51 Though their histories are told indifferent genres, the infant killers Rowse and Calverley have similar histories in that both men lose their fortunes, are discontented with their marriages, and seek solace and excitement elsewhere with women, gambling and drinking. Dolan, who draws attention to the fact that such murders take place ‘at the extreme end of a continuum of prodigality and self-consumption’, states that this kind of killing is ‘social suicide’ but also an indication that the fathers – like some mothers who kill – are perversely taking responsibility for their children through murder.52 However, whereas in The Unnatural Father Rowse fears for his family’s future, Calverly’s care is for its future and its relationship with the past. As seen in the speech above, shame is part of his motivation. 50 Adams, English Domestic, p. viii. 51 ibid., p. 74. 52 Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, p. 142.

266 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

The very different mental states and modes of killing of these murderers are clear in the woodcuts which illustrate them, though neither is an exact representation of the events described. Rowse’s crime is solitary and secretive and the peaceful scene shows the calmness and organisation of the events described in the pamphlet, though it represents an outdoor scene rather than an indoor one. There is a sense of cleansing or baptism in an idyllic place, and the infant bodies are undamaged, yet his gaze and posture are distinctive, possibly shameless, possibly caught in the act. The Calverly illustration is adapted from an earlier pamphlet.53 His crime is watched by the figure of the devil and his action appears frenzied and violent. It suggests defiled bodies and bloodshed, linking it with the destruction of his family bloodline. The impression of arrested movement and the confusion of bodies echoes the events described in both the play and the pamphlet, as well as images of the massacre of the innocents, a subject discussed below.

Sexual shame and motive Fear of being shamed has frequently been cited as one of the reasons women committed infanticide, but as the works cited above indicate, men could fear shame as well. Rowse and Calverly were driven by shame of having endangered their families by squandering their money, Mary Watson’s husband by the fear that he was being cheated of his money, and Lincolne is driven by financial greed. Another group of infanticides were committed by men who feared sexual shame. The subject is discussed by Bernard Capp who writes: ‘Respectable men, like respectable women, valued sexual “honesty” as an intrinsic part of the “good name” that gave them a sense of self-worth and a position of respect in their community’.54 This was particularly true when the man was married as his adultery could lead to ‘a dramatic shift in the domestic balance of power’ which may have been what motivated Adam Adamson who worked so assiduously with Jane Hattersley to conceal her multiple infanticides. Adamson, previously discussed in Chapter 6, is certainly represented as the principal wrongdoer in Brewer’s pamphlet.55 He is introduced as a man ‘in good account and reckoning amongst his neighbours’, but with a ‘shew of honestie and 53 A more complete image, showing more of the Devil, surrounding scenery and a dog discovering a body, appears in Anon, Sundrye Strange. 54 Capp, ‘Double Standard’. 55 Brewer, Bloudy Mother.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

267

good dealing, he covered a masse of dishonest and putrified cogitations’. With each of Jane’s pregnancies, and at each step in the account, it is Adamson who receives Brewer’s opprobrium, with Jane gradually depicted as his victim. Having promised Jane marriage after his wife dies, when Jane becomes pregnant he denies that the child is his. He resumes their relationship after the first infanticide, and when Jane gives birth to and kills a second child he buries it, and likewise the third. When he sells the orchard where the infants are hidden he instructs the purchaser not to ‘digg neere the Box tree’ which leads to the discovery of the bodies. After he and Jane are imprisoned he instructs her that if she denies his involvement and does not claim to be innocent herself, he will obtain a pardon. He does not, but expecting a reprieve Jane does not confess or appear contrite. Instead, she appears ‘stout and fearelesse’, a demeanour which would have confirmed her guilt, and she is hanged. The pamphlet moves from depicting Jane as the principal wrong-doer and manipulator, to casting Adamson in that role. As it becomes clear that Adamson does not plan to keep his word, but that she does, the passages describing her continued hope, even when the noose is around her neck, suggest some sympathy: her heart begins to fail and the former ‘strumpet’ becomes a ‘simple wench’. The pamphlet concludes with an account of Adamson’s death which is repulsively and sensationally described. He is so ‘greevously tormented’ by worms and lice that his neighbours cannot bear to see him: ‘So loathsome a savour came from his body, that those that went to see him could not stand to give their eyes satisfaction, for the greevous and odious strength of it’. Adamson, whose ‘putrified cogitations’ were mentioned earlier in the pamphlet, now suffers the punishment of his body putrefying in front of his neighbours. In his discussion of how unmarried women used slander and exploitation to secure marriage or financial support for their infants, Bernard Capp states: ‘Clergymen, the archetypal figures of parochial respectability, were especially vulnerable to slurs on their moral probity’.56 Some of the clergy who were guilty of fathering bastards resorted to infanticide in order to protect their reputations. Several pamphlets provide accounts of such events, one of which – that concerning Robert Foulkes – certainly relates to an historical case.57 Clearly, clergy had particular reason to feel ashamed of the crime which was variously preceded by lust, seduction, rape, lies and devious deception, particularly as they exhorted sexual morality from the pulpit. 56 Capp, ‘Double Standard’. 57 ‘A True and Perfect’.

268 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

The Araignment for Hypocrisie comprises comments made by Mr. Barker, ‘a minister of Gods word’, and his answers to questions, while awaiting execution for infanticide after he was ‘tempted to his lust’ by a kinswoman in his care.58 The murder had been revealed because ‘a little Boy […] in an Apple-tree gathering Apples’ saw him digging a grave and burying an infant’s body. The image, with its uniting of the garden, the apple tree and the child’s innocence, suggests the Garden of Eden and thus associates Barker’s crime with man’s fall.59 The woman, her maid, and Barker were found guilty and sentenced to hanging. The pamphlet mainly concerns Barker’s regrets, including his crime’s potential negative effect on others’ belief and trust in his religion, and his fear of loss of salvation: ‘Oh that I was assured of being his Servant! […] Oh that the Lord would lift up the light of his countenance […] Oh that the LORD would open up one little crevise to mee’ and so on.60 He readily blames others, insisting that he had no hand in the murder. When asked ‘why and for what end he made the grave’ he explains that ‘they told me […] it was to receive such things as modest men and women may easily conceive what’.61 Asked why he had procured savin for his kinswoman,62 he answers that the maid had told that him ‘if she had some of that to take, it would bring down those things which used to come monethly, the stopping whereof made her so ill’.63 The women later claim that they were lying, the maid saying it was ‘her bane’, and the infant’s mother saying that she was ‘thinking to save her life’, and both of them professing that Barker had no hand in the murder.64 Those in power clearly perceived Barker’s involvement differently. Although by the date of the pamphlet (1652) the law had defined the murder of newborns as a crime committed by single women, despite Barker’s denials in court, and despite the fact that he is ostensibly a respectable minister, he is condemned and both he and the women were hanged. The case of Robert Foulkes, another minister found guilty of infanticide, is described in two pamphlets of 1679. The first, A true and perfect relation, is a third person account of his crime, his and his lover’s trial, and his condemnation.65 We learn that when the young woman whom he managed 58 Crowch, Araignment. 59 ibid., p. Av. 60 ibid., p. A4. 61 ibid., p. A5v. 62 Savin, or juniper, is a known abortifacient and still in use. Riddle, Eve’s Herbs, p. 54. 63 Crowch, Araignment, p. A5v. 64 ibid., p. A8v. 65 ‘A True and Perfect’. The name is given as Foulks in this publication.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

269

to ‘debauch to his bed’ became pregnant he took her to London ‘under pretence of prefering her’ and resolved to stay with her ‘till the pains of Delivery should be over’.66 The writer then describes the subsequent events: At length the fatal hour of her dreaded Travel approacht, and she by her lowd shrieks began to call for the welcome assistance of her own Sex, which is both decent and necessary in cases of that nature, but that it seems was utterly denied her by Mr. Foulks, who sternly oblig’d her to silence, protesting no body should perform that Office but himself. What pangs the poor woman endured by so painful a Delivery is best judg’d by those who have been experienced in those labours; but the wicked intent of this barbarous usage, could referr to nothing but the designed destruction of the unfortunate babe, whom he no sooner receiv’d into the world; but he cruelly cram’d it down a house of Office.67

This extraordinary account penetrates the birth chamber in a manner redolent of medical texts.68 Foulkes’ refusal to obtain female assistance during labour puts the woman’s life at risk, and would have been physically shaming at a time when even doctors performed any necessary obstetrical actions with the woman’s lower body covered. After the murder, Foulkes abandons the woman, but because of her ‘indisposition’ she admits to another woman that she has given birth and the crime is revealed. The representation of this case is unlike those which condemn women with their almost automatic assumption of their guilt. Here the man is vilified. Although both Foulkes and the woman plead not guilty, the references to her ‘dreaded Travel’, ‘lowd shrieks’, and the ‘pangs’ of the ‘poor woman’ are set up in direct opposition to the description of Foulkes’ ‘barbarous usage’ when he ‘utterly denied’ assistance and ‘sternly oblig’d her to silence’. We are told that ‘she not in the least consenting to the Murder, was both pittied and acquitted’. In contrast to this empathy for her ordeal, Foulkes, as a minister, receives no sympathy. We are told that ‘the Evidence against him was very clear and apparent’ and after the verdict the author writes: However obstinate Mr. Foulks seem’d in his Tryal, he quickly chang’d his carriage after Condemnation, for then he not only openly acknowledged his Guile, but very sorrowfully bewail’d the heynous nature of his horrid 66 ibid., p. np. 67 ibid. 68 For a discussion of the privacy of the birth chamber see Paster, Body Embarrassed, p. 186.

270 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

crime, which on better consideration he said, appeard to him in so terrible a shape, that it discompos’d and affrighted his very Soul.69

After Foulkes’ entreaties win him a nine-day reprieve he writes his Alarme for sinners which contains his ‘confessions, prayers, letters, and last words’.70 If this document was intended to elicit sympathy, the hindsight of centuries has the effect of making him look considerably worse. There is plenty of verbal self-flagellation as he admits the shame of his sexual liaison. ‘[I] delivered my self to work all uncleanness with greediness; I had eyes of adultery that could not cease from sin’. He admits being ‘a very slave to my lust, and in absolute vassalage to my flesh’; ‘I am a Dog’. But he emphasises that the cause of all this is the woman and she and others of her sex are constructed as whores. ‘She was easily tempted by me, and proved afterward a constant temptation to me’. From the prison, and later from the place of execution, the adulterous murderer warns readers: be not ensnared by a Whores charms; trust not to her kindnesses […] they lead on to all manner of sin; they will waste your Estate, divide your Family, ruin your Health, destroy your soul; and if ever you need her friendship, she will most perfidiously betray you.

It gets worse. Having admitted his sexual shame, his subsequent actions are shameless. Accusations have been made against Foulkes, which he now denies because he does not want those at the trial to have ‘their belief warpt to uncharitableness’. He was told that at the trial he had been seen ‘Gazing about the Court and the Galleries, where Sate several Gentlewomen’. Foulkes responds that he was ‘formerly too apt to delight in such sights’ but on this occasion he sought to ‘spy out some Witnesses I thought Material, which though they were in Court I could not find, and so lost their Evidence’. Other accusations were made by the woman Foulkes refers to as his ‘Partner in the Guilt and Tryal, though not in the Condemnation’. He denies her claims that he was her guardian since her minority and that he attempted to ‘vitiate her’ when she was nine years old. He also denies her accusation that he was solely responsible for the killing: ‘both her Eyes did see, and her Hands did Act in all that was done’. However, like Mr. Barker who was condemned on the evidence of the woman, her maid, and a child, the woman Foulkes has 69 ‘A True and Perfect’. 70 Foulkes, Alarme. The pamphlet includes Foulkes’ letters to his wife, his children, his successor in his parish, and the parishioners there.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

271

wronged is believed rather than a man of the church. These pamphlets, like works discussed in earlier chapters, show the lack of clarity surrounding the murder of newborns and men’s attempts to deflect guilt onto the woman. They demonstrate the alternative versions of events which can surround cases and the extent to which accounts can hover between factual accuracy and fiction, often deploying emotive language and / or rhetoric to direct the reader’s sympathy, and revealing early modern attitudes. The Strange and Wonderful Relation of a Barbarous Murder also contrasts a woman’s innocence with the evils of a member of the clergy. In this case, infanticide is represented through the lens of anti-Catholicism.71 The murderer is Robert Brown, a ‘Romish-Priest’ who uses ‘Diabolick Intreague’ to seduce a ‘very beautiful young Virgin’ and thereby satisfy his ‘insatiate lust’. When his argument to her that ‘Though marriage was forbid, enjoyment was not’ has no effect he resorts to ‘certain powerful Drugs to incence and stir up an impatient desire to venerial Copulation’ which he administers in a glass of wine, an action which suggests perversion of the Eucharist. He later knocks at her chamber door and when she ‘most obstinately denyed’ admittance, he tells her that ‘he had business of importance (he being her Confessor) and so with much intreaty and many protestations of civility, obtained entrance’. Then ‘partly by violence and partly by the operation of the Drug, with her consent he obtained his desire and blasted all her Virgin honours’. Realising a ‘growing shame’ would be the result, he tries to arrange a marriage for the woman, and when that fails he attempts unsuccessfully ‘to spoil conception or to cause an obortive [sic] delivery’. We are then told: She was delivered of a Son, unknown to any but the Priest, her self, and her Maid-servant; no sooner was the Infant born, but the aforesaid Brown (as he pretended to prevent discovery and save the Gentlewomans credit) did with a pennknife barbarously murder it, and for a more secret conveyance, cast it into a pond in the Orchard, with a mossy stone about its neck. (8)

When the crime is discovered the woman is found guilty of being an accessory and sentenced to death but ‘by the mediation of Friends, at much cost and trouble, obtained a reprieve’.72 The pamphlet abhors Brown’s papistry as much as his crime, and even his lechery is set up as a negative aspect of his religion. It shows a priest’s betrayal of trust when invited to take up residence with a family, and his abuse of his role as a confessor which allows 71 Anon, Barbarous Murder. 72 ibid., p. 8.

272 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

him access to the woman’s bedroom after she has retired. It emphasises the danger of sharing a home with a priest, and the habit of secrecy which this encouraged. These ideas of sin, downfall, and Brown’s corruption of innocence are emphasised by complex interleaving of the historical narrative and the language of Revelation. Combining the two very different modes of communication, results in a work which can read by those favouring sensational stories while also appealing to more learned readers. Whichever approach readers took, they would have been unable to escape the work’s anti-catholic polemic. In the language used to describe the woman’s action when she is offered wine ‘which the young woman drank of’ there is a reflection of the prelapsarian innocence of Eve: ‘she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat’ (Genesis, 3.6). This oblique reference suggests the priest as the snake, the precipitator of man’s fall. It also implies the woman’s imminent downfall and her experience of God’s curse in childbirth: ‘I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children’ (Genesis, 3.16). Of the priest, however, the author writes: So cruel and inhumaine are all those who bear the mark of the Beast in their foreheads, and worship the Scarlet whore who is made drunk with the blood of the Saints.73

This passage is steeped in the apocalyptic language of Revelation, beginning with the mark on those who worship the Antichrist and will receive God’s wrath. It also suggests St. John’s vision in which angels pour vials upon the sea which ‘became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea’. Brown’s defiling of water by throwing the newborn’s body into a pond after cutting its throat is an echo of this image.74 Further deprecation of his Catholicism is made by the reference to the Whore of Babylon who, in Revelation, appears ‘arrayed in purple and scarlet’ and who holds a cup ‘full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication’. This recalls the glass of drugged wine which Brown gave the woman in order to rape her.75 In Tyndale’s The Practyse of prelates, the whore stands for the Pope: ‘now if that great baude the whore of babylon were destroied, then wold the bordel and stues of our prelates shortly perish’.76 This connection is further developed in 73 ibid. 74 Revelation, 16.3–4. 75 ibid. 17.5–6 76 Tyndale, The Practyse of Prelates, p. 2Cv.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

273

the Geneva Bible: ‘This woman is the Anti-christ, that is, the Pope with the whole bodie of his filthie creatures’. By the date of the pamphlet the whore’s scarlet may also have become associated with the red of cardinals’ robes.77 Infanticide is part of the vision of the future which is described in Revelation. Writing of Jezebel, the Bible states: ‘And I will kill her children with death’ (Rev. 2.23) and, later, of the woman clothed with the sun: ‘And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it is born’ (Rev.12.4). Nancy Grubb explains: There are good women in Revelation and there are wicked ones, serving as opponents to and allies of the beasts. The woman clothed with the sun makes her first appearance at the same point […] as the great red dragon, and their immediate conflict symbolizes the battle between good and evil. The woman (identified by many commentators as a symbol of Israel or Jerusalem) is preparing to give birth; the dragon stands before her, ready to devour the newborn baby (symbol of Christ and the church). As soon as her child is born, he is whisked away up to the safety of God’s throne.78

Death at the moment of birth is the fate of infants fathered by the men of the church discussed above. Mr. Barker, Robert Foulkes, and Robert Brown can all be seen as the ‘red dragon’ who waits to ‘devour’ the newborn, though whether readers believed these infants were indeed ‘whisked away up to the safety of God’s throne’ would have depended on their beliefs about infant baptism and salvation. This was a question which troubled Robert Foulkes: It is indeed, a great Aggravation of my Sin against that poor Infant; […] For by that barbarous Act upon its Body, I have done what in me lay to Murther its Soul, by depriving it of the ordinary means which God had ordained for its Salvation, The Sacrament of Baptism […] I never once so much as considered this; so that the poor innocent and harmless Babe, is only beholding to the Mercy of its Heavenly, and not at all to that of its Earthly Parent for the Happiness I hope it now enjoys.79

Foulkes’ most fundamental beliefs and all the teachings of his profession have been overridden by the very emotion which unwed mothers were believed to experience: shame. 77 de Bèze, Geneva Bible, pp. Ch.xvii, v.4, note f. 78 Grubb, Revelations, p. 55. The reference is to Revelation (12.3–4). 79 Foulkes, Alarme, p. 21.

274 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

While it remains true that most infanticide was committed by women, it is clear that the role of men was also significant. Sussex Coroners’ reports describe men as killers or having a direct role in infant deaths. Infants were at risk from men before and immediately after birth, and during their early years. Literature supplies the detail missing in the archives. These accounts show that the fear of poverty and sexual shame could drive men to commit infanticide, and alcohol, never mentioned in female cases, might also contribute to the crime. Literary and archival accounts indicate that two factors distinguish the killings by men from those by women. Firstly, we have seen that literature depicts the men’s crimes as more calculated; they ensure lack of witnesses (John Rowse), take women on doomed walks (William Barwick), or rent London accommodation (Robert Foulkes), all suggesting a greater ability to construct events surrounding the crime, to create false narratives around their actions, and to control money. Secondly, both literature and archives describe men’s killings as involving extreme violence – stabbing, beating, crushing (see Appendix 7). Whereas infanticides committed by women often involve the ‘deadly embrace’ of smothering or strangling, those by men suggest overwhelming strength.80 Sussex archives show that with women there is the sense of liminality through the return to water (Appendix 5), or of abjection and disposal (Appendix 4). With men the dominating sense is of bloodshed and destruction.

Infant murder and monarchy As well as infants and young children who are killed by men because of money, marital disharmony, shame, or drunkenness, there are others who are killed for dynastic reasons. The perpetrators include Herod, western society’s most infamous infant killer, who ordered the slaughter of male infants in Bethlehem after learning of the prophesy that out of that town ‘shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel’ (Matthew, 2.6). The biblical narrative was kept alive in people’s imaginations by medieval wall paintings and the Corpus Christi cycles of plays which were performed throughout England, as discussed in Chapter 2. Both forms of representation were forbidden after the Reformation. Some of Shakespeare’s plays concerning power-hungry monarchs – Richard III, King John and Macbeth – include the murder of infants of various 80 Walker, Crime, Gender, p. 156.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

275

unspecified ages. Just as in the Corpus Christi plays, we see the order being given to carry out the killing. In Richard III, we see the king, who has distinctly Herodian characteristics, order Tyrrell to kill the children who have since become known as ‘the princes in the Tower’.81 Unlike other works depicting men as infant killers, here we are shown the emotional impact on the killer, who calls his action a ‘tyrannous and bloody deed’ and ‘The most arch-act of piteous massacre’ (IV.iv.10). Similarly, in King John, it is clear who orders Hubert to kill Prince Arthur, but Shakespeare focuses on his inability to commit the act: ‘I must be brief lest resolution drop / Out at my eyes in tender womanish tears’ (IV.i.35). Refusal to murder a child is also seen in the Corpus Christi play The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, when a soldier questions Herod’s order: ‘To see soo many yong chylder dy ys schame / Therefore consell ther-to gettis thou non of me’. In this instance, the threat of the gallows changes the soldier’s thinking.82 In King John, as in Richard III, Shakespeare describes the people’s reaction to infant death. In response to Arthur’s accidental on-stage death, we are told: Young Arthur’s death is common in their mouths, And when they talk of him they shake their heads And whisper one another in the ear. (IV.ii.188)

Macbeth, the latest of these works, is Shakespeare’s most explicit representation of child murder and closest to the representation of the massacre of the innocents in the Coventry play, which Shakespeare may have seen.83 As Sarah Wintle and René Weis note ‘the play continually comes back to its concern with children and babies’.84 These are frequently ‘children old enough to take part in the action’,85 though they appear to be within the early modern definition of ‘infant’, as discussed in Chapter 1. The play is also imbued with the violence of infant death, as in the witches’ ‘finger of birth-strangled babe, / Ditch delivered by a drab’ (IV.i.30). Their prophecies, represented by a ‘bloody child’ and a ‘bloody arm’, suggest the dismemberment of the witches’ brew. Lady Macbeth’s image of the destruction of a breastfed child (discussed in the previous chapter) again emphasises the ease of terminating an infant’s life. Like Herod, Macbeth orders the children’s deaths because 81 The sons of Edward IV, Edward V, aged 12, and Richard Duke of York, aged 9. The reasons for their disappearance remain unknown and the mystery continues to inspire fictional accounts. 82 Craig, ed. Coventry Plays, p. 795. 83 Greenblatt, Will in the World, p. 241. 84 Wintle and Weis, ‘Macbeth’, p. 129. 85 ibid., p. 130.

276 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

they endanger his kingship, and we see them murdered in a violent scene in which the mother defends her children, as in the mystery plays. Again, Shakespeare shows the male grief at the death of a child: Macduff: All my pretty ones? Did you say all? – O hell-kite! – All? What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam At one fell swoop? (IV.iii.216)

Representations of infanticide in Shakespeare are juxtaposed with the effects of the infant deaths: the conscience provoked by the princes’ deaths, the nation’s mourning at Arthur’s death, and Macduff’s mourning of his children. He contrasts rampaging monarchical power with children’s precocious wisdom. Such infants fill despots with fear, as expressed in Richard III’s ‘Foes to my rest and my sweet sleep’s disturbers’ (IV.ii.72), and King John’s ‘a very serpent in my way’ (III.iii.61), in a manner similar to Herod’s fear of the infant Christ. In drama, children perceived to be dynastic obstacles are also used as weapons. In The Duchess of Malfi a complex combination of motives stimulates Ferdinand’s actions. In addition to his ‘incestuous passion for her’,86 he suspects the children’s bastardy, and disdains Antonio’s status: ‘Shall our blood / The royal blood of Aragon and Castile, / Be thus attainted? (II.v.22); ‘A slave, that only smelled of ink and counters’ (III.ii.71). He also realises his own greed is thwarted: ‘I had a hope […] to have gained / An infinite mass of treasure’ (IV.ii.282). However, when he reveals the apparently dead bodies of the Duchess’s children: ‘To bring her to despair’ (IV.i.117) they have become a weapon against her. In The Winter’s Tale, Leontes’ denial of the baby Perdita uses the child as a weapon against Hermione. When Paulina lays the infant down, she is using it as a weapon against Leontes – the equivalent to throwing down of gages in chivalric challenge. Leontes transfers the challenge to Antigonus – ‘Take up the bastard / Take’t up, I say’ – commencing a verbal duel between the two men (III.ii.74). More complex use of the infant as a weapon is in 2 Henry VI: Like an offensive wife, That hath enrag’d him on, to offer strokes, As he is striking, holds his Infant up, And hangs resolv’d Correction in the Arme, That was uprear’d to execution. (IV.ii.210) 86 Webster, ‘Duchess of Malfi’, p. xix.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

277

The metaphor hangs between male and female aggression. The child is a shield and the lines draw on the idea of a crucifix or Bible, symbols of good, held up against an Antichrist. Yet, the wife is also using the infant as a weapon against her aggressor who would himself die if he killed the child. Shakespeare uses gruesome images of child carnage, juxtaposed with the mourning of women, to describe the horrors of conflict. In 2 Henry VI, when Young Clifford realises that he has killed his father in battle, he sees his enemies’ children as an appropriate sacrifice through which to exert revenge and punishment: Meet I an infant of the house of York Into as many gobbets will I cut it As wild Medea young Absyrtus did. (V.ii.56)

Mark Antony foresees such horrors resulting from Caesar’s assassination: ‘Mothers shall but smile when they behold / Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war’ (Julius Caesar III.i.270). Infant slaughter is part of Timon’s rancour toward mankind: ‘Spare not the babe […] Think it a bastard […] mince it sans remorse’ and do not be moved by ‘yells of mothers, maids, nor babes’ (Timon of Athens IV.iii.19). In Henry V, the king uses children and mothers’ grief to force the citizens of Harfleur to surrender: if they resist they must look to see: Your naked infants spitted upon pikes, Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen (III.iii.121).

These descriptions of infant slaughter spoken by men share the language of butchery: spitted, gobbets, mince, quarter’d. They are placed late in long speeches of building emotional intensity, with infant destruction toward the climax of mounting horrors. They dehumanise children, reducing them to sacrificial creatures, using them as a symbol of societies’ or families’ survival, of oppression, or social pollution. Yet, despite their brutal content, these lines also humanise the child. They assume parental affection not just in the world of the play, but in the audience. Without it, the shock of this imagery would be ineffective. Just as brutal slaughter and weeping mothers can be traced to medieval sources, so too can the visual and written representations of child butchery (see above). In Ludus Coventriae a soldier, returning to Herod, boasts:

278 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Upon my spere A gerle I bere, I dare well swere. Lett moderys howte!87

The infant body carried on a spear, with its elements of trophy, the spoils of the hunt, and the spiked heads of executed traitors, emphasises the violence of these murders. Like the idea of the dashed child, it is an enduring image.

More violent than liminal A lingering question is, are there aspects of liminality in these narratives about men and infanticide? To an extent, yes, in that accounts occasionally imply a liminal mental state when describing the men’s actions, suggesting that they may be physically of this world, but mentally not quite part of it, such as the archival account of the ‘lunatick’ Henry Pellyng who murdered his pregnant wife. Literary accounts suggest drunken rages, with men separated from logical action by alcohol. Beyond that, the effect of drawing male child-murderers out of the archival and academic shadows in which they seem to lurk reveals little that can be seen as liminal. Instead, focussing on men and infanticide reveals other points. In literature, we have seen that men of all social levels and occupations could be guilty of, or directly implicated in, the crime: butchers, coopers, clergy, those of the ‘better sort’ such as Rowse and Calverly, nobility and monarchs. Their motives vary as much as their status – it could be money, sexual shame, jealousy, or power, or the crime could be apparently motiveless. Accounts of men and infanticide describe their lies. Certainly, women must have lied too, but in street literature women are represented as accepting their guilt, whereas the accounts of infanticide by men draw attention to their denials. John Rowse tells his wife that the murdered children are with a neighbour; William Barwick tells neighbours that his wife is with a relative. The ‘Bloody Miller’ tells us that ‘my bloody fact I still denied’;88 Foulkes calls the infant’s mother his ‘Partner in the Guilt and Tryal, though not in the Condemnation’.89 87 Spector, ed. N-Town Play, p. 109. Howte: cry out, hoot. 88 Anon, Bloody Miller. 89 Foulkes, Alarme, p. 20.

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

279

However, the most noticeable difference between infanticide by men and women, is the way they murdered. Most, though not all, of the killings by women recorded in Sussex archives suggest water, spirituality, and ‘deadly embrace’. Killings and attempted killings by men are distinguished by extreme brutality and force, such as the archival account of William Spookes, who beat his six-year-old son to death. The account is more detailed and descriptive than most, which may suggest the horror of those recording the events. We are told that Spookes: bound his hands and feet, hung him up by the shins, struck him, giving him many wounds so that blood fell from his body to the ground, and then allowed him to fall to the ground. As he lay there, Spookes struck, punched and trampled on him, crushing his body.90

After the child’s death Spookes buried him in his barn, face down. Due to defects in the inquest, he was later pardoned. In street literature, older children are similarly violently killed. Strange and Lamentable News tells of a water seller whose twelve-year-old son died after he attacked him with a cudgel ‘cruelly and excessively’.91 The Cryes of the Dead describes a weaver who violently assaulted apprentices: ‘Spurning and kicking them, / as if dogs they had beene’.92 When he beats one boy ‘from top to toe, / With a coard full of knotts’ the boy dies of the wounds. The illustration shows an action which is similar to the Spookes case, and the description of Walter Calverly ‘holding up the bleeding childe at his armes length’.93 Many of the street literature accounts discussed above involve a knife, but there is no suggestion of them being intimate domestic objects. Instead they suggest masculine spheres – hunting, war, animal slaughter, and butchery. Though women did use knives, and men did drown infants, on the whole the crimes by men are bloody compared to those of women. As we have seen, this bloodiness can be traced to early Christian images of the Massacre of the Innocents and medieval Corpus Christi plays. These crimes are not liminal but, like the killings ordered by Herod, they are brutal and demonic. Authors emphasise this. Their accounts of killings by men are highly descriptive, concentrating on the details of the murders, rather than the killers. They encourage visualisation of violent, bloody and 90 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1485–1558, p. 37 #132. 91 Anon, Strange and Lamentable, p. 5. 92 ———, Cryes of the Dead; Griffiths, Youth and Authority, p. 313. 93 Anon, Two most unnaturall p. 13.

280 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

manic actions, and are thus highly emotive. Both Macbeth’s instruction to commission the deaths (IV.i.150) and the murderous act, (IV.ii.80) are quick and textually sparse. Like Herod, Macbeth needs infants killed for dynastic reasons and, like his biblical predecessor, he delegates the work. As in the Mystery plays, the killings are on-stage and brutal and followed by mourning. Macbeth’s commissioning of the deaths reflects the pattern we have seen in street literature which repeatedly demonstrates male ability to organise, structure and manipulate events in a manner which appears to separate them from the killings.

Bibliography Primary sources Anon, The Bloody Butcher (1667?) (ESTC R172784; EBBA 31663; Euing 20). ———, The Bloody Miller (1684) (ESTC R234346; EBBA 20776; Pepys 2.156). ———, Bloody News from Clerkenwel[l] (1623–1661) (ESTC R10976). ———, The Cryes of the Dead (1620) (ESTC S126168; EBBA 20048; Pepys 1.116–117). ———, A Full and True Relation (1690) (ESTC Wing F2322). ———, A Sad and True relation (1686) (ESTC R229674). ———, Strange and Lamentable News from Dullidg-Wells (1678) (ESTC R32680; Wing 1537:17). ———, The strange and Wonderful Relation of a Barbarous Murder (1679) (ESTC R223990; Wing 5874A). ———, Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers (1591) (ESTC S2242). ———, The true narrative (1680) (ESTC Wing T2790). ———, Two most unnaturall and bloodie Murthers (1605) (ESTC 120705). Brewer, Thomas, The Bloudy Mother (1609) (ESTC S124650). Cockburn, J.S., ed. Calendar of Assize Records: Sussex Indictments: Elizabeth I. London: HMSO, 1975. Craig, Hardin, ed. Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays. London: Early English Text Society, 1902. Crowch, John, The Araignment for Hypocrisie or a Looking-Glasse for Murderers (1652) (ESTC Wing C52). de Bèze, Théodore, The Geneva Bible (1576). Ford, John, ‘’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’, In ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Other Plays, edited by Marion Lomax, pp. 167–239. Oxford: OUP, 1995. Foulkes, Robert, An alarme for sinners (1679) (ESTC R14395).

Not the Usual Suspec ts: Men

281

Hunnisett, R.F., ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1485–1558. Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1985. ———, ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1558–1603. Kew: PRO Publications, 1996. ———, ed. Sussex Coroners’ Inquests 1603–1688. Kew: PRO Publications, 1998. Middleton, Thomas, ‘The Yorkshire Tragedy’, In William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, pp. 472–502. London: Palgrave, 2013. Spector, Stephen, ed. The N-Town Play. Oxford: OUP, 1991. Taylor, John, The Unnatural Father (1621) (ESTC 23808a). Tyndale, William, The Practyse of Prelates, 1548. Webster, John, ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, In The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays, edited by René Weis, pp. 104–200. Oxford: OUP, 1996.

Secondary sources Adams, Henry Hitch, English Domestic or Homiletic Tragedy 1575 to 1642. New York: Benjamin Bloom, 1971. Baird, Kathleen Marion, ‘Domestic Abuse, violence and mental health’, In Mental Health in Pregnancy and Childbirth, edited by Sally Price, pp. 167–188. Philadelphia: Elsevier, 2007. Capp, Bernard, ‘The Double Standard Revisited: Plebeian Women and Male Sexual Reputation in Early Modern England’, Past & Present, no. 162 (1999), pp. 70–100. Dolan, Frances E., Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550–1700. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1994. Greenblatt, Stephen, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare London: Jonathan Cape, 2004. Griffiths, Paul, Youth and Authority: Formative Experiences in England 1560–1640. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. Grubb, Nancy, Revelations: Art of the Apocalypse. London: Abbeville, 1997. Howard, Jean E., Theater of a City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Jones, Karen, ‘Gender and Petty Crime in Late Medieval England: The Local Courts in Kent’, Law and History Review 26, no. 2 (2008), pp. 435–436. Kilday, Anne-Marie, A History of Infanticide in Britain, c. 1600 to the Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. Knafla, Louis A., ‘‘John at Love Killed Her’: The Assizes and Criminal Law in Early Modern England’, University of Toronto Law Journal 35, no. 3 (1985), pp. 305–320. Paster, Gail Kern, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, 1993.

282 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Pettitt, Thomas, ‘Journalism vs. Tradition in the English Ballads of the Murdered Sweetheart’, In Ballads and Broadsides in Britain 1500–1800, edited by Patricia Fumerton and Anita Guerrini, pp. 74–89. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Riddle, John M., Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Walker, Garthine, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. Wintle, Sarah, and Weis, René, ‘Macbeth and the Barren Sceptre’, Essays in Criticism XLI (1991), pp. 128–146.

On-line sources ‘A true and perfect Relation Of the Tryal and Condemnation, Execution and last Speech of that unfortunate Gentleman Mr. Robert Foulks (1679)’. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ [Accessed 1 July 2014].

9

Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950 Abstract Despite changes to laws on infanticide, and changing attitudes toward children, similar patterns of the crime can be seen in the period 1700 to 1950 to those of preceding centuries. These patterns included uncertainties about the border between life and death, a focus on the mental state of women, and an association between women, infant death and water. In addition, archives and literary sources show that men often killed infants during this period. Infanticide continued to attract the interest of creative writers including Wordsworth, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Dickens, as well as lesser-known dramatists who portrayed maternal neglect and abject poverty as among the underlying reasons for the crime. Keywords: Changes in infanticide law; Literary accounts of infant murder; Foundlings

Some say, if to the pond you go, And fix on it a steady view, The shadow of a babe you trace, A baby and a baby’s face, And that it looks at you.1

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been the subject of many dedicated investigations into infanticide, such as the historical studies by Mark Jackson, Lionel Rose and Anne-Marie Kilday, and Josephine McDonagh’s work on the motifs of child murder in literature.2 The purpose of this short interlude is not to reiterate their discussions, but briefly to highlight some of the principal social changes which took place during 1 Wordsworth, ‘The Thorn’, p. 157. 2 Jackson, New-born child; ———, ed. Infanticide; McDonagh, Child Murder; Rose, Massacre; Kilday, Infanticide.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch09

284 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

this period and to demonstrate that, during the 250 years bringing us to the mid-twentieth century, literature continued to associate infanticide with the liminal. The abundance of archival material for this period demonstrates that the crime remained complex and its circumstances individual. It also reveals a continuation of the motives recurring throughout this study. Poverty, fear, shame, abandonment, and reputation remain constants against a background of changing laws, dramatic industrial development, and new perceptions of children and childhood.3 After the 1803 repeal of the 1624 Infanticide Act women were assumed innocent unless proven otherwise, with evidence required that the child was fully born and existing independently of the mother when it died. 4 Dana Y. Rabin writes that eighteenth century juries became reluctant to find defendants guilty and that, rather than the woman’s body being an essential part of the evidence in infanticide cases, increasing attention was paid to her mental state.5 She suggests that this was part of the ‘interest in feelings and emotions characteristic of the era of sensibility’.6 However, a cruel amendment to the Poor Law in 1834 made it more difficult for an unmarried woman to claim support from the child’s father, and was believed to have led to infanticide.7 Ann R. Higginbotham quotes the man at the centre of Frances Trollope’s 1843 novel Jessie Phillips: ‘It is just one of my little bits of good luck that this blessed law should be passed precisely when it was likely to be most beneficial to me’.8 The comment echoes Orlando, the would-be seducer in Brome’s The Jovial Crew, discussed in Chapter 5: ‘There’s no commuting with them; or keeping of Children for them’.9

The liminal mother We saw in Chapter 3 that the complex emotions surrounding pregnancy suggest a liminal mental state and women’s detachment from their actions. Awareness of, and sympathy for this increased with time, and insanity and 3 Jackson, ‘Trial of Harriet Vooght’, pp. 1–17. 4 Further changes to the law in 1922 and 1938 made infanticide a form of manslaughter. Rose, Massacre, p. 10. 5 Rabin, ‘Bodies’. 6 ibid., p. 96. 7 Jackson, ‘Trial of Harriet Vooght’; Higginbotham, ‘“Sin of the Age”’, p. 325; Rose, Massacre. 8 Higginbotham, ‘“Sin of the Age”’, p. 322. 9 Brome, Jovial Crew, p. III.1.258.

Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950

285

similar pleas were frequently presented as defence.10 Recognition of the effect of appalling social conditions – people existing on the social margins – also invited compassion and there were fewer hangings.11 Christine L. Krueger suggests that juries’ and public understanding may also have been influenced by representations in literature.12 This included the fraught relationship which can exist between a mother and her unborn child. Wordsworth’s Gothic poem ‘The Thorn’ (1798) describes Martha Ray wandering in the hills before she murders her infant, and her derangement: Sad case for such a brain to hold Communion with a stirring child! Sad case, as you may think, for one Who had a brain so wild!13

Krueger writes that works such as ‘The Thorn’, Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian (1818) and George Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859) constructed infanticide as pastoral,14 an association which suggests its existence beyond the urban – a marginal place where different social practices persist. Yet in the urban environment a different kind of separation can exist, as suggested by the baby tumbling from its mother’s arms in Hogarth’s Gin Lane. The image suggests her alcohol-induced liminal state and provides another representation of the deadly maternal breast.

The liminal child While the 1803 Act went some way toward defining the border between life and death, people appear to have continued to regard infants as liminal. Despite Rousseau’s revering of the natural child (Emile, 1762) and Philippe Ariès’ suggestion in Centuries of Childhood (1962) that childhood was discovered during the eighteenth century, it has been noted that at this time ‘the greatest

10 Rabin, ‘Bodies’; Jackson, ‘Trial of Harriet Vooght’; Marland, ‘Getting away’. 11 Arnot, ‘Murder of Thomas Sandles’, ibid.; Kilday, Infanticide, p. 149. 12 Krueger, ‘Literary Defenses’. 13 Wordsworth, ‘The Thorn’, p. 157. 14 Krueger, ‘Literary Defenses’. Krueger states that infanticide was not a subject of bourgeois literature in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895). However, Margaret Harkness’ A Manchester Shirtmaker describes a widow’s killing of her sickly daughter and is discussed in Hancock, ‘It was bone’.

286 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

increase in the exposing of children occurred’.15 Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital was established in 1741 due to the frequency of infant abandonment and ‘the shocking spectacles he [Coram] had seen of innocent Children who had been murdered and thrown upon Dunghills’.16 The description suggests the disposal of body waste described by Douglas, discussed in Chapter 3, and echoes the abjection of Mary Philmore who ‘sate her self down upon a Dunghill’ after murdering her infant.17 The offhand attitude to newborns is criticised by Daniel Defoe in Moll Flanders (1722). Moll recognises that paying to have a child taken away could mean ‘having it murder’d, or starv’d by Neglect and Ill-usage’.18 She describes it as a ‘contriv’d Method for Murther’ calling it ‘killing […] Children with safety’. The practice was common in the nineteenth century and the subject of successive scandals,19 fanned by such cases as that of Amelia Elizabeth Dyer, a baby farmer who strangled infants and threw their bodies in the Thames instead of arranging adoption. It is thought that she may have killed as many as 400 babies between 1880 and 1896 and, like the horror crimes of the early modern period, she captured the public imagination and inspired a contemporary ballad, The Ogress of Reading.20 Disregard for young life contributes to the impression that children were less than fully of this world. It is further borne out by child exploitation in an increasingly industrialised society, a plight taken up by Charles Dickens and captured earlier in William’s Blake’s ‘The Chimney-Sweeper’ (1789).21 The boy occupies a liminal world of darkness and invisibility, and sings: Because I was happy upon the heath, And smiled among the winter’s snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe.

Writing of the 1830s, Josephine McDonagh mentions newspapers’ ‘seemingly incessant accounts of infant violation, as child casualties of industrial accidents jockey for space with equally pathetic victims of domestic mishaps […] A strong sense emerges that a generalised threat to infant life lies abroad’.22 15 Boswell, Kindness, p. 137. 16 Foundling Hospital, An Account, p. A2. 17 Anon, Distressed Mother. 18 Defoe, Moll Flanders, p. 173. 19 Jackson, ed. Infanticide, p. 11; Rose, Massacre, pp. 93, 108, 159. 20 Proceedings, ‘Amelia Elizabeth Dyer’; Rose, Massacre, p. 161. 21 Blake, Songs, p. 30. 22 McDonagh, Child Murder, p. 97; Kilday, Infanticide, p. 149.

Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950

287

Liminal places: water Writers continued to represent mothers as drawn to water places to dispose of infant bodies. The Thorn describes the image of a dead child appearing in a small pond near what appears to be a small burial mound while in the narrative ballad The Queen’s Marie, concerning Marie Hamilton, she places her newborn in or on water: O she has rowd it in her apron, And set it on the sea: ‘Gae sink ye, or swim ye, bonny babe, Ye’se get nae mair o’ me’23

In Dickens’ The Chimes (1844), Tobias Beck is horrified by a newspaper account of a woman who attempted to drown herself and her infant, in which only the infant dies. He dreams that his daughter’s life follows a downward path similar to that of this tragic figure so that she is also driven to this desperate action. ‘She wrapped the baby warm, […] To the rolling River, swift and dim […] To the River! To that portal of Eternity, her desperate footsteps tended’.24 Elsewhere, references to infants’ watery deaths are briefly mentioned. Describing Casterbridge, Hardy writes of ‘the pool, wherein nameless infants had been used to disappear’.25 In contrast to works such as Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859) and Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895), in which the authors directly confront infant death, in Casterbridge Hardy suggests that infanticide can be reduced to an aspect of the landscape and part of the community’s collective memory. Water as a place to dispose of infant corpses was not merely a literary contrivance. The Chimes calls on the account of Mary Furley who was sentenced to death in 1844 after her infant died during her attempted suicide. Writing of an ‘apparent epidemic of child murder’, McDonagh quotes an 1866 account of the Reverend Henry Humble which states: ‘metropolitan canal boats are impeded, as they are tracked along, by the number of drowned infants with which they come in contact’.26 Even allowing for the Reverend’s exaggeration, he is marking an association between infants and water. 23 Anon, ‘Queen’s Marie’. 24 Dickens, ‘The Chimes’, p. 157. 25 Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge, p. 131. 26 McDonagh, Child Murder, p. 123.

288 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Not the usual suspects As in the early modern period, infanticide was also committed by married and widowed women, a subject dealt with in novels such as Lucy Clifford’s Mrs Keith’s Crime (1885) and Margaret Harkness’s A Manchester Shirtmaker (1890) which concern widows who kill their children to prevent their suffering, thus supporting the theory that ‘women are always loving mothers, even during murder’.27 By contrast, in George Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife (1885), the child dies due to maternal neglect, a situation used to malign the theatrical profession.28 In Elizabeth Robins’ play Alan’s Wife, a recently widowed woman kills her disabled child and then retreats into silence, an action which forces the audience to consider what her motives might have been. The play thwarted the conventions of infanticide plays by showing the murder on stage, and by not offering a last-minute reprieve in which the audience learns that the mother has been wrongly accused, or that the child is still alive.29 Literature and archives show men were also guilty of infanticide, as in the fictional case of Jessie Phillips whose infant was killed by her lover. Melissa Valiska Gregory’s study of nineteenth-century newspaper accounts reveals male killers were described as working-class fathers who were unable to control their violence or sustain their families.30 But as she points out, none of the Victorian infanticides by men inspired literary works. This brief overview shows that infanticide and its representation maintained a fairly constant pattern between 1700 and the early twentieth century, with recurring themes of liminal mothers and infants, murderous nurses, and a variety of perpetrators. Authors wrote about infanticide in various ways. McDonagh states that their approaches included the sentimental, morbid, dispassionate and parodic, and points out that some authors, such as Jonathan Swift, found fun in this ‘grim topic’.31 The comedy of infant death was not new. A 1680 ballad concerning ‘The Drownding of three Children on the Thames’ warns ‘You’l say it is no laughing matter, / To see poor Children Drowned’.32 It describes the frozen river and:

27 Porter and Gavin, ‘Infanticide’, p. 106. The novels are discussed in Hancock, ‘It was bone’. 28 Miller, ‘Child-Killers’. 29 For a discussion of this and other dramas of the period involving infanticide see ShepherdBarr, Theatre and Evolution. 30 Gregory, ‘“Most Revealing Murder”’. 31 McDonagh, Child Murder, p. 13. 32 Anon, lamentation of a bad Market.

Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950

289

Three children sliding thereabouts, upon a place too thin, That so at last it did fall out, that they did all fall in.

Throughout the period covered by this Interlude people have been entertained by Mr. Punch, whose first recorded London appearance was in 1662.33 These puppet shows have much in common with early modern ballad performances. George Speaight writes that they were ‘presented in open air, before a shifting, casual audience, with all the noises of the street in competition’. He adds: ‘The show must be lively in action […] no story […] just a bit of knock-about fun’.34 The loose plot is believed to have developed in response to glove puppets’ limited capacity for manipulation (they can hold small objects and hit things) and audience response, so that it was ‘moulded by the laughter of street urchins’.35 Though it is uncertain when Mr. Punch’s act of infanticide was first included, Speaight suggests it may have been when he accidentally dropped the baby and got a big laugh.36 Why laughter? Speaight suggests that ‘This atrocious act brings to the surface the momentary emotions of every parent of a howling baby!’37 Today, the baby lives and Mr. Punch is not hanged, reflecting changes in the English penal system,38 but Mr. Punch’s sociopathic violence still evokes laughter. People were, and are, also entertained by the Grimms’ Fairy Tales (first English edition 1823). These stories of ‘gore and sexuality’ include child abandonment and infanticide, crimes whose frequency, Maria Tatar observes, moves their portrayal from the sensational to the realistic.39 But realism needs to be kept in check. Stephen Evans suggests that ‘Children – some children – do seem to like the darkness of horror but, perhaps, not if it becomes too realistic’. 40 The effect of the ability to visualise appears to be important as readers can 33 An entry in Samuel Pepys’ Diary for 9 May 1662 regarding a visit to Covent Garden states: ‘Thence to see an Italian puppet play that is within the rayles there, which is very pretty, the best that ever I saw’. Pepys, The Diary, p. 219. 34 Speaight, History, p. 182. 35 ibid. 36 Speaight states that Baby was known to exist in the 18th century, ibid. 37 Speaight, History, pp. 220, 193. Acknowledgement of this emotion continues in Mansbach and Cortes, Go the F**k. 38 Comment made during an informal discussion at Covent Garden May Fayre and Puppet Festival, 3 May 2015. This annual event celebrates Pepys’ diary entry, which is believed to record London’s first Punch and Judy performance. 39 Evans, ‘Grimm’s Tales’; Tatar, The Hard Facts. 40 Evans, ‘Grimm’s Tales’.

290 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

experience frightening events from a safe place with limitations imposed by their own imaginations. Perhaps that is why adults can find them more ‘scary’ than do children. Like Punch and Judy, the Grimms’ Fairy Tales continue to be retold in many media. From 1897, people could enjoy the Grand Guignol theatre in Paris, which specialized in naturalistic horror shows. Several dealt with infant deaths due to altruistic murder, insanity, twists of fate, and abandonment,41 such as The Woman who was Acquitted, which concerns a governess who had strangled three children but is never punished.42 The theatre closed in 1962, its final director, Charles Nonon, writing ‘We could never equal Buchenwald. Before the war, everyone felt that what was happening on stage was impossible. Now we know that these things, and worse, are really possible’.43 Yet interest in performed horror did not wane. On the contrary, writing about revenge tragedy, Helen Hackett points out that twentieth-century atrocities may explain a new interest in the violent and the shocking, resulting in a recent revival of Jacobean tragedy.44 Wendy Griswold suggests that the genre appealed to the ‘dogged optimism of [the] era’, because ultimately justice is served, and while governors might be corrupt, there were high hopes for their institutional successors.45 A renewal of interest in Jacobean tragedies also suggests a need to comprehend the events and mental states which lead to such acts, including our abiding need to understand infanticide which, as we shall see in the Epilogue to this study, continues to be a subject of new theatrical works.

Bibliography Primary sources Anon, The Distressed Mother or Sorrowful Wife in Tears (1690) (ESTC R226661). ———, The Lamentation of a bad Market (1674–1679) (ESTC R227236; EBBA 20764; Pepys 2.146). ———, ‘The Queen’s Marie (disputed 16th-18th century)’, In The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1918, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, p. 440. Oxford: OUP, 1957. 41 Gordon, Grand Guignol, pp. 57, 97. 42 ibid., p. 105. 43 ‘Outdone by Reality’. 44 Hackett, Short History, p. 196. 45 Griswold, Renaissance Revivals, p. 164.

Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950

291

Blake, William, Songs of Innocence and Experience. Edited by Richard Wilmott. Oxford: OUP, 1990. Brome, Richard, A Jovial Crew (1641). Edited by Ann Haaker. Nebraska: Edward Arnold, 1968. Defoe, Daniel, Moll Flanders. Edited by G.A. Starr. Oxford: OUP, 1972. Dickens, Charles, ‘The Chimes’, In A Christmas Carol and Other Stories, edited by G.K. Chesterton, pp. 85–162. London: Dent, 1969. Foundling Hospital, Account of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children, 1749. Hardy, Thomas, The Mayor of Casterbridge. Edited by Dale Kramer. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Pepys, Samuel, The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Edited by Henry B. Wheatley. London: G. Bell, 1923. Wordsworth, William, ‘The Thorn’, In Wordsworth: Poetical Works, edited by Thomas Hutchinson, p. 157. Oxford: OUP, 1969.

Secondary sources Arnot, Margaret L., ‘The murder of Thomas Sandles: meanings of a mid-nineteenthcentury infanticide’, In Infanticide: historical perspectives on child murder and concealment, 1550–2000, edited by Mark Jackson, pp. 149–167. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Boswell, James, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. Chicago: Chicago University, 1998. Gordon, Mel, The Grand Guignol: Theatre of Fear and Terror. New York: Amok, 1988. Gregory, Melissa Valiska, ‘‘Most Revealing Murder by a Father’: The Violent Rhetoric of Paternal Child-Murder in The Times (London) 1826–1849’, In Writing British Infanticide: Child-Murder, Gender, and Print 1722–1859, edited by Jennifer Thorn, pp. 70–90. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003. Griswold, Wendy, Renaissance Revivals: City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy in the London Theatre, 1576-1980. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986. Hackett, Helen, A Short History of English Renaissance Drama. London: Tauris, 2013. Hancock, Catherine R., ‘‘It was bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh, and she had killed it’.: Three versions of destructive maternity in Victorian Fiction’, Literature Intepretation Theory 15:3 (2010), pp. 299–320. Higginbotham, Ann R., ‘‘Sin of the Age’: Infanticide and Illegitimacy in Victorian London’, Victorian Studies 32, no. 3 (1989), pp. 319–337.

292 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Jackson, Mark, ed. Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550–2000. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. ———, New-born child murder: women, illegitimacy and the Courts in 18th-century England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996. ———, ‘The trial of Harriet Vooght: continuity and change in the history of infanticide’, In Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment: 1550–2000, edited by Mark Jackson, pp. 1–17. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Kilday, Anne-Marie, A History of Infanticide in Britain, c. 1600 to the Present. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013. Krueger, Christine L., ‘Literary Defenses and Medical Prosecutions: Representing Infanticide in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Victorian Studies 40, no. 2 (1997), pp. 271–294. Mansbach, Adam, and Cortes, Ricardo, Go the F**k to Sleep. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2011. Marland, Hilary, ‘Getting away with murder? Puerperal insanity, infanticide and the defence plea’, In Infanticide: historical perspectives on child murder and concealment, 1550–2000, edited by Mark Jackson, pp. 168–192. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. McDonagh, Josephine, Child Murder in British Culture 1720–1900. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. Miller, Renata Kobetts, ‘Child-Killers and the Competition between Late Victorian Theater and the Novel’, Modern Language Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2005), pp. 197–226. Porter, Theresa, and Gavin, Helen, ‘Infanticide and Neonaticide: A Review of 40 Years of Research Literature on Incidence and Causes’, Trauma, Violence and Abuse 11, no. 3 (2010), pp. 99–112. Rabin, Dana, ‘Bodies of evidence, states of mind: infanticide, emotion and sensibility in eighteenth-century England’, In Infanticide: historical perspectives on child murder and concealment, 1550–2000, edited by Mark Jackson, pp. 95–110. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002. Rose, Lionel, The Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Britain 1800–1939. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. Shepherd-Barr, Kirsten E., Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett. New York: Colombia University Press, 2015. Speaight, George, The History of the English Puppet Theatre. London: Robert Hale, 1990. Tatar, Maria, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Interlude: Infanticide 1700–1950

293

On-line sources ‘Outdone by Reality’. Grandguignol.com, http://www.grandguignol.com/time1962. htm [Accessed 27 May 2018]. Evans, Stephen. ‘Are Grimm’s Fairy Tales too twisted for children?’, BBC Worldwide, http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20130801–too-grimm-for-children [Accessed 30 November 2013]. Proceedings. ‘Amelia Elizabeth Dyer, Killing > murder, 18th May 1896’., Old Bailey Proceedings Online, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse. jsp?div=t18960518–451 [Accessed 21 July 2014].

10 Epilogue: Echoes of the Past Abstract Despite social changes resulting in unwed pregnancy no longer being shameful, and a welfare system designed to protect people from the worst effects of poverty, infanticide continued to be committed in 20th century England and on into the 21st century. Killings may be carried out by single women, or couples working together, and often involve substance abuse, though post-partum confusion is also sometimes an apsect of these killings. Married women and men also murder their children, with revenge and punishment is often cited as a motive. Creative writers still include infanticide in their works, drawing on real-life cases or using fictional examples. This on-going interest in the subject appears to be part of a social need to understand violent infant death and to negotiate our feelings toward this complex crime and its perpetrators. Keywords: Recent infanticide cases; Contemporary literary representations; Modern Medeas; Reasons for interest in infanticide

[Suddenly and violently flinging the doll to the ground.] I’ll bash its brains out. I’ll kill it. I don’t want his baby […] I don’t want to be a mother.1

Introduction A 26–year old, unmarried woman became pregnant but found other reasons for her weight gain and was confused and shocked when she went into labour. She gave birth alone at night, without calling for help from her parents with whom she lived, and when the baby seemed to have been born dead, she wrapped it in the things she had been wearing and took it to a nearby river where, she later said, she placed it on the water and watched it floating 1

Shelagh Delaney, A Taste of Honey (1958) (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), p.75.

Billingham, J., Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019. doi: 10.5117/9789462986794/ch10

296 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

away. These events took place near Stratford-upon-Avon in 2006, though their resemblance to what we know of early modern cases is self-evident.2 During this research it seemed that accounts of recent infanticide, newspaper articles debating the point at which life begins, and descriptions of brutal child cruelty, appeared almost daily. It became impossible to ignore the extent to which the subjects I was investigating were being echoed in the present by documented cases. It also became clear that these topics continue to inspire today’s creative writers and artists. Playwright Mark Ravenhill describes James Bulger’s murder in 1993 as a ‘tear in the fabric’,3 a phrase which reverberates at many levels. It contains associations with the tearing of the temple curtain at the moment of Christ’s death (Matthew 27.51). It also suggests the rending of garments, a traditional symbol of grief and mourning, the ability to glimpse something hitherto unseen, and weeping. Ravenhill believes that this crime was the impetus for him to take up writing, and the fact that many important writers emerged at this time, he suggests, indicates the profound emotional and intellectual impact of the crime. 4 More recently, other writers whose works are discussed below have used documented cases of infanticide in their work,5 while others’ work involves fictional deaths. I therefore wish to conclude by showing how the themes of this study are still relevant, and examining possible reasons for their endurance. There are also, of course, differences. In the dominant culture single motherhood is no longer shameful and materially hard to survive. Knives are now rarely used, deaths being more likely to be what Walker describes as ‘deadly embrace’, or as the result of physical abuse.6 Frequently the child’s death comes at the end of a period of extended physical violence, with the 2 A newspaper article which reported the discovery of the body stated that police described the child as having ‘several serious injuries, including a fractured skull and collarbone’ which ‘were not caused by childbirth’. Vasagar, ‘Police believe’. Six months after these events, Rachel Davies, the child’s mother, was traced, but denied all knowledge of the event. At her trial she said she had given birth standing and after leaving the baby had returned to her car and cried for an hour before continuing to her place of work. Fitzsimmons, ‘Baby Lilly’s mum’. In sentencing, the judge acknowledged that it was highly likely that the child was stillborn, and concluded that Davies should be treated with ‘compassion rather than by way of punishment’. ‘Mum who dumped’. 3 Ravenhill, ‘A Tear’. Two-year-old James Bulger was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys in February 1993. 4 ibid. Ravenhill notes that there are aspects of the crime in his first three plays: Shopping and Fucking (1996), Faust is Dead (1997) and Handbag (1998). 5 Niklas Rådström’s Monsters (2009), which deals with James Bulger’s murder, and Sue MacLaine’s unpublished play A Place of Safety (2010) concerning the death of Maria Colwell. 6 Walker, Crime, Gender, p. 156.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

297

media describing appalling injuries on the infant body.7 Today, hands are used as a weapon, and infant death is often caused by the child being hit and punched. Substance abuse by the parents is frequently mentioned in the media reports of these crimes. Newborn infants still die under circumstances which require examination, though it remains difficult to ascertain whether an infant was born alive. Married people still kill to injure their partners, parents kill to protect their children, to avoid poverty, to avoid separation and to protect their own reputations. It appears that sometimes infants are killed for no apparent motive, but as the result of an outburst of uncontrolled violent anger or frustration.8 This chapter focuses on the remarkable continuity which exists from the early modern period to the present day. It will look principally at questions of reality and fiction; killers, communities and accomplices, and again liminality. It concludes by suggesting that, although some aspects of infanticide are shaped by historical period, the crime continues to run deep in our consciousness.

Reality and fiction Just as we often cannot be certain about the events surrounding infanticide in early modern England, uncertainty remains an element of today’s cases. Early accounts of the Stratford case which opens this chapter strongly suggested that the infant had been murdered. At Rachel Davies’ trial, the prosecution said that it was ‘physically impossible’ for the child to have floated on the water. Verdicts in recent cases reflect the impossibility of knowing. Jeffrey Wiltshire and Rosalin Baker were jailed for 11 years for the death of their 16–week baby whose injuries included a fractured skull, broken wrist and 40 rib fractures. The Old Bailey jury could not decide who inflicted the fatal injuries and they were both found guilty of ‘causing or allowing the death’.9 Uncertainty is similarly an aspect of literary works concerning infanticide. Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1998) deals with many of the aspects of infanticide considered in this study, particularly in its breaking down of the history / fiction separation by its imaginative retelling of a documented case, a mother’s altruistic killing to prevent her infant from experiencing her own appalling life, and the suggestion that Beloved exists in a liminal 7 8 9

‘Eli Cox baby death’; Whitehead, ‘Mother stamped’; Morris, ‘Parents convicted’. ‘James Ring jailed’. Kirk, ‘Parents who staged’; ‘Jail for couple’.

298 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

place between this world and the next.10 Ultimately the novel conveys the impossibility of accessing truth where infanticide is concerned. Beloved is, to adopt Ann Snitow’s phrase, a ‘fractured narrative’, and leaves readers uncertain who or what Beloved is or represents.11 Readers have to piece together the story from fragments in a manner similar to readers of the ballad The Wicked Midwife which opened this study. The impossibility of knowing the truth is also the subject of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman.12 It concerns Katurian, who writes ‘stories’ in which children die horrible deaths, and who is interrogated by the totalitarian state in which he lives because children are being killed in the ways he describes. The play blurs the line between what has and has not happened. For example, the playwright gives the impression that Katurian’s brother, brain damaged by his parents’ torturing, dies early on, but he does not. The parents are reported dead, but return. Katurian warns his brother, and the audience: Katurian: A man comes in to a room, says to another man, ‘Your mother’s dead’. What do we know? Do we know that the second man’s mother is dead? […] All we know is that a man has come into a room and said to another man, ‘Your mother is dead’. That is all we know.13

Later, Katurian says to his brother: Katurian: Michal: Katurian:

What did you tell him? Just the truth. Which particular truth?14

Storytelling also arises in Mark Ravenhill’s Handbag, a retelling of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest which includes an infant’s death due to its carers’ lack of knowledge.15 Ravenhill manipulates time by moving between Victorian and present-day narratives which finally merge, thus creating another challenge to what we perceive as truth, as does a presentday scene, in which rent-boy Phil tells his life story, re-creating it as one of peace and contentment. Just like the claims of those accused of infanticide, 10 Morrison, Beloved. 11 Snitow, ‘Death Duties’. 12 McDonagh, Pillowman. 13 ibid., p. 39. 14 ibid., p. 51. 15 Ravenhill, Handbag.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

299

the play raises issues of the difference between what happened, what is remembered as having happened, and what is said. Rachel Davies may have needed to believe that she saw her child floating away. Phil needed to construct his past as happy. Tony Selby, an actor in the original production of Edward Bond’s Saved (1965, discussed below), in which a baby is stoned to death in its pram, recalls that he ‘didn’t throw a stone’ despite photographic evidence to the contrary.16 In both the fictional and the factual accounts, there is a separation between self and violence, as if this is an emotional need in stories or experiences of infanticide.

Killers, communities and accomplices Killers As we have seen, it is difficult to assess the frequency of infanticide in early modern England. More surprisingly, this also applies to the present. There is no single source for statistics on the number of children who are killed by another person in England with the result that assessing this figure requires combining numbers from two government publications. Even then, the result is not reliable. However, the estimated figure appears to be that about four children die this way each week.17 Looking solely at cases of suspected neonaticide, Emma Milne, who has researched neonaticide in England and Wales, estimates that around seven cases a year are investigated.18 Nor are there any statistics for child abandonment though researchers, basing their findings on media reports over a seven year period, estimate that the number is about 16 each year.19 As in the early modern period, today’s media focus is on extraordinary and exceptional cases of infanticide.20 They concentrate on cases in which there are multiple deaths, or which involve extreme physical violence which may be carried out over an extended period of time by a man, a woman, or a 16 Costa, ‘A killing’. 17 For discussion of these figures see NSPCC, ‘Child Homicides’; ———, ‘Explaining’. 18 Milne, ‘Murder or Infanticide’. 19 Sherr et al’s research analyses such areas as age at abandonment, chances of survival, place of abandonment, gender and naming. It describes the media coverage as beginning with a search for the mother but petering out after the initial interest. Sherr, Mueller, and Fox, ‘Abandoned babies’. 20 For the results of statistical research into who kills infants in modern England, see Hendrick, ‘Children’.

300 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

couple acting together.21 Media coverage of such cases tends to be extensive and, in some papers, includes sensational headlines similar to early modern pamphlets. In contrast, accounts of murdered newborns and abandoned babies flash into the news media then virtually disappear, becoming a matter of local, rather than national, significance.22 In such cases, there appears to be a reluctance to come to a guilty verdict. Gintare Suminaite pleaded guilty to infanticide after keeping her pregnancy a secret and strangling her baby after giving birth alone. The judge told her: ‘You were overwhelmed by the stress of your situation and in a state of partial denial during the pregnancy. At the time of giving birth you were in a state of extreme anxiety and panic’.23 In May 2018, a nameless girl, believed to have been 14 years old, left her infant’s body under steps near a local swimming pool. Despite her apparent attempt to set light to the body, all charges against her were dropped and the authorities acknowledged the compassion such cases invite. A spokesperson for the police said: ‘In a sensitive case like this, we need to make sure all the people involved have the right support networks in place’.24 Milne writes: ‘I have not found any woman imprisoned for killing their newborn child since at least 2002’. A notable exception was Rachel Tunstill, who killed her newborn with scissors, and was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment in July 2017.25 The reasons for the sentence are unclear. Early modern writers constructed two kinds of killer. There are those whom readers would have recognised as ‘just like us’: tradespeople, clergy and neighbours, who are illustrated in familiar, domestic environments, surrounded by the objects of daily life. Conversely, some early modern killers are represented as ‘other’. They are drunken, belong to the ‘wrong’ religion, are beyond the control of husbands or masters. Similarly, today’s killers may be depicted as remarkably ordinary people who commit an extraordinary act, or as ‘other’ in terms of the violence they are capable of inflicting on a young infant. Lianne Smith, who killed her children in 2010 when ‘gravely disturbed’ and ‘suffering from a degree of mental disturbance’, is in other ways described much as any other parent. She treated her children to a ‘perfect’ holiday before killing them, afterward ‘giving [them] a cuddle and spending the night beside their bodies’.26 After Jael Mullings was arrested in 21 ‘Eli Cox baby death’; Salmon, ‘Father punched’; Whitehead, ‘Mother stamped’. 22 For statistics on infant and child murder in England and Wales see NSPCC, ‘Child Homicides’. For an analysis of the statistics see ———, ‘Explaining’. 23 ‘Gintare Suminaite’. 24 ‘No charges’. 25 ‘Rachel Tunstill’. 26 Greenhill, ‘Mother who Killed’.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

301

2012 for the murder of her two infants, aged two and three months, detectives said ‘This is a local family, a fairly close family with two young children who everybody adored and doted on’.27 Felicia Boots ‘lived with her investment banker husband in a salubrious area of London’ and they seemed like a ‘typical middle-class couple’, until she suffocated her two infants in 2012.28 In each instance newspapers included photographs of the location of the killings – familiar-looking houses and hotel rooms. But, like their early modern predecessors, killers may also be represented as ‘other’ in creative literature and the media. In Saved people are set apart by their inability to feel or articulate emotions; drug use, social displacement and sexual orientation are the background to Handbag; the dehumanising effect of the plays’ worlds features in Saved and Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1995). In the former, language is diminished to almost non-communication, the play ending in a silent scene in which a character painstakingly attempts to mend a broken chair. In the latter, a war-torn state and alcohol prompt a catalogue of violence, sex, and abuse, including the death of an infant which is subsequently eaten by a starving character. Despite this, Blasted is less disturbing than other works concerning infant death, due to its lack of psychological depth and apparently deliberate shock tactics. Yet this in itself demonstrates how easily we can become inured to violence. In the media, some killers are depicted as ‘not like us’ by detailing infants’ severe physical injuries, and references to substance abuse. Others are constructed as other due to their beliefs. Modern witchcraft has concerned authorities since eight-year-old Victoria Climbié was murdered by her guardians in 2000, partially because they thought she was ‘possessed’. Alexandra Topping writes: ‘African groups have warned that belief in witchcraft is increasingly common in some communities and that […] children in the UK are “suffering in silence” after being branded as witches’. In Greater London an average of eight children a year are victims of witchcraft-related abuse.29 We have seen that in the early modern period people killed their infants for so-called ‘altruistic’ motives, such as fear of their being reared in the ‘wrong’ religion or the impossibility of surviving poverty.30 Similarly, the altruistic motive appears in modern drama. In The Pillowman, children fated to live unhappy lives succumb to apparently accidental deaths in order to avoid years of suffering. But, as Katurian states, ‘The Pillowman’s 27 28 29 30

Carter and Laville, ‘Doctor alerted’. Topping, ‘Good Mum’. ———, ‘Accusations’. See for example Anon, Pittilesse Mother; ———, Distressed Mother.

302 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

job was to get that child to kill themselves, and so avoid the years of pain that would just end up in the same place for them anyway’, and thus make their deaths easier for the parents to bear.31 Later Katurian explains ‘The Pillowman was a thoughtful, decent man, who hated what he was doing’.32 The softening effect of Pillowman’s explanation – the means of coming to terms with child death – is differently expressed by Tony Selby. Interviewed in connection with a 2011 revival of Saved he stated ‘In actual fact the baby is saved. It’s saved from a non-existent life’.33 Newspaper reports show, and literature suggests, that there are still situations in which women kill infants because they cannot see a way forward. Lianne Smith, who feared her children would be taken by social services, said ‘It was the end of the road. I knew they were going to take my children […] I felt I was in a corner’.34 This is also the case in the novella Beside the Sea in which a poor, bewildered and depressed woman uses the last of her money to treat her children to a seaside visit, and murders them in the hotel room in the desperate belief that they would always be together.35 Such cases and works in part echo the motives and actions of early modern women described in pamphlets and who appear to have killed in despair, such as Mary Philmore who ‘sate herself down upon a Dunghill’ after her crime, and Mary Cook who killed her child because she believed that her relatives did not love her, and feared for the fate of her child. The men who constructed the 1624 Infanticide Act were confident that those who killed infants were ‘lewd women that have been delivered of bastard children’ and that they did it to ‘avoid their shame, and to escape punishment’. Penalties for bastard bearing no longer exist in the British penal system, and in the dominant British culture there is no sense of shame about having a child outside marriage. Yet as recently as in 1950s England unmarried pregnancy was considered a disgrace. In A Taste of Honey (1958), an early example of Britain’s new theatrical realism, the central character is a young, unmarried, pregnant woman. She hides herself away because she doesn’t like people looking at her, an action which suggests her bodily shame and is redolent of early modern women who sought to hide their pregnancies.36 She only appears fully to acknowledge that she is pregnant when given a doll 31 McDonagh, Pillowman, p. 44. 32 ibid., p. 52. 33 Costa, ‘A killing’. 34 Burgen, ‘Mother Jailed’. 35 Olmi, Beside the Sea. The novel was adapted into a monologue and performed by Lisa Dwan at the Purcell Room, London in March 2012. 36 Delaney, Taste of Honey, pp. 50, 61.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

303

‘to practise a few holds on’, flinging it to the ground in an act of abjection, exclaiming that she doesn’t want a child and that she will kill it.37 Communities Who is responsible when an infant is killed? We saw in Chapter 6 that early modern pamphleteers sometimes pointed to the wider community in which the crime took place such as those who described Mary Cook’s murder of her infant and their request that others ‘call to mind, and lay to heart, and repent of their neglect of duty towards her […] that they do not expose their Relations unto Temptations’.38 Similarly, Brewer mentions many people who failed to recognise Jane Hattersley’s pregnancies and suspicious actions, and therefore enabled her infants’ deaths.39 Today, enquiries after high-profile cases attempt to uncover how infant death could have happened. Polly Toynbee writes that killers ‘always turn out to be an unworthy vessel for society’s fury’ adding: ‘Conveniently, social workers are always there to fill the role required by a frenzy of media hate. They failed to save a child: they are the true killers’. 40 But a change may be afoot here. Increasingly the media appear to question how serious crimes can have taken place within communities: How could people not have realised? Why did they not intervene? This point is confronted in Niklas Rådström’s Monsters which deals with the murder of James Bulger.41 Theatre critic Michael Billington describes it as it a ‘sober, unsensational enquiry into a tragic case, rather than a piece of theatrical exploitation’.42 The play combines a Greek-style chorus with scenes based on police and court transcripts. These, and the author’s request for a sparse production ethic, remind us of the timelessness of the crime. One scene catalogues cases between 1748 and 1988 in which children killed other children. It is preceded by the chorus stating: ‘Nothing like this has ever happened before. But it has happened before. It will happen again’. 43 Interrupting stage performance usually goes against the conventions of serious theatre, but Rådström writes: ‘Throughout the performance, the audience is informed that it is possible to intervene at any time in the events that are related on stage’: 37 ibid., p. 75. 38 Partridge and Sharp, Blood, p. 34. 39 Brewer, Bloudy Mother. 40 Toynbee, ‘This frenzy of hate’. 41 Rådström, Monsters. 42 Billington, ‘Review – Monsters’. 43 Rådström, Monsters, p. 46.

304 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

I don’t know if you are prepared to handle what has already happened and will happen here […] I don’t know what you intend to do about it […] Are you prepared to be a witness? If so will you only be a witness? Or are you prepared to intervene? Are you prepared to step in and prevent what is about to happen? (17)

The play emphasises that thirty-eight people saw James Bulger with his abductors and after he had been injured, but did nothing. Billington writes: ‘It implies we all have a measure of responsibility for James Bulger’s murder […] but the play fails to justify its accusation of collective guilt in the manner of […] Saved which argues that a profoundly unjust, violent society will inescapably lead to acts of individual brutality’. 44 In a preface to Saved, Bond writes that violence occurs ‘in situations of injustice. It is caused not only by physical threats, but even more significantly by threats to human dignity’. 45 He continues that victims of injustice ‘may merely react violently because of an unconscious motive, an unidentified discontent. When this happens their victims may be innocent’.46 Introducing a later edition, he writes that working people had lost their traditional place in national culture and consequently had lost a sense of themselves. ‘This was the beginning of a strange new modern form of violence. It is caused not by the traditional needs of poverty but by the need for respect. […] The young people murder the baby in the park to regain their self-respect’. 47 Or, it could be seen as a reaction against their sense of powerlessness. Such arguments echo the early modern period: the injustice perceived by abandoned women or wives of profligate husbands, and the sense of being a lost or displaced person, at the margins of the society in which they live. An early modern woman might certainly kill to gain her self-respect, but also to allow her to maintain the respect of others in a society in which a woman who was neither maid, widow nor wife was outside social structures. Although witnessing is central in Monsters, the scenes take place after the murder. In contrast, in Saved the audience sees an infant subjected to a violent death by stoning, though a pram provides some separation. We later learn that Len ‘the likeable character, through whom the viewer is 44 Billington, ‘Review – Monsters’. 45 Bond, Plays, p. 13. 46 ibid., p. 15. 47 ———, Saved.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

305

introduced to this world’, watched and failed to intervene. 48 But as Jenny S. Spencer writes: ‘No particular moment leads the squeamish to shut their eyes’.49 Similarly, in Fred Watson’s unpublished play Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger the infant death – the inevitability of which is in the work’s title – occurs on stage as the culmination of unconsidered actions.50 One critic described it as ‘human beings stumbling towards a killing they do not seek’.51 The play echoes early modern themes including premarital pregnancy, desperation, financial hardship, and abandonment. The drunken youths who intimidate the babysitter into abandoning the infant attempt to quieten it with gin. The directions state: ‘With his back to the audience he [Charley] tips the gin bottle in to the child’s mouth. Cries of alarm and protest follow within a few seconds. They grow in volume’.52 Again, the audience is separated from the death by the actor’s turned back, and the youths are distanced from their action by the alcohol which dislocates them from reality. Accomplices In Chapter 6 we saw the frequency with which accomplices, or trickster figures, were a component of infanticide in early modern England. Such figures do not appear in twentieth-century drama concerning infanticide, but they are visually represented in Dame Paula Rego’s work. Rego’s art is highly narrative, making it akin to written texts, and her working method, which involves living models and fabricated doll-like figures, suggests theatrical performance. ‘Every picture tells a story’, she says of her own work.53 She is often inspired by others’ writings but her work crosses genres. She has created a visual telling of McDonagh’s The Pillowman and the playwright insisted that note be taken of her images for the sets and costumes of the play’s Broadway production, a reflection of the synergy between the works.54 Many of the themes discussed in this study appear in Rego’s art including rape, abortion, abandonment, reference to water as death or purification,

48 Spencer, Dramatic Strategies, p. 32. 49 ibid., p. 31. 50 Watson, Fred Ginger. Premiered by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the New Arts Theatre Club, London, 29 August 1962. 51 G.G., ‘Stumbling’. 52 Watson, Fred Ginger, p. 2.29. 53 Auerbach, ‘Paula Rego’. 54 McEwen, Paula Rego, p. 150.

306 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

monstrosity, the mother’s body, the born or unborn, inside and outside.55 Because Rego’s viewers often have to create their own narratives, based on their own experience, expectations and evidence, an element of the impossibility of knowing what happened or is happening always lurks in her pictures, which frequently show nightmarish worlds of horror and brutality. The works’ timeless quality, including the characters’ clothing, contributes to their ability to illuminate periods outside the century in which they were created. In a series of works which culminated in Oratorio (2010), a mixed media triptych produced for the Foundling Museum, Rego depicts infanticide, the desperate alternative to abandonment to which some women have felt driven across the centuries. The scenes include Rape, Birth, and a series of images in which babies are being tipped into a well, another water place. In each work the woman does not dispose of the children alone, but is accompanied by other figures. In Down the Well I, the most dominant of these is older and appears to smile as babies fall from a bucket. The figure seems visually female yet androgynous and her sinister face suggests the monstrosity ascribed to early modern child killers. Her relationship with the other woman is one of the uncertainties with which Rego leaves the viewer: the older woman could be mother, midwife, or the physical manifestation of the inner voice which seems to instruct the younger woman in what she should do – a trickster, or in early modern terms, the devil. Like the mothers in Sussex who ‘aided and abetted’ their daughters in the killing of their newborns, it is unclear whether this older woman is attempting to ensure the salvation or the damnation of the younger woman, who looks on expressionless and numb, showing no anger, fear or remorse. The action seems routine, and her face suggests that this is merely a grim job which has to be done, and one from which she is disassociated, placing herself in a location separate from the act. Similarly complex to decipher is the smaller figure in the foreground. She looks at the viewer, inviting us to consider whether we are as culpable for the destruction of the infants as the women who stand over the tumbling bodies. The three figures connect this drawing to the Fates who judge 55 Most specifically, the Portuguese novel The Sin of Father Amaro (1875; English translation 1962) has been the subject of a series of works by Rego. The novel tells the story of a priest who ensures the death of the infant he has fathered on a young woman. Rego has also created a series known as The Abortion Pastels (1998 / 9), in response to the low turnout for the Portuguese government’s referendum on legalising abortion.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

307

Image 8: Paula Rego Down the Well I (2009). This timeless image links with many of the themes in this study. (© Paula Rego, Courtesy Marlborough Fine Art.)

308 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

destinies and decide when life ends. It also suggests the liminal worlds of witches. Sarah Kent writes: The well stands in the centre of each picture. It looks more like a bathtub or a cauldron for boiling clothes or cooking stews than a well, which makes one wonder if the babies aren’t also being stewed and puts cannibalism on the agenda alongside murder.56

In all versions of the infanticide scene the small figure is bringing another baby to its death, or perhaps this unnaturally wizened child is holding a doll, witnessing and acting out the sexual exploitation which may be her destiny. Whether the child in the Oratorio image is holding a baby or a doll, her presence suggests a chain of people, or events, culminating in infanticide. The colour the artist uses indicates that the deed is carried out in twilight, the liminal time between day and night. In Well, another work in this series, a manikin, puppet or doll-like figure rises from the line which suspends the infants – perhaps a spirit, perhaps another indication of lost innocence. A young woman hangs over the edge of the well, possibly the infant’s mother, which may suggest water as ritual purification, if she is being bathed, but water as death if she is drowning. The figure illustrates the findings of psychologists and anthropologists: the uncertainty about whether the child is inside or outside, part of her or a separate being. Her tumbling red hair, or blood, is echoed in the body of the newborn who appears to have been thrown on the ground, in an act of abjection and a manifestation bodily pollution.

Liminality and marginality today The liminal child and mother Liminality and marginality, the themes which have recurred throughout this study, are still surprisingly in evidence. The media construct some women as flamboyant and idealised models of pending motherhood, which both gives them an ‘otherness’ and suggests the role fulfilment of early modern pregnancy portraits.57 Due to better understanding of psychological states we now rarely describe women who kill their newborns as ‘evil’, or ‘monstrous’, 56 Kent, ‘Oratoria’. 57 See for example ‘In Style’.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

309

though other killers may be thus depicted.58 Advances in medical science have made the questions surrounding the status of the unborn or newborn child even more complex. Issues of personhood and in rerum natura remain in evidence.59 In January 2014 the MP for East Worthing, Sussex presented a Ten Minute Motion to the House of Commons requesting leave to bring in a Bill which would allow parents to register the death of a child ‘stillborn before the threshold of 24 weeks gestation’.60 The Bill, which went to a second reading but was not passed for debate, would not have affected the legality of abortion up to 24 weeks, though discussions on this topic are always poised to resurface.61 The result would have been laws which both recognise and deny the infant unborn at 24 weeks. It seems we are as confused as were our early modern predecessors about the moment at which a foetus should be regarded as having human existence. This confusion is seen in today’s practices and academic debates. In 2013, Judge Howard Levenson, citing an earlier ruling, wrote ‘an embryo or foetus in utero does not have a human personality and cannot be the victim of a crime of violence […] it does not have the attributes to make it a person’.62 Yet a woman who aborted her baby at forty weeks was jailed for eight years (later reduced to three and a half) for a crime whose ‘seriousness […] lay between manslaughter and murder’ according to Mr. Justice Cooke who, passing sentence, said the child was ‘capable of being born alive’.63 In contrast, when an infant died in hospital at five days the staff arranged for him to be buried in a pauper’s (shared) grave with up to twelve other infants.64 The grave was insufficiently sealed and the infant’s body was removed by a fox. Such cases suggest disrespect for the newborn but legal protection of the unborn child. However, a man whose partner miscarried after he punched her in the stomach received a sixteen-week sentence, because it was impossible to prove a connection between the assault and the loss of the child, yet the same newspaper reported that a man who punched a police horse was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.65 Such uncertainties are captured in 58 Lambie, ‘Mothers who kill’. 59 During a referendum on the legality of abortion in the Irish Republic, in May 2018, the issues were widely debated in the British and Irish media. 60 Loughton, Registration of stillbirths. 61 See for example McVeigh, ‘How new call’; Bennett, ‘Why does Jeremy Hunt’; Quinn, ‘Health secretary backs’. 62 Levenson, ‘Decision’. 63 Wainwright, ‘Woman jailed’. 64 Cohen, ‘“miracle baby”’. The ensuing outcry led to a change in practices. 65 Radnedge, ‘Outrage as thug’.

310 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

the postscript to a paper which discusses the rights and wrongs of abortion and infanticide from a philosophical perspective. Mary Anne Warren writes: ‘In this country [USA], and in this period of history, the deliberate killing of viable newborns is virtually never justified’.66 She continues (my italics) ‘This is in part because neonates are so very close to being persons that to kill them requires a very strong moral justification – as does the killing of dolphins, whales, chimpanzees, and other highly personlike creatures’. Again, we are as unclear today about the rights of the unborn or newborn, as we were five centuries ago. Dramatists represent this uncertainty by showing people treating infants as less than human. The baby stoned to death in Saved is referred to as ‘that’ or ‘it’ throughout the play and Fred, who is convicted for the killing, says ‘It was only a kid’.67 Tony Selby, who appeared in the original production recalls seeing ‘bored, neglected kids hurling stones at squirrels’ and suggests that ‘from there to killing the baby […] takes only one little leap of the imagination’.68 Monsters deals with the beating to death of James Bulger in 1993; in Handbag the dead infant is burnt to try to get it to breathe; and in The House of Fred Ginger the infant is killed when it is fed alcohol in an attempt to stop it crying. Unwelcome pregnancy and the infant as waste An aspect of liminality considered in Chapter 3 is the mother’s relationship with her unborn child and the perception of its potentially hostile nature, a subject which continues to interest writers who often connect unborn infants with monstrosity. A character in The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), in which a group of women is impregnated by aliens, describes the emotions of a woman who finds herself unexpectedly and reluctantly pregnant: ‘To know there’s something growing there – and not to be sure how, or what’,69 later adding that it is: As if one were not a person at all, but just a kind of mechanism, a sort of incubator […] And then to go on wondering, hour after hour, night after night, what – just what it may be that one is being forced to incubate.70

66 Warren, ‘On the Moral’, p. 116. 67 Bond, Saved, p. 69. 68 Costa, ‘A killing’. 69 Wyndham, Midwich Cuckoos, p. 73. The novel became a successful film, Village of the Damned, dir. Wolf Rilla, in 1960. 70 ibid., p. 87.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

311

Similarly the narrative of the film Rosemary’s Baby (dir. Roman Polanski, 1968), played out in a semi-dreamlike state suggesting pre- and post-partum mental disturbance, invites pregnant women to fear the child they are carrying. The narrator / author of the epistolary novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, describes her reluctance to have a child. She writes of the ubiquity of film images of dystopian pregnancy, citing Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979) and Mimic (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 1997) as well as Rosemary’s Baby.71 The character describes her own experience as ‘infestation, colonization by stealth’, and feeling that she is ‘swallowed by a big biological project that I didn’t initiate or choose’.72 Unwanted infants are still treated as detritus. The body of an infant was found on the conveyor at a recycling plant in Scunthorpe73 and another infant body was found in the garden drain of a house in Grimsby in February 2016.74 Another infant was killed, placed in plastic bags and put in the kitchen bin.75 Some infants survive such ordeals. A badly injured ‘very young baby’ was found at the bottom of a garbage chute in a block of flats in Wolverhampton.76 A newborn was rescued when a security officer in Manila noticed movement in a rubbish bag taken from a plane recently arrived from Bahrain. It was believed that the infant was born on the flight.77 Another living child was rescued from a rubbish bin in the toilets in a hospital in Wigan78 and another from a drain in Sydney.79 Dramatic media footage of the rescue of a live baby from a sewer in China, where the mother had claimed it had fallen, was followed a month later by a newspaper account of a two-day old baby rescued from a drain in Alicante.80 The number of such known cases is remarkable, and suggests the complexity of the mother / child relationship and the pressures which some women can feel during pregnancy and after childbirth. The point is emphasised by the fact that, in England, when infant bodies are found, the authorities’ focus is invariably on finding and helping the distressed and endangered mother, not punishing her, as in a case at Sheerness in Kent. A police spokesperson said: ‘I have got significant concerns about mum […] This is a desperate act and I’m concerned about both her 71 Shriver, We Need to Talk, p. 58. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin’s film Devil’s Due (2014) continues the genre of dystopian pregnancy. 72 ibid., pp. 51, 58. 73 ‘Dead baby found’. 74 Perraudin, ‘Postmortem’; ‘HR Executive’. 75 ‘Rachel Tunstill’. 76 ‘Dead baby found’; ‘Baby found injured’. 77 ‘Newborn baby found dumped’. 78 ‘Newborn baby found inside’. 79 Jabour, ‘Police interview’. 80 Branigan, ‘China shocked’; ‘Mother held’.

312 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

medical and emotional well-being’.81 Abandoned, living babies recur in historical accounts and in literature, from the tragedy of Oedipus onwards. The practice is occasionally mentioned in the media, such as the case of the baby left at a priest’s house in Reading.82 Abandonment has led to the revival of the medieval practice of ‘baby boxes’ in which unwanted infants can be left. There are 200 in continental Europe, though they remain illegal in Britain.83 We remain doubtful about when the unborn or newborn should be considered fully human, echoing the early modern period. However, better psychological understanding regarding perinatal states means that in Britain women accused or suspected of infanticide are treated with compassion.84 Infanticide is almost always recognised as resulting from disturbed mental states, or as a social failure, in both the woman’s intimates and wider society. Today, the killing of a newborn provokes dismay and sadness, rather than disgust.

Performing modern Medeas The enduring figure of Medea as a woman who kills her children as an act of revenge continues to be seen in contemporary events and performance.85 A case from twenty-first century Sussex has parallels with both Medea and Lady Macbeth and suggests that not only do real life crimes inspire fiction, but fiction can influence real life. In January 2010 Fiona Donnison, of Heathfield, Sussex, suffocated her two children, aged two and three. She had left their father two years previously, taking their children with her, and the couple had recently agreed to end their relationship formally as he had met a new partner. The morning after the murders, having apparently attempted suicide, Donnison went to Heathfield police station and reported her crime. As with other modern and early modern accounts of infanticide, early media reports of the events were accompanied by images of the former family home, a visual representation of middle class normality which had become the locus of tragedy. As events were revealed during the trial a vivid picture emerged. The officer to whom Donnison reported her crime told the court that she was pale and swaying from side to side, and said she had killed her children. When 81 82 83 84 85

Holmwood, ‘Detective Inspector’. ‘Mother called’. Ramesh, ‘Europe’s “baby boxes”’. ‘Gintare Suminaite’. ‘Cody-Anne Jackson’.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

313

asked how many children she had ‘She answered “two – three – four” with a space in between’.86 The officer reported that Donnison went ‘floppy’ and collapsed. She ‘grabbed her stomach very tightly and screwed her face up and then let out the most horrific noise. At one stage, she was unconscious but then her eyes opened and were just rolling’. The police later found the bodies of two infants in the boot of Donnison’s car, parked near the home she formerly shared with her partner. It was believed that she planned to kill him as there was evidence suggesting that she had lain in wait armed with two kitchen knives. Defence claims that Donnison was ‘not in her right mind’ at the time were dismissed by prosecutors who pointed to the level of planning involved in the killings and the fact that, after her arrival at a mental health facility, her behaviour did not suggest serious depression.87 Claims of amnesia and inability to remember killing her children were similarly dismissed by professionals, based on several behavioural indicators. One clinical psychologist told jurors she believed Donnison ‘100% likely to be feigning’ psychological problems or symptoms. The reports show the difficulty of distinguishing between performed and diagnosed ‘madness’. Elaine Showalter has demonstrated that Victorian familiarity with Shakespeare prompted asylum attendants to pose their charges with Ophelia-like clothes, gestures, and props when being photographed.88 Thus the style and manner of expression for ‘mad young women seeking to express and communicate their distress’ became a construction which blurred the division between what was true and what was performed. Donnison’s actions also suggest performance – ‘feigning’ –, in her case adopting the image of female ‘madness’ provided in Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene. Donnison’s counting ‘two – three – four’ and her ‘horrific noise’ after she reported her crime to the police, echo Lady Macbeth’s ‘One; two’ and ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’ (V.i.49). There are also parallels with performances of Medea, a narrative with which the Donnison case has remarkable similarities. Her actions fuel the assumption that a woman who kills her children will be supposed ‘mad’. It seems unlikely that Donnison was deliberately adopting Lady Macbeth or Medea as a model, but rather suggests a subconscious awareness of ‘mad women’s’ stereotypical behaviour. The relevance of Medea to modern times has been observed by recent stagings of Euripides’ play (Headlong, 2012; National Theatre, 2014) and Charpentier’s opera Médée (1693) (English National Opera, 2013), which have 86 Carter, ‘Mother accused’. 87 ‘Mother Guilty’. 88 Showalter, ‘Representing Ophelia’, p. 86.

314 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

been updated to the present, or the recent past. These were high-profile productions by important companies, with big-name casts and directors, and they received outstanding reviews. The familiarity of settings and clothing emphasised the omnipresence of the murdering mother and moved toward constructing Medea as everywoman. Whether that is a justifiable persona for her is a contestable point. As the daughter of a king and granddaughter of the sun god, a princess, warrior, sorceress, and fratricide, Medea is anything but everywoman. Yet, despite these qualities, Euripides portrays a woman who, in the very ordinary area of being able to keep her husband loyal to her, was less than the most ordinary patrician. The play provides us with an ancient representation of a woman who is little different to the early modern women who were deserted by their lovers and, although Medea is more powerful, the result is the same – the violent death of infants. To an extent these modern-dress productions present today’s audiences with a feminist ideal: strong, articulate, intelligent women – a type far more familiar and acceptable today than in ancient Greece or early modern England. ‘I admire her’ says actor Rachael Stirling, who played the role in 2012. ‘Obviously the course of action she takes is extreme, but I like the fact that she doesn’t accept that her husband runs off, as society expects of her’.89 Fiona Shaw, another actor who has played the role, comments on Euripides’ skill in setting up a situation in which Medea’s previous actions have ‘cornered’ her.90 She says ‘There is absolutely nowhere for her to go. Thereafter the audience feel sympathetic, right until the moment when she says: “I must kill the children”‘. At this point she crosses a boundary, moving from being the injured woman to the one who inflicts injury. Audiences’ willingness to witness a woman crossing this boundary is evidence of the enduring interest in the mental state those who murder their infants.91 Today, the interest is in part stimulated by popular interest in psychology which gives us the understanding and vocabulary to analyse the effects of betrayal and loss to which Medea is subject.92 But there are limits to this understanding, and when a real-life case closely echoes that of Medea, as in 89 Costa, ‘Medea’. 90 Fiona Shaw, directed by Deborah Warner, played the role in London, Dublin and New York, 2000–2003. 91 The killing of infants by a separated parent is not a uniquely female phenomenon. It was believed that Paul McBride, who killed his six-month old son after separating from the mother, acted out of revenge. (Metro, 16 September 2011) Similarly, Michael Pedersen killed his two young children a few weeks after separating from his wife. (Guardian 2 October 2012) Both committed suicide. 92 Lambie, ‘Mothers who kill’.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

315

Donnison’s murder of her infants, she is described as using the children as the ‘ultimate pawns’ to hurt her partner ‘in the most extreme way possible’.93

The language of monstrosity The language of monstrosity is rarely used in connection with infant killers, and those who take the lives of other vulnerable people. In the early modern period monstrosity was associated with divine judgement and God’s retribution for mankind’s wrongdoings. Today the term is used of extreme crimes which are perceived as outrageous, sometimes with the ‘shock horror’ tone of early modern pamphlets. Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire, set up in 1594 as a House of Correction and now ‘home to a roll call of the most violent, perverted and murderous prisoners in the British penal system’ is nick-named Monster Mansion.94 Child killer Ian Huntley was described as a ‘monster’ while Fred and Rose West, who committed multiple murders of vulnerable people ‘could behave monstrously – but seemed like the rest of us’.95 Liam Deane, whose two-day old daughter died after he punched her, was described as a monster in sensational tabloid newspapers after he was killed while in prison, though the term was not used in later, on-line editions. When early modern women talked about ‘the devil’ they were providing an explanation for their acts which they, and those who questioned them, would understand – it was a way of describing their mental state. Today, most people do not believe in the devil or, increasingly, in the idea of absolute evil, a term which artists use with caution. Ravenhill warns: ‘A carefully laid out set of liberal platitudes start to topple once the “E” word enters the conversation’ but adds ‘I still can’t absolutely deny that it never ever exists’.96 Niklas Rådström says ‘I don’t believe in evil as a metaphysical force […] but I do believe that there are evil situations in which we all find ourselves, and that sometimes in those situations people lose the civilised part of themselves’.97 Tilda Swinton, who portrayed the mother in We Need 93 ‘Mother Guilty’. Donnison was sentenced in 2013 to a minimum of 32 years imprisonment. This is not a unique case. After a woman was jailed for 16 years for suffocating her two year old daughter, the investigating detectives said: ‘This was a killing that was cold and callous and set to exact revenge on [her partner] as he had broken off the relationship’. ‘Cody-Anne Jackson’. 94 Armstrong, ‘Monsters’. 95 McKay, ‘A glimpse of pure evil’. 96 Ravenhill, ‘A Tear’. 97 The Guardian, 6 May 2009

316 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

to Talk About Kevin, says: ‘There is always this word ‘evil’ pulled out of the drawer […] It’s a very quick response’.98 Our post-Freudian perception leads us to view motives for infanticide in studied, but less clear-cut, ways than those of our predecessors, involving attempts to understand the mind of the perpetrator. Early modern explanations are a different period’s attempts to comprehend actions which society cannot understand. They involve the idea of a force outside the person (the devil), the force of evil within, or the suggestion of the monster disguised in human form, each containing ideas of unnaturalness.

Why? Why do writers continue to be drawn to use infant death in their creative works? Why do readers and audiences continue to want to examine it? Of course, these questions are linked: creative writers might abandon the topic if there were no public interest. Artistic examinations of infant death are part of a wider interest in murder. Charlie Brooker has written of our ‘innate lust for murdertainment’.99 Many of these works are based on real and notorious crimes. In the last decade these have included docudramas about mass murderers Fred and Rose West, and the musical play London Road, concerning the murder of prostitutes in Suffolk. Just as early modern pamphlets examined ‘all of the circumstances, perpetrators, and motives’ of crimes,100 so today’s literary works dealing with real crimes can present a different viewpoint to newspaper accounts . They can take readers or viewers into the minds of those involved, and thus help them to understand. They also allow audiences to participate in the crime from a safe distance, as a form of catharsis. This need is clear from the ritual of spontaneous memorials erected at places of shocking death to which people bring flowers, candles, images and, in the case of children, toys. Using toys for this purpose provides an insight into modern attitudes to infant death. Are they bought especially, or is another child making a sacrifice of a loved (or unloved) toy as their own act of (adult prompted) mourning? A toy suggests the dead child living in the present or in a liminal place as if, like the ghosts in early modern literature, he or she cannot rest until justice has been served. Perhaps such memorials should be seen as a form of community apology for 98 Cochrane, ‘I didn’t speak’. 99 Brooker, ‘Haven’t we had enough’. 100 Dolan, Dangerous Familiars, p. 126.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

317

having failed to notice and act upon the danger a child was in, or to support a desperate parent, again a suggestion of the community culpability we have seen directly expressed or implied in pamphlets. By writing about infanticide, creative artists present and examine a subject people may be reluctant to think about. Writer Sue MacLaine is still refining her play A Place of Safety which deals with the death, in 1973, of seven-year-old Maria Colwell, after years of abuse by her stepfather.101 She suggests that when we hear a child has died we find it hard to imagine the manner of that death.102 It is, she says, ‘a failure of the imagination’ and she believes that ‘we do not want to look’. She adds: ‘It is hard to watch infanticide – it is frightening to see what we have turned our eyes from’. As a writer, MacLaine likes to ‘tackle issues’ and says ‘I go to those places so that other people don’t have to’. She sees her role as a broker between the audience and the unseeable, describing herself as a guide. The play, set twenty years after the enquiry into Maria’s death, examines it from the perspective of the social worker who was blamed for enabling the crime to take place. It looks at the ‘personal cost to those involved in child protection’ and the ‘impossibility of her task’.103 Modern, reality-based works raise issues similar to those we have seen in early modern literature – culpability (Monsters), the effect on the community (London Road) questions of individual responsibility (A Place of Safety). The creative techniques are also similar to those of early modern pamphleteers who wrote (or claimed to write) accounts based on interviews and verbatim (though probably ventriloquised) speeches. Monsters draws on interrogation transcripts and court documents; London Road is based on the authors’ interviews with the community; A Place of Safety includes verbatim words from the enquiry. It is as if these modern works are attempting to access factual and / or emotional truth, ‘truth’ being a quality frequently claimed by early modern pamphleteers. Monsters and A Place of Safety are exceptional in being based on real cases of infant murder. Most creative works deal with fictional examples, so again, why are writers drawn to constructing these f ictional situations? Murder is dramatic and emotive, and inevitably means characters with possibly complex motives and dark secrets, who weave alternative 101 MacLaine, A Place of Safety. 102 This and subsequent comments taken from the author’s telephone conversation with Sue MacLaine, 9 May 2013. 103 Violent infant death frequently prompts a ‘serious case review’ which examines such areas as the family’s contact with medical and social services.

318 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

narratives constructed on deceptions. Their appeal to writers is self-evident. Examinations of violence reveal the variety of humankind’s nature, and what Derek Cohen describes as its ‘terrible seductive power’.104 In fictional narratives there may be considerations around who is culpable, but there is no ambiguity about the victim’s innocence. The infant or child is a blank canvas, a tabula rasa, a symbol of hope, optimism, a belief in a future, whose intentional death is also the partial death of these positive emotions and beliefs. The automatic innocence of the child frees writers to use the crime as the basis for discussing other matters, and the metaphor of the blameless child is easily unravelled freeing audiences to focus on broader issues. So in fictional works such as Fred Ginger, Saved or Blasted audiences can consider subjects such as society, education, employment, marital relationships, power, the dehumanising effect of war, just as early modern writers used infanticide as a basis for examining erroneous religions, marital power, and promiscuity. When such topics are viewed through the lens of child death, fictional infants allow writers to make ‘loud’ statements. But, why the audience interest? As the Chorus states at the opening of Monsters: I don’t know why you came here […] You probably want to know why Why did that which will soon happen here already happen?105

Commenting on representations of early modern mothers who kill, Staub writes: ‘The construction of the mother […] becomes enmeshed with […] anxieties about family relations, religion and economics’.106 These subjects were in upheaval during the early modern period and they are again now, which may also in part account for the many works about infant killers. Works about infanticide may also be a result of what Tyminski refers to as ‘the tenuous hold we all have on civilised behaviour’.107 Or, perhaps we are in a state of uncertainty about what constitutes ‘civilised’ behaviour at a time when stories of child abuse and terminally ill infants’ right to life are so often brought to our attention through the media.

104 Cohen, Shakespeare’s Culture, p. 127. 105 Rådström, Monsters, p. 17. 106 Staub, ‘Early Modern Medea’, p. 333. 107 Tyminski, Psychology, p. 56.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

319

Our fascination with infanticide does not fade with the passage of time since the deaths. Explanations are still being sought for the remains of ninety-seven newborn babies from the Roman period discovered in Buckinghamshire. Early theories favoured the dramatic: a brothel and consequent infanticide.108 Subsequently, Brett Thorn, keeper of archaeology at the Buckinghamshire County Museum, offered a more prosaic suggestion when he stated that the site may have been ‘a shrine where women went to give birth, and get protection from the mother goddess during this dangerous time’.109 He believes they may be the bodies of infants who died during labour. The point of interest is that we continue to be intrigued by infant death, have an on-going need to understand it, and may even favour violent explanations. Or, perhaps, the idea of infants dying from natural causes is too uncomfortable for people to contemplate. Of course audiences like to be frightened and shocked,110 a need which goes back to childhood and may have a positive psychological effect. Stephen Evans’ article about the benefit of Grimms’ Fairy Tales elicited on-line comments. One respondent wrote that they help children ‘to negotiate the scary outer world and to negotiate through their own interior world including fear, anger etc. They allow you to experience and survive’. Another wrote of their ability to ‘allow us to contain dark and murderous fantasies’.111 However, I would disagree with the suggestion that they are ‘a convention with no relation to reality’. As we have seen, extraordinary cruelty and violence toward children is all too real, and has a long history.

Finally When embarking on this study it was always my intention in this research to use the Sussex Coroners’ inquests as a starting point for asking questions and to use literary works to investigate how the two forms worked together. As well as combining historical and literary critical approaches, I also wanted to call on other disciplines to examine how they might help to provide an understanding of infanticide beyond the idea that unmarried women killed their infants because of fear, shame and their doubts about their ability to survive. The fact that so many Sussex infants 108 ‘Baby deaths link’. 109 Ord, ‘Roman dead baby’. 110 Some play reviews challenge this, such as those of Fred Ginger, Saved and Blasted. 111 Evans, ‘Grimm’s Tales’.

320 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

were drowned or thrown invited the introduction of anthropological ideas about liminality, marginality, and abjection, including the liminality of pregnant women and the unborn or newborn child. Once it became apparent that these theories illuminated hitherto disregarded aspects of infanticide, it was clear that they were also revealing about other aspects of the crime. Confusion about what constituted marriage could lead to liminal situations in which women were neither maids, widows, nor wives. Strident laws against bastard-bearers virtually ensured that such women were forced to live on the margins of society, while punishments for bastardy followed many performance aspects of ritual. Although Herod and Medea remain the most notorious infanticides in western culture, early modern men and married women lurk at the margins of academic literature about the crime. This research drew them from the shadows and into the spotlight revealing differences of motive and method. Throughout, the ideas have been enriched by the wealth of early modern creative works. Street literature and drama are central to the themes of this study because they were popular media – new, exciting, disapproved, performed, but above all enjoyed by huge numbers of all social groups. For many – tradespeople, country-dwellers – they were a rare representation of themselves. What was described by these media is what people consumed on a virtually daily basis. It was how many learned of male seducers, abandoned pregnant women, artful bastard-bearers, forlorn lovers, vengeful husbands and wives – and infanticide. It remains true that most of the women accused of infanticide in the early modern period were unmarried, and therefore extremely probable that many of them were both ashamed of having a child outside marriage, and fearful about their survival. But this research has revealed that their circumstances, actions, and motives were more complex than these bald facts suggest. From the moment a woman began an illicit sexual liaison she could be categorised as neither maid, widow, or wife – defined by a state of non-being, rather than being. She could be excluded from the formal rites of childbirth and motherhood. She would have known that the situation which followed would be the near-impossible task of finding shelter and work so that she and her baby could survive. Some women achieved this against apparently near impossible odds. Others attempted to survive but abandoned their child when it was a few weeks old. But, as we have seen, some women concealed pregnancy, gave birth alone and then ended the child’s life, disposing of the body in whatever way they could. At such times, they might have seen the child as something sullied that had come from

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

321

their body, and treat it as other bodily detritus. Or, they might be drawn instinctively to water, and thus participate in the complex relationship which appears to exist between water, women and children. How often this happened, we cannot know. We return to where we started. Infanticide is a dark, hidden crime. A close study of a small geographic area has revealed much; anthropological theories about liminality have taken us further and offered a different perspective. Other sources and disciplines could add more. While we may find no ultimate ‘truth’, we should keep looking in order to aid our understanding of the men and women involved in infanticide, and the infants who fell victim to the crime. A line from Samuel Beckett offers an appropriate afterword: ‘They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more’.112

Bibliography Primary sources Anon, The Distressed Mother or Sorrowful Wife in Tears (1690) (ESTC R226661). ———, A Pittilesse Mother (1616) (ESTC 24757). Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot. London: Faber & Faber, 1958. Bond, Edward, Plays: One. London: Methuen, 1996. ———, Saved. London: Methuen, 2011. Brewer, Thomas, The Bloudy Mother (1609) (ESTC S124650). Delaney, Shelagh, A Taste of Honey (1958). London: Bloomsbury, 2014. MacLaine, Sue, A Place of Safety: Unpublished work, 2010. McDonagh, Martin, The Pillowman. London: Faber, 2003. Morrison, Toni, Beloved. London: Vintage, 2005. Olmi, Véronique, Beside the Sea. Translated by Adriana Hunter. London: Peirene, 2010. Partridge, N., and Sharp, J., Blood for Blood (1670) (ESTC R234717). Rådström, Niklas, Monsters. London: Oberon Modern Plays, 2009. Ravenhill, Mark, Handbag. London: Methuen, 1998. Shriver, Lionel, We Need to Talk about Kevin. London: Profile, 2005. Watson, Fred, Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger. Unpublished; RSC Archive, 1962. Wyndham, John, The Midwich Cuckoos. London: Penguin, 2008. 112 Beckett, Waiting for Godot, p. 89.

322 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Secondary sources Auerbach, Jake. ‘Paula Rego: Telling Tales (Screen talk with Paula Rego)’. London Barbican, 29 November 2012. Cohen, Derek, Shakespeare’s Culture of Violence. New York: St. Martin’s, 1993. Dolan, Frances E., Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England 1550–1700. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1994. Hendrick, Harry, ‘Children and Childhood’, Recent Findings of Research in Economic & Social History 15 (1992), pp. 1–4. Lambie, Ian David, ‘Mothers who kill : the crime of infanticide’, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 24, no. 1 (2001), pp. 71–80. Loughton, Tim, Registration of stillbirths, Hansard HC Deb 14 Jan 2014 Col 693. McEwen, John, Paula Rego: Behind the Scenes. London: Phaidon, 2008. Ravenhill, Mark, ‘A Tear in the Fabric: The James Bulger Murder and New Theatre Writing in the Nineties’, Theatre Forum 26 (Winter / Spring 2005), pp. 85–92. Sherr, L, Mueller, J, and Fox, Z, ‘Abandoned babies in the UK – a review utilizing media reports’, Child: care, health and development 35, no. 3 (2009), pp. 419–430. Showalter, Elaine, ‘Representing Ophelia: women, madness, and the responsibilities of feminist criticism’, In Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, edited by Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman, pp. 77–94. New York: Methuen, 1985. Snitow, Ann, ‘Death Duties: Toni Morrison Looks back in Sorrow’, In Critical Essays on Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”, edited by Barbara H. Solomon, pp. 147–152. London: G.K. Hall, 1998. Spencer, Jenny S, Dramatic Strategies in the Plays of Edward Bond. Cambridge: CUP, 1992. Staub, Susan C., ‘Early Modern Medea: Representations of Child Murder in the Street Literature of Seventeenth-Century England’, In Maternal Measures: Figuring caregiving in the early modern period, edited by Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh, pp. 333–347. London: Ashgate, 2000. Tyminski, Robert, The Psychology of Theft and Loss. London: Routledge, 2014. Walker, Garthine, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2003. Warren, Mary Anne, ‘On the moral and legal status of abortion’, In The Problem of Abortion, edited by Joel Feinberg, pp. 102–119. Belmont: Wadsworth, 1984.

News media (print and on-line sources) Armstrong, Jeremy. ‘Monsters of Monster Mansion’, Mirror, 6 October 2007. ‘Baby deaths link to Roman “brothel” in Buckinghamshire’. BBC Online, http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/10384460 [Accessed 27 June 2013].

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

323

‘Baby found injured under rubbish chute in Wolverhampton’. BBC Online, www. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-19546855 [Accessed 12 June 2014]. Bennett, Catherine. ‘Why does Jeremy Hunt want to turn the clock back on the abortion debate?’, The Observer, 7 October 2012. Billington, Michael. ‘Review – Monsters’, Guardian, 9 May 2009. Branigan, Tania. ‘China shocked after newborn’s rescue from sewer pipe’, Guardian, 29 May 2013. Brooker, Charlie. ‘Haven’t we had enough of murder on the telly?’, Guardian, 4 June 2012. Burgen, Stephen. ‘Mother Jailed for 30 Years for Killing her Children’, Guardian, 4 July 2012. Carter, Helen. ‘Mother accused of killing her children confessed at police station’, Guardian, 12 July 2011. Carter, Helen, and Laville, Sandra. ‘Doctor alerted police to ‘distressed’ mother hours before child killings’, Guardian Online, http://www.theguardian.com/ society/2008/nov/14/child-protection-mental-health-manchester [Accessed 5 June 2014]. Cochrane, Kira. ‘I didn’t speak for five years’, Guardian, 12 October 2011. ‘Cody-Anne Jackson jailed for suffocating daughter’. BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-40739654 [Accessed 14 May 2018]. Cohen, David. ‘A “miracle” baby for couple in fox horror’, Evening Standard, 8 March 2011. Costa, Maddy. ‘A killing in the park’, Guardian, 10 October 2011. ———. ‘Medea: the mother of all roles’, Guardian, 2 October 2012. ‘Dead baby found at recycling unit’. Guardian, 4 May 2012. ‘Eli Cox baby death: Mother and boyfriend jailed’. BBC Online, http://www.bbc. co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-41985494 [Accessed 13 May 2018]. Fitzsimmons, Lizzy. ‘Baby Lily’s mum tried to hide birth’, Stratford Observer, 4 April 2007. G.G. ‘Stumbling towards unsought killing’, Bristol Evening Post, 31 August 1962. ‘Gintare Suminaite walks free after Bognor baby killing’. BBC Online, http://www. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-38803441 [Accessed 13 May 2018]. Greenhill, Sam. ‘Mother who killed her children in hotel on Costa Brava’, Daily Mail Online, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161522/Mother-Lianne-Smithkilled-children-normal-happy-fell-spell-TV-psychic.html. [Accessed 5 June 2014]. Holmwood, Chloe. ‘Detective Inspector Richard Vickery of Kent Police talks about body of baby girl found in Sheerness ’, Kent online, http://www.kentonline. co.uk/sheerness/news/dead-baby-found-in-park-121676/ [Accessed 13 May 2018]. ‘HR executive flushed baby’s body down her parents’ drain’. Daily Telegraph, 2 October 2017.

324 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Jabour, Bridie. ‘Police interview mother of newborn baby found abandoned in Sydney drain’, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/ nov/23/newborn-baby-found-abandoned-25m-down-drain-in-north-west-sydney [Accessed 15 May 2018]. ‘Jail for couple who staged baby’s death on bus’. Guardian, 19 May 2017. ‘James Ring jailed for manslaughter after death of baby’. Kent Online, http://www. kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/dad-jailed-after-babys-death-184050/ [Accessed 5 June 2018]. Kirk, Tristan. ‘Parents who staged baby’s death jailed’, Evening Standard, 18 May 2017. McKay, Neil. ‘A glimpse of pure evil’, Guardian, 1 August 2011. McVeigh, Tracy. ‘How new call to cut the abortion term has rekindled bitter debate’, Observer, 7 October 2012. Milne, Emma. ‘Murder or Infanticide? The causes behind the Crime’, Independent, 2017. Morris, Steven. ‘Parents convicted over death of baby’, Guardian, 11 May 2018. ‘Mother called abandoned baby Amelia’. Reading Chronicle, 6 May 2012. ‘Mother guilty of murdering her children to hurt the father’. Guardian, 9 August 2011. ‘Mother held after baby rescued from drain’. Guardian, 24 June 2013. ‘Mum who dumped baby in river is spared jail’. Birmingham Mail, 21 August 2007. ‘Newborn baby found dumped in aircraft lavatory bin’. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/worldnews/asia/philippines/8000016/Newborn-baby-found-dumped-inaircraft-lavatory-bin.html [Accessed 20 May 2018]. ‘Newborn baby found inside bin in hospital toilets, court told’. Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/03/newborn-baby-found-binhospital-toilets-wigan-court-told [Accessed 20 May 2018]. ‘No charges against girl after baby’s remains found in Broadway, Sheerness’. BBC Online, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-39174411 [Accessed 13 May 2018]. Ord, Louise. ‘Roman dead baby “brothel” mystery deepens’, BBC Online, http://www. bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14401305 [Accessed 15 September 2013]. Perraudin, Frances. ‘Postmortem on baby boy found in Grimsby drain proves inconclusive’, Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/ feb/15/baby-boy-body-grimsby-drain-postmortem-inconclusive [Accessed 20 May 2018]. Quinn, Ben. ‘Health secretary backs 12–week legal limit on abortions’, Guardian, 6 October 2012. ‘Rachel Tunstill: Mother murdered baby with scissors’. BBC online, http://www. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-40330268 [Accessed 15 May 2018]. Radnedge, Aiden. ‘Outrage as thug who punched pregnant girlfriend in stomach the day before she lost unborn baby jailed for 16 weeks’, Metro, 30 October 2013.

Epilogue: Echoes of the Past

325

Ramesh, Randeep. ‘Europe’s “baby boxes” condemned by UN’, Guardian, 11 June 2012. Salmon, Natasha. ‘Father punched two-day-old daughter to death “because she would not stop crying”’, Independent, 2017. Topping, Alexandra. ‘Accusations of witchcraft are part of growing pattern of child abuse in UK’, Guardian Online, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/oct/30/ woman-admits-killing-two-babies [Accessed 20 November 2013]. ———. ‘‘Good mum’ admits to killing her two babies’, Guardian Online, http:// www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/oct/30/woman-admits-killing-two-babies [Accessed 8 August 2014]. Toynbee, Polly. ‘This frenzy of hatred is a disaster for children at risk’, Guardian, 18 November 2008. Vasagar, Jeevan. ‘Police believe baby found in plastic bag near river was battered to death’, Guardian, 24 May 2006. Wainwright, Martin. ‘Woman jailed for self-abortion at 39 weeks’, Guardian, 18 September 2012. Whitehead, Tom. ‘Mother stamped toddler to death after authorities failed to spot abuse’, Daily Telegraph, 8 April 2016.

On-line sources Evans, Stephen. ‘Are Grimm’s Fairy Tales too twisted for children?’, BBC Worldwide, http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20130801–too-grimm-for-children [Accessed 30 November 2013]. ‘In Style’. www.instyle.co.uk/celebrity/pictures/pregnant-celebrities. [Accessed 1 August 2014]. Kent, Sarah. ‘Oratoria (sic)’, Theartdesk, www://theartdesk.com [Accessed 4 October 2013]. Levenson, Judge Howard. ‘Decision of the Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber)’, http://www.west-info.eu/files/JR-1201–2011–00.pdf [Accessed 10 September 2014]. NSPCC. ‘Child Homicides Statistics’, http://www.nspcc.org.uk/inform/research/ statistics/child_homicide_statistics_wda48747.html [Accessed 30 July 2014]. ———. ‘Explaining the Statistics’, http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/ brief ings/child_killings_in_england_and_wales_wda67213.html [Accessed 30 July 2014].

326 

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Appendix 1

The 1624 Infanticide Act1

Chapter 27 of the statute of 21 James I An act to prevent the destroying and murthering of bastard children 21 Jac. 1 c. 27, Statutes of the Realm. Whereas many lewd Women that have been delivered of Bastard Children, to avoid their Shame, and to escape Punishment, do secretly bury or conceal the Death of their Children, and after, if the Child be found dead, the said Woman do alledge, that the said Child was born dead; whereas it falleth out sometimes (although hardly it is to be proved) that the said Child or Children were murthered by the said Women, their lewd Mothers, or by their Assent or Procurement: …That if any Woman…be delivered of any Issue of her Body, Male or Female, which being born alive, should by the Laws of this Realm be a Bastard, and that she endeavour privately, either by drowning or secret burying thereof, or any other Way, either by herself or the procuring of others, so to conceal the Death thereof, as that it may not come to Light, whether it were born alive or not, but be concealed: In every such Case the said Mother so offending shall suffer Death ..., except such Mother can make proof by one Witness at the least, that the Child (whose Death was by her so intended to be concealed) was born dead.

1 https://deviantmaternity.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/an-act-to-prevent-the-destroyingand-murthering-of-bastard-children.pdf [Accessed 29 May 2018]

Appendix 2 Note on Sussex Coroners’ inquests Sussex has a high level of survival for records of Coroners’ inquests (1,367 survive for the years 1485 to 1688, as well as others from beyond the early modern period). They are stored at the National Archive and are subject to the inevitable ravages of water and burn damage. The inquests, which clerks recorded in Latin, have been translated by Roy F. Hunnisett, who was principal assistant keeper of public records at the National Archive.1 His desire was to make public records available to others. He does not interpret the documents (though he does make some statistical analyses with brief comments). Where clerks resorted to the vernacular, Hunnisett indicates the fact by single quote marks. This is the practice I have followed. Although the inquests have been ‘edited’, the term does not indicate selection and the volumes contain all known surviving records. In an editorial note Hunnisett describes his editorial process. He says the originals ‘contain much repetition and are sometimes excessively verbose’2 To demonstrate this he includes one inquest both in Latin and in a verbatim translation, which shows the constant repetition in the accounts. To take one short extract from the verbatim translation: of which mortal wound thus given by the aforesaid Henry Younge in the aforesaid form the same Thomas Botcher on the aforesaid sixth day of August in the aforesaid twenty-seventh year immediately died at Lewes aforesaid in the aforesaid county;3

Hunnisett writes that he has omitted words stating what is self-evident, such as ‘feloniously’, but otherwise has deleted ‘nothing of substance’. He ackncowledges that this may make the records appear uniform. It must be recognised that the clerks may have overwritten events with their own cultural perceptions, a fact which applies to all written documents.

1 Hunnisett, ed. Inquests 1485–1558; ———, ed. Inquests 1558–1603; ———, ed. Inquests 1603–1688. 2 ———, ed. Inquests 1558–1603, p. xvli. 3 ibid., p. xlvii.

1547 Feb

1550 Dec

1553 Feb

1555 Nov

1559 Mar

1599 Mar

1559 Nov

1/132

1/150

1/165

1/204

* 17

* 106

2/5

Alice Warner

Alice Bankes

Alice Woode

Robert and Elizabeth Kente

Richard Bernarde

Joan Bakon

William Spookes

Year Month Accused

Caseb

Sidlesham

Little Horsted Berwick

Aldrington

‘spynster’

spinster

spinster

parents

f

~

f

f

f

father and grandfather of child

Hellingly

m

m/f

f

Status

W.Grinstead ‘spynster’

Merston

Place

8

child

child

6

0

0

6

Age

Complete list of cases from archival and other sourcesa

thrown from window stab to head, or blow

drowned

[cold/exposure]

crushed

murdered

beating

Method

not guilty

~

pregnant

~

~

~

~

Plea

acquitted

~

guilty

accidental

~

waived

murder

Conclusion

~

~

~

~

~

~

outlawed

Sentence

Beat/stabbed servant aged 8

Child was bound, hung up, beaten; trampled; buried face down. Spookes fled. Hid infant on bench in father’s house and fled. Barnerde fathered child on his daughter. After killing the child he committed suicide. Rioters broke into his home, took property and evicted three other young children. Parents sent daughter Agnes to guard neighbour’s sheep resulting in her death because they ‘took no care of her’. Pleaded pregnancy.

Additional Details

Appendix 3 Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatural, Unexplained Infant Death 1547–1686

1565 Apr

1565 May

1567 June

1572 Dec

1573 June

1574 Oct

1575 Sep

1576 Dec

1577 Mar

1577 ~

2/24

2/25

* 214

2/111

* 467

* 515

2/153

* 623

2/171

#

Place

Kirdford

Mercy Gould

Anthony Fisher/Joan Marshe Elizabeth Gery Margaret Comber Agnes Berye

Joan Powlter

Cuckfield

Hailsham

Fletching

Nuthurst

Playden

Wivelsfield

Robert Buxted Willard Richard and ? Hollington Kyte

Sibyl Elyett

Henry Pellyng Lindfield

Year Month Accused

Caseb

spinster now wife of John ‘Berries’ spinster

spinster

spinster

labourer/ spinster

spinster

wife

butcher

‘spynster’/ wife

husband

Status

m

f

f

m

~

f

f

m

m

~

m/f

Method

cold [exposure]

beaten

nettle in mouth

killed

0

?

stillborn/ infanticide

beaten

infant killed

0

~

infant killed

9

~

infant broke neck

unborn bludgeoned pregnant wife

Age

~

not guilty

~

not guilty

~

~

acquitted

not guilty

convicted

both not guilty

not guilty

natural death

~

~

guilty

guilty

convicted

Conclusion

~

~

not guilty

Plea

~

~

~

death

~

~

~

to hang

to hang

lunatic

Sentence

Agnes accused of killing daughter of John Berries, now her husband. Blows were heard after cries stopped. Accused ‘John Nok’. Extensive enquiry discussed by David Cressy. See below.

~

Pleaded pregnancy. Untrue.

‘They killed her infant and buried it’.

Fortune Luck, servant, died of the cold after being sent on an errand by Kyte and wife. Described as ‘unbaptised’ infant.

Attacked wife when ‘frantick’. Judged ‘lunatic’. May have died in prison. Sibyl spinster/wife of William murdered an unknown infant, encouraged and later harboured by her husband. Pleaded not guilty ‘Christian Grantham’ blamed; couple harboured her. All convicted. William pleaded Benefit of Clergy; Sibyl died in prison. Joan Marden was child’s mother.

Additional Details

330  Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Lindfield Bridget Standford Joan Browne Etchingham spinster

Ursula Farmer/ Alice Farmer Constance Stevens Elizabeth Reader Mary Mowser

1579 Apr

1580 Jan

1582 Oct

1582 Dec

1588 Mar

1588 Aug

1589 Jan

1589 May

1589 June

1589 Nov

1590 Jan

2/239

2/287

* 861

2/360

2/369

* 1125

2/380

2/387

* 1202

2/398

Roland Medowe/ Nicholas Gower

Joan Baker

Margery Porter Mercy Drowling

‘spynster’

wife of Richard Drowling spinster

spinster

Penhurst

Eastbourne

Southover

Framfield

labourers and assailants

spinster

spinster

spinster

Washington spinster

Rotherfield

Dallington

Rye

Maud Godley West Burton spinster

m

f

f

m

f

f

m

~

f

m

m

m

spinster

2/226

Ringmer

1579

* 712

m

m/f

spynster

Catsfield

Joan Farnecombe Alice Baker

1578 Mar

2/200

Status

Place

Year Month Accused

Caseb

drowned in pond

drowned

Method

thrown in well

crushed, neck broken

strangled

born dead

with a knife

unborn cut Alice Smyth’s throat; removed child from womb

0

infanti- ~ cide 10 beaten with a staff 0 disembowelled with knife

0

0

0

0

suffocated by hand infant murdered

0

child

10+

Age

~

~

not guilty/ pregnant

not guilty

~

not guilty

not guilty/ pregnancy

~

~

not guilty

confessed

~

not guilty

Plea

convicted

hanged

remanded (pregnant) released

~

~

to hang

~

hanging

~

~

death

Sentence

Body thrown under stairs. Pleaded pregnancy and found to be so. Sentenced to death July 1590. Ursula aided and abetted by Alice, her mother. Did not flee.

~

John Mody, infant’s father, to be whipped around the town. ~

Alice’s mother, Elizabeth, suspected accomplice. Died in gaol.

Child was Leonard Farnecombe.

Additional Details

Gower aided and abetted.

Elizabeth Watson cited as accessory. acquitted At trial said child (Edward Cooper) found to be killed by Tom Staff. Mary guilty, Mary hanged, Mary killed her newborn. Claimed mother mother freed. pregnancy, but untrue. Agnes aided and abetted. acquitted guilty to hang ~

both guilty

acquitted

sentenced

guilty

natural death

convicted

guilty/ ignoramus ~

convicted

Conclusion

Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatur al, Unexpl ained Infant Death 1547–1686

331

Margret Fuller Westfield

Elizabeth Eastbourne Lyndsey Agnes Nokes Ticehurst

Bennet Davis Maresfield

May Sibyl Lamboll Joan Ambry

Alice Lyghe

1591 Sept

1591 Dec

1592 Dec

1594 Apr

1595 Apr

1597 Apr

1600 Mar

1600 June

1600 July

1603 Dec

2/450

2/468

2/480

* 1572 1595 May

1595 Dec

2/425

2/483

2/502

2/535

2/538

2/544

3/10

Richard ap Beaven

Alice Hide

Mildred Barnes

~

~

Status

spinster

yeoman

‘spicer’

‘spynster’

spinster

spinster

spinster

spinster/ servant

~

?

Ticehurst

spinster

Westbourne spinster

Chichester

Lewes

Henfield

Heathfield

Burwash

Burwash

Pulborough ‘Yoman’

2/420

Thomas Cranley

1591 July

2/417

Place

Year Month Accused

Caseb

m

f

f

f

m

f

m

f

m

f

m.

f

m

m/f

stillborn

‘born mute and dead’

stillborn

natural death

crushed newborn’s head

Method

0

0

0 ‘twisted and broke neck’ premature and stillborn

strangled

thrown into pit and drowned child drowned in pail of water 0 suffocated? born dead? 0 thrown and drowned in pit 6y 11m raped, languished and died

0

0

0

0

0

0

Age

~

not guilty

not guilty

~

~

not guilty

natural death not guilty/ pregnant ~

.

~

~

not guilty

Plea

natural death

natural death guilty

Beavan ‘at large’

~

acquitted

not guilty

acquitted

~

to hang

~

~

~

~

~

~

~

Sentence

Additional Details

~

~

Agnes Davies (‘spicer’/wife) of Hugh Davies harboured Beaven knowing he had committed the crime. ~

Evidence given against Bennet. Infant stillborn. Women testified against Hide.

Pleaded pregnancy. Received special pardon. ~

Wife gave evidence against Cranley at Sessions. He was acquitted. John at Death said to be responsible. ~ ~ ‘‘Godley’ Walker, … who had been born about 8 am … died a natural death … and not otherwise’. ~ ~ ‘An unknown woman gave birth to a dead male child’. suspected of delivered by Natural death. Employer, Awcocke felony proclamation and wife discharged. Mildred suspected, but released. ~ ~ ~

released

Conclusion

332  Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

1604 Sept

1606 Apr

1606 July

1608 Feb

Pre1609

1609 June

1611 Apr

1611 Nov

1612 Jan

1613 Mar

1613 May

1616 April

3/51

3/54

3/71

§ 

3/81

* 200

* 221

3/108

3/123

3/126

3/171

Chichester

Place

Isabel Woodgat

Agnes Cheesman Katherine Haddes

Agnes Pavy

Agnes Smith

Agnes Swyft

John Swyft

Rebecca Henberye Jane Hattersley

Joan Homewood

spinster/ wife?

spinster

spinster

Status

spinster

spinster

infant’s father

~

spinster

Brighton

wife of Robert, gent

Rottingdean spinster

Wivelsfield

Lamberhurst spinster

Ditchling

Lancing

Worth

East Grinstead

Lamberhurst widow

East Grinstead

Joan Maunser Mayfield

Helen Gates

Year Month Accused

3/19

Caseb

f

f,f

m

m

m

f

m

~

m

m,m,f

m

m

m/f

struck & bruised head strangled, gave bruises

broke neck

strangled

strangled

nips & bruises

~

born prematurely

cut throats of her three children

born prematurely

born dead

Method

‘servula’ multiple injuries

0

0

0

0

0

6m

0

0

?

0

0

Age natural death misadventure

Conclusion

~

~

Sentence

~

~

Additional Details

~

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

~

waived

convicted

convicted

convicted

not guilty

~

hanged

hanged

hanged

~

Gave birth to female twins; strangled and choked one child. bruised other, thrusting it into the ‘hoole’ of a post. Injuries to Joan Giles, husband’s servant comprising staves, straps, hot tongs, striking, whipping, pinching. Accused. At large.

.~

~

~

Joan cut her Richard Homewood was father of throat and the children. drowned herself ~ misadventure ~ Gaoled on suspicion of murder. Appears not to have stood trial. not denied guilty hanged Three newborns at different times. Aided by their father Adam Adamson. Described in pamphlet. See below. ~ suspected of ~ Multiple wounds, caused by hand. murder Suspected of murder, fled, retaken but not tried. ~ not guilty ~ ~

~

~

~

Plea

Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatur al, Unexpl ained Infant Death 1547–1686

333

Mary Delve

1621 Apr

1621 May

1622 Apr

1622 Dec

1623 Jan

1624 Feb

1626 Apr

1626 Apr

3/222

3/225

3/235

3/244

* 647

3/254

3/272

3/273

Northiam

Selmeston

Joan Blackman Joan Power

Joan Barnett

South Mundham

Ringmer

Rye

Ann/Agnes New Hebbenden Fishbourne Alice Thatcher Bodiam

Eleanor Warwicke

Mary Hemsley Willingdon

spinster

spinster

~

spinster

spinster

spinster

spinster

spinster

~

Lewes

Unnamed

3/211

1620 Jan

1618 July

3/542

widow

Status

baker

1617 Jan

3/186

Place

Mary Hailsham Reynoldes Francis Myles Rye

Year Month Accused

Caseb

f

f

f

m

f

m

m

m

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

~ m

0

Age

m

m/f

not guilty

not guilty

~

~

not guilty

Plea

strangled/ suffocated thrown onto mound of earth and suffocated

not guilty

not guilty

choked, not guilty smothered, strangled languished and natural died death thrown from ~ window wilful negligence/ Devil put it in thrown onto her mind rocks

smothered

struck pregnant woman premature; died next day drowned

suffocated

Method

natural death

acquitted

convicted

~

~

convicted

acquitted

convicted

~

~

acquitted

Conclusion

acquitted

~

~

not guilty

~

hanged

~

hanged

~

~

acquitted

Sentence

Thomas Frenchman, child’s father advised Joan to ‘take something’ if she became pregnant but she did not do so. Newborn died after half an hour and body thrown onto rocks and into the sea. A Richard Howell and wife gave evidence against Joan. ~

~

~

Nicholas and Katherine Reynoldes accused of encouraging/ comforting Mary. Both to appear at Assize. Nicholas delivered by proclamation. ~

~

Myles killed pregnant woman and her unborn child. Child was Nicholas Newton.

Note says she did not flee.

Additional Details

334  Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Rachel Burtenshaw Joan/Alice alias Willis Elizabeth Sparshall Jane Evans

Joan Chesle

Elizabeth Launder Alice Bassett

1628 Mar

1633 Aug

1634 Dec

1636 Feb

1636 Dec

1638 Dec

1648 Apr

1650 Nov

1650 Dec

1651 Mar

1651 Aug

1656 July

1656 Nov

3/287

3/327

3/341

3/348

3/353

3/367

3/404

416

417

418

421

438

3/439

Place

Eastbourne

Rye

Hastings

Susan Cliffe Hockham Elizabeth Hailsham Freakes Mary Barwick Petworth jnr.

Eliz. Cruttenden? Elizabeth Beecraft

spinster

alias widow of Henry spinster

spinster

spinster

spinster?

Status

spinster

spinster

spinster

spinster

spinster

spinster

E.Chiltington spinster

Barcombe

South Harting Lindfield

Cliffe

Hartfield

Joan Higgons Ferring

Year Month Accused

Caseb

f

~

f

f

m

m

m

m

f

m

m

f

f

m/f

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Age

strangled

buried in cell

strangled

thrown in pond

choked/strangled

threw into field. Died of cold/ lack of nourishment thrown into brooke of water threw in pond

cut throat

drowned in well

strangled

thrown down naked in garden cut throat

Method

not guilty

~

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty; pregnant not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

Plea

acquitted

~

acquitted

convicted

acquitted

convicted

convicted

convicted

convicted

acquitted

convicted

convicted

convicted

Conclusion

~

~

~

hanged

~

hanged

~

hanged

hanged

released

hanged

hanged

hanged

Sentence

Mary Barwick sen. Spinster alias wife of Christopher Barwick (believed to have aided and abetted) supported her knowing of the crime. Body found after digging on Joan Steadman’s advice. Wrapped dead infant and laid it in a settle. Gaoled pending two sureties.

Did not flee, dicharged, paid fees

Jury of matrons found her to be not pregnant.

~

~

~

~

‘Intending she should die’ and ‘deprived of any human assistance’. ~

Additional Details

Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatur al, Unexpl ained Infant Death 1547–1686

335

Joan Harmer

?

Jane Dobson Maresfield

1657 July

1662 Mar

1662 Mar

1663 June

1665 Apr

1666 Sep

1667 Apr

1667 Feb

1670 Mar

1677 Dec

1678 Jan

1679 Jan

1679 July

445

455

456

461

3/466

3/472

3/475

3/478

3/479

3/496

3/497

3/500

3/501

Edburton

Worth

Goring

Hastings

West Firle

Petworth

Lindfield

Ticehurst

Framfield

Mayfield

Ann Taylor

Patching

Ann Batchelor Framfield

Elizabeth Baker Jane Pollard

Ann Gates

Frances Edwards Thomasin Pollington Dorothy Wood Margaret Buck Henry Beale

Ann Comber/ Lurgashall John Puttocke

1657 Mar

442

Place

Year Month Accused

Caseb

spinster

spinster

infant’s grandmother

spinster

spinster

spinster

?

spinster

father

spinster

spinster

spinster

wife

spinster/ widow

Status

m

m

m

m

m

m

?

m

f

m

f/f

f

m

m

m/f

choked and drowned strangled

threw into pit full of water, mud, filth struck with wooden bar cut neck

Method

0

0

0

0

0

0

?

thrown in pond of water

strangled

struck with bedstaffe

born dead? Strangled? strangled

strangled

?

15 or 50 struck in chest weeks 0 strangled

~

0

0

~

0

Age

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

~

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

indictment rejected confessed murder not guilty

not gulity

Plea

convicted

acquitted

guilty

convicted

convicted

convicted

~

acquitted

convicted

acquitted

to hang

~

~

convicted

Conclusion

sentenced

~

hanged

pardoned

hanged

hanged

~

released

hanged

~

~

hanged

~

hanged

Sentence

Pleaded a pardon (allowed). Released. Paid fees.

Produced a pardon and released; ‘paid her fees’. Assize record states William and Jane Pollard killed newborn infant of Margaret Pollard. William died in gaol; Jane hanged. Margaret acquitted. Paid her fees.

Trial assumed infant born alive.

Enquiry into ‘death of a child’. Witnesses called but ‘canne findeno discovery theirof’. ~

Child, his ‘natural daughter’, was asleep in her cradle. ~

Fled but later appeared at an Assize hearing. Subsequently found to be pregnant – remanded.

John Puttocke charged with aiding (acquitted); but sentenced to three months for unlawful sex. ‘while of unsound mind’

Additional Details

336  Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

1682 Feb

1683 Mar

1685 Aug

1686 July

1686 Dec

3/506

3/507

3/512

3/516

3/518

Place

Frant

spinster

Sedlescombe spinster

father

spinster

spinster

Status

m

m 0

0

8 wks

0

m f

0

Age

f

m/f

strangled/thrown into well strangled

bruise to head

strangled

premature birth

Method

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty/ benefit of clergy

not guilty

not guilty

Plea

acquitted

acquitted

~

convicted

Later women accused her of strangling; acquitted. paid fees

Additional Details

Robert and Elizabeth Smith (spinster) accused; he convicted (murder) but pleaded benefit of clergy; Elizabeth pardoned. to be released Two men aided, harboured and comforted Margery. ~ ~

released

~

Sentence

acquitted

born dead

Conclusion

a All records are taken from the three volumes of Hunnisett’s translations from the Latin unless otherwise indicated. b Records from Hunnisett’s translations are indicated as volume number/case number * Assize Court records. # Records held among State Papers at The National Archives. The case is fully described in ‘Mercy Gould and the Vicar of Cuckfield’ in David Cressy, Agnes Bowker’s Cat: Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England, Oxford University Press (2009). § Described in Thomas Brewer’s pamphlet The Bloudy Mother (1609).

Margery Barham Mary Peirce

Elizabeth Findon Bennett Richard Jones Slinfold

Mary Gardiner Amberley

Year Month Accused

Caseb

Sussex Cases of Violent, Unnatur al, Unexpl ained Infant Death 1547–1686

337

Joan Farnecombe Alice Baker

Ursula Rotherfield Farmer/ Alice Farmer Elizabeth Eastbourne Lyndsey Agnes Nokes Ticehurst

1578 Mar

1579

1588 Aug

1595 April

1595 May

1597 Apr

1621 Apr 1636 Feb

1648 Apr

1650 Dec

1651 Mar

200

* 712

369

480

* 1572

502

222 348

404

416

418

Elizabeth Freakes

Mary Delve Elizabeth Sparshall Elizabeth Launder Alice Bassett

Alice Hide

Little Horsted Catsfield

Alice Woode

1559 Mar

* 17

Hailsham

Northiam South Harting East Chiltington Eastbourne

Henfield

Ringmer

Place

Year Month Accused

f

m

spinster

spinster

m

m m

m

m

f

f

m

m

f

m/f

spinster alias widow of Henry spinster

‘spicer’

spinster

spinster

‘spynster’

spinster

‘spynster’

spinster

Status

0

0

0

0 0

0

child

0

0

child

10+

child

Age

thrown into brooke of water threw into pond of water; drowned/ choked thrown in pond

thrown into pit and drowned drowned in pail of water thrown and drowned in pit drowned drowned in well

thrown in well

drowned in pond

drowned

drowned

Method

not guilty

not guilty; pregnant not guilty

not guilty not guilty

~

not guilty/ preg. ~

not guilty

~

not guilty

pregnant

Plea

convicted

convicted

convicted

convicted acquitted

~

not guilty

acquitted

guilty/ ignoramus acquitted

convicted

guilty

Conclusion

Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Water

Case

Appendix 4

hanged

hanged

~

hanged released

~

~

~

~

~

death

~

Sentence

Jury of matrons found her to be not pregnant. ~

~ ~

Women testified against Hide.

Pleaded pregnancy. Received special pardon. ~

Alice’s mother, Elizabeth, suspected accomplice. Ursula alided and abetted by Alice, her mother. Did not flee.

Child was Leonard Farnecombe.

Pleaded pregnancy.

Additional Details

338  Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

1662 Mar

1679 July

1686 July

456

501

516

* Assize Court records

1657 Mar

442

Place

Margery Barham

Dorothy Wood Ann Taylor m m

spinster

Patching

Sedlescombe spinster

f,f

m

m/f

spinster

spinster/ widow

Status

Ticehurst

Ann Comber/ Lurgashall John Puttocle

Year Month Accused

Case

0

0

0

0

Age threw into pit full of water, mud, filth cast into pit of water thrown in pond of water strangled/thrown into well

Method

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty

~

Plea

acquitted

convicted

convicted

convicted

Conclusion

To be released

sentenced

sentenced

hanged

Sentence

John Puttocke charged with aiding (acquitted); but sentenced to three months for unlawful sex. Pleaded pregnancy and found to be so. Pleaded a pardon (allowed). Released. Paid fees. Two men aided, harboured and comforted Margery.

Additional Details

Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Water

339

Alice Hide

Alice Bankes

1597 Apr

1599 Mar

1623 Jan

1624 Feb

1626 Apr

1628 Mar

* 106

* 647

254

273

287

South Mundham

Rye

Joan Higgons Ferring

Joan Power

Joan Barnett

Alice Thatcher Bodiam

Berwick

Henfield

spinster?

spinster

~

spinster

spinster

‘spicer’

spinster

f

f

f

m

~

m

f

502

Eastbourne

1595 April

480

Elizabeth Lyndsey

f

Ursula Farmer/ Rotherfield Alice Farmer

1588 Aug

369

‘spynster’

m

Joan Browne Etchingham spinster

m/f

1588 Mar

Status

360

Place

Year Month Accused

0

0

0

0

child

0

0

0

0

Age

thrown down naked in garden

thrown onto mound of earth and suffocated

willful negligence/ thrown onto rocks

thrown from window

thrown from window

thrown and drowned in pit

thrown into pit and drowned

thrown in well

crushed, neck broken

Method

not guilty

not guilty

convicted

natural death

hanged

acquitted

~

convicted

devil put it in her mind

~

~

~

~

~

Sentence

not guilty

~

~

aquitted

acquitted

sentenced

Conclusion

~

~

~

not guilty/ pregnancy

not guilty

not guilty/ pregnancy

Plea

Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Throwing

Case

Appendix 5

‘Intending she should die’ and ‘deprived of any human assistance’.

~

Thomas Frenchman, child’s father, advised Joan to ‘take something’ if she became pregnant but she did not do so. Newborn died after half an hour and Joan threw body onto rocks and into the sea.

~

~

Women testified against Hide.

Pleaded pregnancy. Received special pardon.

Ursula aided and abetted by Alice, her mother.

Body thrown under stairs. Pleaded pregnancy and found to be so. Sentenced to death July 1590.

Additional Details

340  Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Alice Bassett

Elizabeth Freakes

Ann Comber/ Lurgashall John Puttocke

1650 Nov

1651 Mar

1657 Mar

1679 July

1686 July

416

418

442

501

516

* Assize Court records

Elizabeth Launder

1648 Apr

Patching

Sedlescombe spinster

Margery Barham

spinster

spinster/ widow

spinster

spinster

spinster

Ann Taylor

Hailsham

Eastbourne

East Chiltngton

m

m

m

f

m

m

m

404

Elizabeth White

Shermanbury spinster

1646 Dec

m/f m

Status

spinster

Barcombe

393

Joan Chesle

1638 Dec

367

Place

Year Month Accused

Case

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

Age

strangled/thrown into well

thrown in pond of water

threw into pit full of water, mud, filth

thrown in pond

threw in pond

thrown into brooke of water

thrown into cellar intending death from cold/ lack of nourishment

threw into field. Died of cold/ lack of nourishment

Method

not guilty

not guilty

~

not guilty

not guilty

not guilty; pregnant

not guilty

not guilty

Plea

acquitted

convicted

convicted

convicted

convicted

convicted

convicted

convicted

Conclusion

Pleaded a pardon (allowed). Released. Paid fees.

John Puttocke charged with aiding (acquitted); but sentenced to three months for unlawful sex.

Jury of matrons found her to be not pregnant.

Thrown into cellar of John Langford, her master.

~

Additional Details

to be released Two men aided, harboured and comforted Margery.

sentenced

hanged

hanged

hanged

~

hanged

hanged

Sentence

Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Throwing

341

Alice Warner

Henry Pellyng Lindfield

1559 Nov

1565 Apr

1567 June

1577 Mar

1588 Mar

1589 May

5

24

* 214

171

360

380

Halisham

Buxted

Sidlesham

Hellingly

spinster now wife of John ‘Berries’

butcher

husband

spinster

father and grandfather of child

Status

Elizabeth Reader

Framfield

spinster

Joan Browne Etchingham spinster

Agnes Berye

Robert Willard

Richard Bernarde

1553 Feb

165

Merston

William Spookes

1547 Feb

132

Place

Accused

Year Month

m

m

f

m

~

f

f

m

m/f

stab to head

crushed

beating

Method

10

0

?

~

beaten with a staff

crushed, neck broken

beaten

beaten

unborn bludgeoned pregnant wife

8

0

6

Age

not guilty

not guilty/ pregnancy

not guilty

~

not guilty

not guilty

~

~

Plea

acquitted

sentenced

acquitted

guilty

convicted

aquitted

~

murder

Conclusion

released

~

~

to hang

lunatic

~

~

outlawed

Sentence

At trial said child (Edward Cooper) found to be killed by Tom Staff.

Body thrown under stairs. Pleaded pregnancy and found to be so. Sentenced to death July 1590.

Agnes accused of killing daughter of John Berries, now her husband. Blows were heard after cries stopped. Accused ‘John Nok’.

Joan Marden was child’s mother.

Attacked wife when ‘frantick’. Judged ‘lunatic’. May have died in prison.

Beat/stabbed servant

Barnerde fathered child on his daughter. After killing the child he committed suicide. Rioters broke into home and took property and evicted three other young children.

Child was bound, hung up, beaten; trampled; buried face down. Spookes fled.

Additional Details

Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Bloodshed or Extreme Violence

Case

Appendix 6

342  Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Mayfield

Jane Evans

Frances Edwards

1616 April

1633 Aug

1636 Dec

1657 July

1662 Mar

171

327

353

445

455

* Assize Court records.

Lindfield

Rachel Burtenshaw

1606 July

54

Thomasin Pollington

Isabel Woodgat

Joan Homewood

Thomas Cranley

1591 July

417

labourers and assailants

spinster

spinster

Status

Framfield

Hartfield

Brighton

East Grinstead

spinster

wife

spinster

spinster

wife of Robert, gent

spinster/ wife?

Pulborough ‘Yoman’

Penhurst

Roland Medowe/ Nicholas Gower

Eastbourne

Joan Baker

1590 Jan

Mary Mowser Southover

Place

398

1589 June

387

Accused

* 1202 1589 Nov

Year Month

Case

f

m

f

f

f

m,m,f

m.

m

f

f

m/f

with a knife

disembowelled with knife

Method

cut throats of her three children

crushed newborn’s head

0

~

0

0

cut neck

struck with wooden bar

cut throat

cut throat

‘servula’ multiple injuries

?

0

unborn cut Alice Smyth’s throat; removed child from womb

0

0

Age

confessed murder

indictment rejected

not guilty

not guilty

~

~

not guilty

~

~

not guilty/ pregnancy

Plea

Sentence

Additional Details

~

convicted

convicted

waived

released

convicted

guilty

Wife gave evidence against Cranley at Sessions. He was acquitted. John at Death said to be responsible.

Gower aided and abetted.

~

hanged

hanged

hanged

~

Fled but later appeared an Assize hearing.

‘while of unsound mind’

~

~

Injuries to Joan Giles,husband’s servant: staves, straps, hot tongs, striking, whipping, pinching. Accused at large.

Joan cut her Richard Homewood was father of throat and the children. drowned herself

~

hanged

to hang

Mary guilty, Mary hange; Mary killed her newborn. Claimed mother mother freed. pregnancy, but untrue. Agnes acquitted aided and abetted.

Conclusion

Sussex Infant Deaths Involving Bloodshed or Ex treme Violence

343

Richard Barnerde

1553 Feb

1555 Nov

1565 Apr

1565 May

165

204

24

25

Aldrington

Sibyl Elyett

Kirdford

Henry Pellyng Lindfield

Robert and Elizabeth Kente

Merston

William Spookes

1547 Feb

132

Hellingly

Place

Year Month Accused m

m/f

‘spynster’/ wife

husband

parents

m

~

f

father and f grandfather of child

~

Status

[cold/exposure]

crushed

beating

Method

infant

broke neck

unborn bludgeoned pregnant wife

6

0

6

Age

~

not guilty

~

~

~

Plea

guilty

convicted

accidental

~

murder

to hang

lunatic

~

~

outlawed

Conclusion Sentence

Sibyl spinster/ wife of William murdered an unknown infant, encouraged and later harboured by her husband. Pleaded not guilty ‘Christian Grantham’ blamed; couple harboured her. All convicted. William pleaded Benefit of Clergy; Sibyl died inprison.

Attacked wife when ‘frantick’. Judged ‘lunatic’. May have died in prison.

Parents sent daughter Agnes to guard neighbour’s sheep resulting in her death because they ‘took no care of her’.

Barnerde fathered child on his daughter. After killing the child, he committed suicide. Rioters broke into home and took property and evicted three other young children.

Child was bound, hung up, beaten; trampled; buried face down. Spookes fled.

Additional Details

Sussex Infant Deaths Showing Direct Involvement of Men

Case

Appendix 7

344  Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Francis Myles Rye

Mary Hemsley Willingdon

1572 Dec

1574 Oct

1580 Jan

1590 Jan

1591 July

Pre1609

1618 July

1621 May

* 515

239

398

417

§ 

542

225

Jane Hattersley

Thomas Cranley

labourers and assailants

spinster

labourer/ spinster

wife

butcher

Status

East Grinstead

spinster

baker

~

Pulborough ‘Yeoman’

Penhurst

Rye

Margery Porter

Roland Medowe/ Nicholas Gower

Playden

Hollington

Anthony Fisher/Joan Marshe

Richard and ? Kyte

Buxted

111

Robert Willard

1567 June

* 214

Place

Year Month Accused

Case

m

~

~

m

m

m

~

f

m

m/f

murdered

killed

cold [exposure]

beaten

Method

not guilty

0

~

0

0

smothered

struck pregnant woman

~

crushed newborn’s head

not guilty

hanged

~

hanged

hanging

~

~

to hang

acquitted

~

case rejected ~

guilty

Not denied

~

released

not guilty

convicted

convicted

both not guilty

Natural death

~

~

guilty

Conclusion Sentence

~

Plea

unborn cut Alice Smyth’s ~ throat; removed child from womb

infant

~

9

~

Age

Nicholas and Katherine Reynoldes accused of encouraging/ comforting Mary. Both to appear at Assize. Nicholas delivered by proclamation.

Myles killed woman, and her unborn child. Grand jury rejected indictment.

Three newborns at different times. Aided by their father Adam Adamson. Described in pamphlet

Wife gave evidence against Cranley at Sessions. He was acquitted. John at Death said to be responsible.

Gower aided and abetted.

John Mody, infant’s father, to be whipped around the town.

‘They killed her infant and buried it’.

Fortune Luck, servant, died of the cold after being sent on an errand by Kyte and wife.

Joan Marden was child’s mother.

Additional Details

Sussex Infant Deaths Showing Direc t Involvement of Men

345

1651 Aug

1657 Mar

1665 Apr

1678 Jan

1685 Aug

421

442

466

497

512

Place

Edburton

Petworth

father

infant’s grandmother

father

spinster/ widow

spinster

Status

f

m

f

m

f

m/f

* Assize Court records. § Described in Thomas Brewer’s pamphlet The Bloudy Mother (1609)

Richard Jones Slinfold

Jane Pollard

Henry Beale

Ann Comber/ Lurgashall John Puttocle

Mary Barwick Petworth jnr.

Year Month Accused

Case

8 wks

0

not guilty

Plea

bruise to head

struck with bedstaff

not guilty/ benefit of clergy

not guilty

not guilty

threw into pit full ~ of water, mud, filth

strangled

Method

15 or 50 struck in chest weeks

0

0

Age

convicted

guilty

convicted

convicted

acquitted

~

hanged

hanged

hanged

Conclusion Sentence

Robert and Elizabeth Smith (spinster) accused; he convicted (murder) but pleaded benefit of clergy; Elizabeth pardoned.

Assize record states William and Jane Pollard killed newborn infant of Margaret Pollard. William died in gaol; Jane hanged. Margaret acquitted.

Child, his ‘natural daughter’, was asleep in her cradle.

John Puttocke charged with aiding (acquitted); but sentenced to three months for unlawful sex.

Mary Barwick sen. Spinster alias wife of Christopher Barwick (believed to have aided and abetted) supported her knowing of the crime.

Additional Details

346  Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart Engl and

Index The index includes the names of those early modern fictional and nonfictional killers who are considered in some detail in the text, and the works in which they appear. abandon(ment): 53–60, 90, 97, 116, 135, 145, 156, 183, 192, 221, 226, 228, 239, 244, 254, 263, 269, 284, 286, 289, 290, 299, 304–06, 312 abortions: 43, 52, 56, 72, 79, 136–44, 152, 164, 167, 225, 238, 305, n. 306, 309; see also contraception, miscarriage accidents: 26, 29, 60, 66–68, 82, 86–88, 97, 125, 194, 200, 213, 234, 236–37, 247, 275, 286, 289, 301 accomplices: 44, 94, 192, 205–07, 210, 297, 299, 305 Adam Adamson, (The Bloudy Mother): 192–95, 266–67 Ages of Man: 24–25, 26, 81, 82 animals: 60, 81, 99–100, n. 143, 179–81, 194, 215, n. 236, 239–46, 279 Araignment for Hypocrisie, The (Mr Barker): 139, 268–69, 272 archives: 16, n. 25, 26–28, 43, 68, 71, 72, 103, 106, 117, 130, 142, 192, 221, 254, 260–63, 274, 279, 288 Barker, Mr: 139, 141, 268 balladeers:119, 125, 127, 130, 171 bastard(y): 16, 20–22 39, 43, 81, 87, 91–2, 97, 104–105, 114, 117–45, 154–77, 181=83, 191, 197, 207, 210, 220, 247, 267, 276–277, 302, 320 benefit of belly: n. 261 benefit of Clergy: 261, 263 birth control: 135–44; see also contraception, abortion Blood for Blood (Mary Cook): n. 160, 200–04, 211, 232 Bloody Miller, The (unnamed killer): 126, 278 Bloody News from Clerkenwell (unnamed couple): 256 Bloody Newes from Dover (Mary Champion): Image 6, 228, 230, 232 Bloudy Mother, The, (Jane Hattersley/Adam Adamson): 152–53 192, 215 Breastfeeding: 43, 53, 220, 234–235, 239–46; see also overlaying Brewer, Thomas: 193, 215, 266–67, 303 Brome, Richard: n. 70 A Jovial Crew: 104, 155, 173–75, 283 burials: 53–54, 60, 82, 84, 86, 90, 92, 102, 180, 197–200, 207, 287 Churching: 43, 99, 101–06 Churchwardens: 31, 91, 101, 114, 123, 125, 131 138, 153–55, 158–59, 199, 215

clergy: 267, 278, 300 Mr Barker (The Araignment for Hypocrisie): 139, 268–69, 272 Robert Brown (The Strange and Wonderful Relation): 271–73 Robert Foulkes (An Alarme for Sinners): 35, 257, 268–78 contraception: 40, 43, 72, 135–41, n. 143 Coroners: 19, 23, 29, 30–34, 42, 66, 86, 197–200, 222, n. 226, 231, 274, 328 Countrey Farmer or the Buxom Virgin, The (unnamed characters): 168 Country Lass Who left her Spinning-Wheel, The (unnamed character): 168 Cruel Mother, The (Mary Cook): 200–02, 204–05, 211 deadly embrace: 231, 236, 274, 279, 296 Deeds against Nature, (Martha Scambler): 179, 181, 211, 239 detritus: 93, 311 321; see also dung heaps Devil, The: 37, 42, 43, 58, 61, 64, 68, 94, 139, 181, 183, 200, 202, 206, 210–14, 223, 233, 266, 306, 315; see also Satan disposals: 89, 90–92, 102, 274, 286 Distressed Mother, The (Katherine Fox): 227 dramas: 16, 23, 35–36, 41, 43, 71, 121, 128, 133, 169, 176, 177, 254, 264, 276, n. 288, 301, 305, 310, 316, 320; see also theatre drowning: 56, 86–93, 106, 208, 227, 231, 232, 256, 259, 264, 279, 287, 308, 320; see also water dung heaps: 98, 232, 233, 286, 302; see also detritus Elizabeth Kennet (The Unnatural Mother): 233, 239, 225–26, 313 Euripides: 62, 209, 313–14; see also Medea Europe: 42, 51–62, 69, 312 Belgium: 52, 54, 90 France: 57, 62–63, 205 Germany: 52, 57, 62–64 Italy: 58–59, 62–63, 90, 100 Netherlands: 56, 57 Nordic countries: 51, 53, 54, 57, 59, 62 folklore: 23, 54, 62–63, 88, 261 forensics: n. 79, 93, 256 Ford, John ‘Tis pity she’s a whore: 256

348  Heywood, Thomas: 96 history: 16, 18, 27, 28, 41, 137, 297, 310, 319 Holy Roman Empire: 56, 77 Jane Hattersley (The Bloudy Mother): 30, 39, 153, 179, 193–98, 214–15, 233, 239, 266, 303 Jane Lawson (The Unnatural Mother): 227, 233, 239; see also Elizabeth Kennet John Rowse (The Unnatural Father): 263–66, 274, 278 Katherine Fox (The Distressed Mother): 227–33 Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall: 103, 120, 126 liminality: 23, 39–43, 77–106, 114–145, 155–78, 183, 209, 244, 246, 274, 278–80, 284–88, 297, 308–10, 316, 320 lying in: 85, 98–106, 123 145, 162, 183, 195 Margret Vincent (The Pittilesse Mother): 204, 213, 215, 228, 233, 239 Martha Scambler (Deeds against Nature): 39, 94 179, 204, 211, 215, 233, 239 married women: 18, 39, 42, 44, 59, 135, 143, 198, 213, 219–47, 254, 320 Mary Champion (Bloody News from Dover): 228, 231–33 Mary Cook (The Cruel Mother, Blood for Blood, Inquest after Blood): 200, 202–04, 207, 211, 215, 225, 232–33, 243, 302–03 Mary Philmore (A True and Perfect Relation): 232–33, 286, 302 Massacre of the Innocents, The: 62, 69–72, 74, 84, 254, 266, 275, 279 maternal breast:44, 234–46, 285 maternity: 245 Medea/Medea: 62, 69, 71–2, 209–10, 219, 225–28, 233, 246, 312–14, 320 medieval: 25, 51–55, 65–72, 165, n. 180, 202, 222, 243, 274, 277, 279, 312; see also middle ages middle ages: 16–17, 25, 42, 51, 68, 69, 90, 164; see also medieval Middleton, Thomas: 96, 104, 237 A Mad World, my Masters: 169 The Changeling: 96, 169 The Witch: 104, 125, 211 The Yorkshire Tragedy: 237, 264 miscarriages: 20, 52, 80, 84, 137, 138, 205 Milton, John: 80, 86 monarchy: 72, 173, 274 monstrosity: 178–79, 306, 310, 315 mortality: 55, 66, 69, n. 81 motives: 18, 44, 57, 59, 68, 72, 105 106, 179, 220, 222, 225, 226, 234, 247, 252, 254–55, 263–74, 266, 278, 284, 288, 297, 301–04, 316–17, 320 Mourning Conquest, The (unnamed characters): 37–38, 38

No Naturall Mother but a Monster (Besse): 39, 103, 153, 178, 181, 192, 215 overlaying: 72, 194, 220, 234, 236–37, 247; see also breastfeeding pamphlets: 16, 23, 27, 28, 30, 35–39, 42, 43, 63, 79, 192, 195, 200, 208, 209, 227, 228, 230, 231–33, 234, 238, 242, 244, 246, 247253, 254, 256, 259, 267, 271, 300, 302 pamphleteers: 94, 130, 213, 220, 223, 239, 303, 315, 316, 317 Parker, Martin: 178 The Desperate Damsells Tragedy (unnamed woman): 134 No Naturall Mother, but a Monster (Besse): 39, 103, 153, 178, 181, 192, 215 penances: 32, 43, 65–68, 72, 104, 122, 128–32, 135, 145, 154, 163, 191 physical violence: 63, 65, 72, 138, 205, 296, 299 Pittilesse Mother, The (Margret Vincent): Image 4, 37, 181, 212, 229, 237, 240 plays: 36–8, 42, 70–72, 118, 120, 156, 171, 173, 176, 215, 264, 274–80, 288, 301; see also theatre playwrights: 96, 119, 127, 176, 296, 209, 305, 310 poverty: 16, 54, 55, 60, 64, 67–9, 196, 247, 254, 263, 274, 284, 297, 301,304 prostitution: 43, 124, 157, 173, 175–77, 183 pregnancy/pregnant: 19–21, 32, 34, 36, 40, 43, 56, 57–68, 79, 85 89, 92, 94, 94–106, 114, 117, 120, 120–26, 132, 132, 134–45, 152–70, 172–80, 183, 181, 191–95, 200, 205,–7, 214, 234, 255–59, 261, 254, 267, 269, 278, 284, 295, 300, 302–5, 310–12, 320 punishments: 19, 32, 39, 42, 53, 56, 59, 62, 64, 121–2, 127–35, 145, 154, 171, 174, 181, 183, 191, 227, 229, 232 262, 267, 277, n. 296, 302, 320 religions: 22, 23, 41, 52, 60, 72, 85, 101, 127, 136, 165, 181, 204, 212–15, 223, 230, 243–44, 268, 271, 300, 318; see also Clergy Ravenhill, Mark: 44, 296, 298, 315 Rego, Paula: 44, 305, 307 rites of passage: 23, 43, 122, 127, 135, 145, 191 rituals: 40, 56, 89, 98, 101, 102, 106, 101–03, 127–32, 135, 145, 155, 177, 208, 316, 320 Rocke the Babie, (Jone): 156, 159, 161, 170 Satan: 213; see also the Devil Shakespeare, William: 24, 90, 118, 129, 137, 138, 176, n. 234, 235, 245, 246, 274–77, 313 All’s Well: 118–20 As You Like It: 24, 118, 145 Henry V: 277 1 Henry VI: 234 2 Henry VI: 129, 235, 276, 277 3 Henry VI: 138 Julius Caesar: 277 King John: 274–276 King Lear: 137, n. 160

Index

Macbeth: 211, 219, 234, 244–46, 274–75, 280, 312–13 Measure for Measure: 118–20, 125, 129, 176–77 Much Ado: 120, 126, 129 Pericles: 90, 176–177 Richard III: 137, 274–276 Timon of Athens: 277 Titus Andronicus: 9, 29, 229, 245 Winter’s Tale: 39, 90, 118, 126, 142, 258, 276 Skilfull Doctor of Gloster–shire, The: 156, 162, 164, 165–66 spinsters: 68, 92, 139, 220, 221, 222, 255, 261, 262 strangling: 58, 92, 178, 211, 231, 244, 274, 286, 290, 300 Sundrye Strange and Inhumaine Murthers: 97, 207, 224, 263 Sussex: 29–34, 44, 68, 86, 86–93, 101, 103, 114, 116–17, 123–24, 130, 138, 143, 154–155, 195, 197–98, 206, 210, 213–215, 221–22, 247, 253–55, 260–63, 274, 279, 306, 309, 312, 319 theatre: 37, 37–8, 118, 122, 127–8, 132, 169, 223, 290, 303, 313 throwing: 53, 55, 63, 87, 91, 93–98, 105, 206, 210, 213, 221, 226, 231, 239, 256, 264, 272, 286, 299, 308, 320 tricksters: 42, 120, 177, 209, 305

349 True and Perfect Relation, A (Mary Philmore): 155, 232, 268 Turner, Victor: 40–42, 101, 123, 128, 135, 173, 177, 191 Unnatural Father, The, (John Rowse): 263, 265 Unnatural Mother, The, (Jane Lawson): 227, 233, 239 van Gennep, Arnold: 40, 101, 116, 122, 127, 131–35, 177 violence: 20, 53, 57, 62, 72, 81, 137, 138, 177, 205, 220, 247, 257, 259, 260, 271, 274, 275, 278, 288, 289, 296, 299–304, 309, 318 virgins/virginity: 101, 105, 132, 133, 139, 168–70, 177, 243, 271 Walter Calverly (The Yorkshire Tragedy, Two Unnatural and Bloodie Murthers): 264, 279 wandering: 120, 155, 161, 172–75 water: 33, 66, 79, 86 87–98 105–07, 206, 310, 231, 232, 236, 256, 264, 272, 274, 279, 287, 295, 297, 305–08, 321; see also drowning Webster, John: Duchess of Malfi: 119 wetnurses: 18, 44, 54, 157, 160, 220, 235–46 Wicked Midwife, The (unnamed characters):207–208, 214, 298 William Barwick (A True and full Relation): 256, 259, 264, 274, 276