'Monsters of the Vilest Kind': Infanticidal Women and Attitudes To Their Criminality In Eighteenth–century Scotland

Kilday, Anne‐Marie

doi:10.1179/175138108x355120

Cited by 12 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…75 Scottish studies, by contrast, although acknowledging the diminishing influence of the church during the eighteenth century, often emphasize the importance of kirk sessions in the monitoring and punishment of the perpetrators. 76 While the subject of abortion has received much less attention in scholarly literature than infanticide, examples of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century attempts to procure abortifacients have been identified. 77 These herbal treatments, however, commonly served a dual purpose; they could be used either to terminate a pregnancy or to encourage bleeding in a fashion which was thought to promote fertility.…”

Section: Pregnancy and Abortionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discussing Patients in Private and in Print: The Records of an Eighteenth‐Century Dispensary

Cunynghame¹

2023

J Eighteenth Century Stud

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This essay studies the variation between the ways in which physicians wrote about their patients in private and their presentation of these case histories to the wider world in print. Focusing particularly on the case of Andrew Duncan, who founded the Edinburgh Public Dispensary in 1776, this paper will investigate the differences detailed in Duncan's handwritten case notes with the ways in which he chose to portray these patient cases in his published works. This paper will argue that not only does Duncan demonstrate a tendency to exaggerate the positive outcomes from his treatments but also his published works simplify the diagnoses performed on dispensary patients. The self‐editing which is apparent in his medical publishing includes the omission of details of the range of complaints individual patients suffer from and exclusion of certain disease categories, including hysteria, from the printed record. This paper will argue that a historiographical focus on printed material such as disease studies and annual reports can result in the distortion of information regarding diagnosis, medical outcomes, and the relationship between patient and practitioner during the eighteenth century.

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Section: Pregnancy and Abortionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discussing Patients in Private and in Print: The Records of an Eighteenth‐Century Dispensary

Cunynghame¹

2023

J Eighteenth Century Stud

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“…The heightened guilt and shame of illegitimate pregnancy were imposed on women by the parish council, which dominated the judicial process with very little involvement of law officials. 23 The agency of plebian Londoners is a central topic in a recently published book by Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker on the lives of the London poor between 1690 and 1800. They use the appealing term "pauper agency" in their analyses of London justice and come to the conclusion that changes in policing, justice, and poor relief were shaped by those who used such institutions: common Londoners.…”

Section: State Of the Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to Crime and Gender in History

Heijden¹,

Pluskota²

2018

Journal of Social History

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This essay introduces the special section "Crime and Gender." The first part explains the disregard for women in crime history. The second part summarizes the state of research. The final part describes the aim and introduces the contributions to this special section."Why gender and crime?" asked Margaret L. Arnot and Cornelie Usborne in the introduction to their edited volume on gender and crime in modern Europe (1999, reprint 2003). The answer was quite simple: until the 1980s crime historians focused their studies on the criminality of men because women were thought to be "exceptionally law-abiding," and when they committed crime, their crimes were treated with much more leniency by prosecutors and courts than those of men. 1 Social historians had begun to use judicial sources in order to write a history from below and to include common people in their analyses of crime, the working of the justice system, and social control. However, those studies did not include women's crimes or the issue of gender differences in crime. The pioneering study by John M. Beattie in 1975 on the criminality of women in eighteenth-century England was an important exception, and his work is in many ways still an example to historians writing on female criminality in the early modern period. 2 The neglect of women in crime history is related to the quantitative approaches taken by crime historians between the 1970s and 1990s. British, German, and French studies particularly dealt with questions regarding longterm trends and fluctuations in crime. Such studies focused on theories of civilization, violence, modernization, and urbanization that may explain long-term changes. 3 Historians such as Randolph Roth, Gerd Schwerhoff, Richard McMahon, and Joachim Eibach criticized the way that crime historians interpreted quantitative data on violence and suggested the need for a qualitative analysis and a better understanding of the social and legal context in order to understand changes in violent behavior. 4 Roth, for instance, examined a variety of sources to further the quantitative study of homicide and neonaticide. 5 Most methods used by crime historians estimate only the rate at which homicide came within the purview of the courts, leaving out the most common types of violence committed by men as well as women.

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“…Examination of the woman's marital situation, her poverty, and her religion show a longer‐term context for her crimes that challenges explanations of infanticide based on short‐term factors. Kilday investigates the nature of child murder in eighteenth‐century Scotland, highlighting how such crimes were regarded by contemporary legal and social opinion. Early nineteenth‐century crowds attending public executions are often depicted as little more than a troublesome rabble.…”

Section: (Iv) 1700–1850 Peter Kirby University Of Manchestermentioning

confidence: 99%