5 MARCO TEORICO
5.1 REQUISITOS DEL PUESTO DE TRABAJO CON VIDEO TERMINALES (NTP 232.
There are 178 female principal infanticide suspects in the Great Sessions gaol files for the period 1730-1830. The length and detail of the surviving records made it necessary to examine a sample of the cases in order to ensure sufficient analysis. The years 1730- 45, 1770-85 and 1805-20 were selected for this purpose. The 45-year sample provides
29Muir, ‘Illegitimacy in eighteenth-century Wales’, 363-64. 30Muir, ‘Illegitimacy in eighteenth-century Wales’, 367-68.
31 For Welsh language ballads on the representation of women in the eighteenth century, including a
discussion of illegitimacy and infanticide, see Siwan Rosser, Y Ferch ym Myd y Faled: Delweddau o’r
Ferch ym Maledi’r Ddeunawfed Ganrif (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2005). I am grateful to Siwan
for alerting me to these ballads, and for very kindly translating sections of her monograph to assist with my research.
exceptional qualitative and statistical data, whilst offering clear evidence of change over time. Ninety women were suspected of neo-natal infanticide in the years studied (Table 3.1). A further three were accused of aiding and abetting the crime. This suggests that there were, on average, two infanticide suspects across the whole country per year.32
When comparing this figure with localised English studies, the incidence of infanticide in Wales appears on a par with, if not slightly lower, than in England.33 In late-
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Surrey there were 0.67 infanticides a year, with 0.82 for the period 1650-1800.34 There was less than one indictment per year for
newborn child murder in north-east England in the eighteenth century.35 As with all
crimes, but particularly for infanticide, surviving records detail only the cases reported and investigated.36 The secrecy surrounding the births and deaths of some newly-born
illegitimate children makes it plausible that the actual figures were higher. One entry in the 1795 Denbighshire Trinity Quarter Sessions read: ‘Account of costs of a search of all pools in a place in the parish of Ruthin for bodies of children supposed to have been thrown there’, implying that newborn children were believed to have been murdered and disposed of more frequently than the number of cases suggest.37
Table 3.1. Marital status of women indicted for infanticide (excluding accessories)
All samples % 1730-1745 % 1770-1785 % 1805-1820 % Singlewoman 82 92.1% 32 88.9% 21 100.0% 29 90.6% Widow 6 6.7% 4 11.1% 0 0.0% 2 6.3% Married 1 1.1% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 1 3.1% Unknown 1 - 0 - 0 - 1 - Total 90 100.0% 36 100.0% 21 100.0% 33 100.0%
If a married woman was prosecuted for killing her newborn child, the charge would be the common law offence of murder and a conviction could only be gained if there was evidence that the child had been born alive and subsequently been murdered. If the
32 Monmouthshire was part of the Oxford Circuit and is not included in this study.
33 The population of Wales increased from approximately 406,000 in 1700 to 587, 128 in 1800: Howell,
The Rural Poor, 14. The combined urban and rural population of the county of Surrey increased from
128,000 in 1700 to 278,000 in 1801, according to Beattie’s estimates: Beattie, Crime and the Courts, 28, FN 38. For a more detailed comparative statistical analysis, see Woodward, ‘Infanticide in Wales’, 100.
34 Beattie, Crime and the Courts, 115, Table 3.6; J. R. Dickinson and J. A. Sharpe, ‘Infanticide in early
modern England: the Court of Great Sessions at Chester, 1650-1800’, in Mark Jackson (ed.), Infanticide:
Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550-2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 38.
35 Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, Rogues, Thieves and the Rule of Law: The Problem of Law
Enforcement in North-East England, 1718-1800 (London and Pennsylvania: UCL Press., 1998), 113.
36 The problems associated with the ‘dark figure’ of unrecorded murder cases are discussed in greater
detail in the previous chapter.
woman was unmarried, the case fell under the 1624 act ‘to prevent the destroying and murdering of bastard children’.38 The act stated that if a child was found dead, and the
birth had been concealed, it would be presumed that the mother had murdered it unless it could be proven by at least one witness that the child had been stillborn. The fact that 82 of the 90 infanticide suspects were recorded as singlewomen, six were widows, and only one was married, was therefore largely dictated by this legal statute.39 Although the
motives for murdering legitimate and illegitimate children were likely to have differed greatly, that so few married women were charged with murdering their newly-born children is probably not entirely accurate.40 This is not to suggest that all unmarried
women who were suspected of infanticide were guilty, or that married women murdered their children in equal or greater numbers than singlewomen. But the comparatively low number of suspected newborn child murders occurring within marriage is unlikely to have accurately reflected reality. Married women were viewed as less of a social threat than singlewomen and widows and were not subjected to the same communal scrutiny.41 It would have been easier to murder a child within marriage, either by failing
to provide adequate nutrition, or by ‘overlaying’, and the deaths would be less likely to raise suspicion.42
The age and status of the suspects differ from those recorded elsewhere. The ‘typical’ offender is commonly believed to have been a young woman, usually a servant.43 However, less than one quarter of the women recorded in the Great Sessions
files can be readily identified as servants.44 This is despite servants accounting for a
larger percentage of the population in Wales than they did in England, and females accounting for a significantly larger percentage of servants than males.45 The majority
of suspects do not appear to have been in domestic service, nor were they necessarily
38 21 James I, c. 27. The act was repealed in 1803.
39Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in earlier seventeenth-century England’, 112; Beattie, Crime and the Courts,
114; Kilday, Women and Violent Crime, 70. Servants are assumed to be unmarried. The marital status of one woman is indeterminate.
40 Kilday, Women and Violent Crime, 70; Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide in the eighteenth century’, 206. 41 Kilday, A History of Infanticide, 64.
42 Jackson, New-Born Child Murder, 43.
43 Otto Ulbricht, ‘Infanticide in eighteenth-century Germany’, in Richard J. Evans (ed.), The German
Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History (Routledge: London and New York, 1988);
Clíona Rattigan, ‘“I thought from her appearance that she was in the family way”: detecting infanticide cases in Ireland, 1900-1921’, Family and Community History, 11 (2008), 134-51; Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide in the eighteenth century’, 192-93; Anne-Marie Kilday, ‘Desperate measures or cruel intensions? Infanticide in Britain since 1600’, in Anne-Marie Kilday and David Nash (eds.), Histories of
Crime: Britain 1600-2000 (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 60-79; Kilday, Women and Violent Crime, 73.
44 Twenty of the 90 principal suspects can be readily identified as servants, though it is possible that some
were in domestic service and not recorded as such.
young women. The age of the suspects is only recorded for 12 percent of the suspects, but they are significantly older than expected (Table 3.2). They range from 24 to 44 years, with the average age being 32. If we take into account the female accessories, this figure rises to 36 years.46 The suspects, then, were not young, naive girls, but women
above the average marital age in this period.47
Table 3.2. Age of women indicted for infanticide (including accessories)
in the sample periods
Age All samples %
Under 18 0 0.0% 18-24 1 10.0% 25-30 2 20.0% 31-40 5 50.0% 41-50 1 10.0% 51+ 1 10.0% Unknown 83 - Total 93 100.0%
It has been suggested that an illegitimate pregnancy would be particularly disastrous for servants as they were only employed on the basis that they remained single and childless, and the loss of reputation to a household employing an unmarried, pregnant servant would not be tolerated.48 This loss of character ‘would have been seen by many
servants as not simply embarrassing or inconvenient or humiliating, but as completely catastrophic, both socially and economically’.49 In early modern Germany, two young,
unmarried servants were driven to suicide out of the shame of their illegitimate pregnancies.50 This may have been the feeling of some Welsh women, but the
acceptance of many employers of the liberal courtship rituals engaged in by their employees also provides evidence to the contrary. The Report of the Commission to
Inquire into the Poor Law recorded: ‘many gentlemen state that they must either
overlook the fact of their female servants giving in to it [courting] or make up their minds to employ only men servants or old women’.51 Most servants freely courted
46 The oldest woman was Sarah Lloyd who was 76 years old and an accessory to her daughter’s
infanticide: NLW GS 4/635/5.39 (1819).
47 Gillis lists the average marital age of women in Britain in the first half of the eighteenth century as 26.2
years. This dropped to 25.9 years during the next 50 years, and in the first half of the nineteenth century it was 23.4 years: Gillis, For Better, For Worse, 110.
48Kilday, ‘Desperate measures’, 69; Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide in the eighteenth century’, 203; Beattie,
Crime and the Courts, 114.
49 Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide in the eighteenth century’, 203. 50 Boes, Crime and Punishment, 165-79.
within their place of work, so if pregnancy was to result then it would hardly have been a surprise.
Depositional evidence suggests that many employers were far more understanding and accommodating towards their pregnant servants than has often been assumed.52 Jane Edwards was informed by her employer that if the rumours regarding
her pregnancy were true, and that ‘if she was with child and would confess...she should be welcome to stay another week in his house and that he would assist her and do what service he could’.53 William Price also overheard his dairymaid reporting that his
housemaid had recently given birth. He went immediately to the maid and desired to know whether it was ‘dead or alive’ and ‘[i]f alive...assistance might be given’.54
Margaret Robert’s employer approached the Overseer of the parish and informed him that his servant was pregnant and asked him ‘not to make a stir or noise in the parish about it’ as he ‘would give security to indemnify the said parish’.55 Two employers also
played a more active role in an attempt to protect their servants. Howell Williams was indicted for being ‘privy to the said murder’ of his servant’s newborn child, and for ‘receiv[ing], keep[ing] and comfort[ing]’ her after the murder had been committed.56
Rees Jones was also bound to answer charges against him for aiding the escape of his servant who was suspected of infanticide. According to the recognizance, Rees had ‘disregard[ed] the caution’ of Margaret Davies, a midwife, and had ‘permit[ted] to escape and did not show the person of his late servant Mary Evans...in order to undergo an examination before a magistrate on a vehement suspicion of having been privately delivered of a bastard child...found in his garden’.57
Pregnant servants were not necessarily ridiculed by their employers and did not automatically face expulsion from their place of work.58 Some appear to have been
offered support, both physically and financially. Mr Justice Hardinge suggested that servants who had suffered ‘indiscretion’ may still prove ‘excellent members of the community’, and he advised employers to ‘recommend [the women]...for other virtues’, as ‘many are the humane, who would gratefully accept a female servant thus
52 Laura Gowing suggests that mistresses were more likely to threaten their pregnant servants, than to
support them: Gowing, ‘Secret births’, 104.
53 NLW GS 4/47/6.22 (1742). 54 NLW GS 4/912/2.14 (1814). 55 NLW GS 4/757/1.94 (1808). 56 NLW GS 4/812/4.10 (1737). 57 NLW GS 4/526/3.18 (1771).
58 Walker has argued that the options for unmarried, pregnant women were not as restricted in practice as
recommended, with a generous oblivion of this fault’.59 That servants comprised such a
low percentage of infanticide suspects in Wales may be explicable in this way. This is not to argue that bastardy was readily accepted by all of Welsh society, or that all unmarried pregnant women freely bore their children. Social stigma certainly did play an important part in some women’s decisions to murder their newborns, as will be shown later. But there were differences in attitudes towards illegitimacy, and not all unmarried Welsh women were subject to moral dilemma when faced with pregnancy, or were driven by the same desires to conceal and destroy their newborn child as has been recorded elsewhere.60
Infanticide has been viewed as both a solitary crime, and gender-specific.61 Only
six women committed the crime with the support of another individual in the sample years. Three accessories were women, two of whom were the suspect’s mother.62 There
are no recorded male principal infanticide suspects in the sample years, although three men were indicted as accessories to unmarried women.63 Infanticide, like witchcraft, has
been considered a rare example of a female-dominated crime. It has been suggested that men only became involved in infanticide cases after the discovery of the body, usually in their official roles as Justices of the Peace, coroners or jurors.64 With few exceptions,
the role of men in infanticide has received little consideration.65 Men, however, were
just as likely to act as accessories to infanticide as women. Two of the male accessories were employers of the suspects, and the third male was the child’s father who received the body of the dead infant for concealment.
Although men were not always formally indicted, there is still indirect evidence for women turning to them to aid their crime, both before and after the act. Margaret John approached the physician, Rees Rytherch, and requested that he ‘give her
59 J. Nichols (ed.), The Miscellaneous Works in Prose and Verse, of George Hardinge, Esq. Senior Justice
of the Counties of Brecon, Glamorgan and Radnor, Volume I (London: J. Nichols, Son and Bentley,
1818), 69.
60 T. C. Smout has also argued that there was no need for a woman pregnant with an illegitimate child in
lowland Scotland to resort to infanticide to conceal her shame as the rural community placed no pressure upon her, and would rather support her both emotionally and financially: T. C. Smout, ‘Aspects of sexual behaviour in nineteenth-century Scotland’, in A. A. Maclaren (ed.), Social Class in Scotland: Past and
Present (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1976), 80.
61 Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide in the eighteenth century’, 200; Kilday, Women and Violent Crime, 70. 62 NLW GS 4/744/4.18 (1782); NLW GS 4/1020/3.10 (1820); NLW GS 4/635/6.39 (1819). The
relationship between the third woman and principal suspect is unknown. Dickinson and Sharpe found that accessories were most often female members of the family: Dickinson and Sharpe, ‘Infanticide in early modern England’, 43.
63 NLW GS 4/611/6.79 (1737); NLW GS 4/812/4.10 (1737); NLW GS 4/298/5.6 (1739). 64 Howard, Law and Disorder, 90.
65 For studies that do consider the role of men in infanticide, see Walker, Crime, Gender and Social
something to cause abortion’. Without her knowing, he ‘gave her a little magnecia’ out of fear that she ‘might play a serious trick with herself and go elsewhere and take something that would be of serious consequence as he knew what he had given her could have no ill effect’. Two weeks later, Margaret returned to the physician as the medicine had not had the desired effect and she required something stronger. He ‘gave her another harmless dose [for] the same motive’. Soon afterwards Margaret returned for a third time, but was advised to ‘keep quiet and to suffer the child to come to maturity as it was too late to affect her purpose’. She ‘begged’ him to ‘keep the circumstance secret,’ which he ‘promised to do’.66 Ann Hughes, claiming that her child
had been stillborn, also turned to her fellow servant, John Lloyd, and requested his help in burying the child. Although he refused, he kept her pregnancy a secret and ‘never mentioned a word about what he had seen to anybody, not even his own wife’.67 That
these women turned to men during this difficult time and entrusted them with the secret of their pregnancy suggests a degree of mutual respect and friendship. In concealing the pregnancy from the community, an experience which was commonly shared and celebrated by all, these men opted to provide individual support over communal obligation. In the case of John Lloyd, he also kept Ann’s pregnancy a secret from his own wife until required, under examination, to reveal his knowledge.
Men also played a central role in the removal of pregnant women or newly-born children from the parish in order to avoid suspicion. The aforementioned Rees Rytherch was desired by Margaret ‘to procure a nurse for the child, but to keep it secret and there would be a horse waiting to send for [him] as the father of the child was very substantial and able to pay all expenses’.68 Arabella Williams denied committing infanticide, and
claimed in her defence that she had given her newly-born child to its father who ‘took away the child...over the water’.69 Moreover, following an incestuous relationship with
his daughter, John Lloyd approached John Edwards, amongst others, to request whether he would ‘go with his daughter to the north’ and that he would ‘give him two shillings a day and bear his expenses’.70 Although the act of child murder was overwhelmingly a
solitary crime, when women did seek support they were just as likely to look to a man as a woman. Indictments alone suggest that infanticide was an entirely female- dominated crime, but depositional evidence provides evidence of men playing central
66 NLW GS 4/757/1.92 (1808). 67 NLW GS 4/900/3.1 (1776). 68 NLW GS 4/757/1.92 (1808). 69 NLW GS 4/250/6.15 (1737). 70 NLW GS 4/745/1.76 (1782).
roles in the concealment of the pregnancy, and offering support and comfort to women during their ordeal.
Considering the geographical location of suspected infanticides, historians of England (with the unique exception of London) and Scotland have suggested that the majority of women investigated for the crime were from rural areas.71 Suspects were
supposedly identified and brought to justice more readily in the countryside, where the close proximity of neighbours and relatives ensured the slightest change in appearance or behaviour of an unmarried woman was readily detected, and where the body of a child could be rapidly traced to the woman concerned. For Wales, comparisons between urban and rural areas are difficult to make, as has been shown, as there was little distinction between the sparsely populated and more urbanised areas, especially before the nineteenth century. The arguments put forward by historians regarding geographical distribution of infanticides do not apply as clearly to Wales, where more infanticides were recorded in areas of larger population. Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Glamorganshire accounted for 19.8 percent, 18.7 percent and 15.4 percent of infanticides respectively (Table 3.3). The 1801 census showed that Glamorganshire and Carmarthenshire were the most densely-populated counties in Wales, with population figures of 70,000 and 67,000. Three of the largest towns (Cardiff, Swansea and Merthyr Tydfil) with populations of between 1,000 and 2,000 were located in Glamorganshire. Pembrokeshire was the fourth most populous county with a population of approximately 56,000. In contrast, only five percent of infanticide suspects were resident in Radnorshire, a county with a population of merely 19,000 in 1801. These figures appear all the more pronounced when it is remembered that Radnorshire had an illegitimacy rate of 14.5 percent in the early nineteenth century, the highest in Britain. In contrast,