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{"id":18512,"date":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=251"},"modified":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T00:00:00","slug":"infancitide-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/11\/infancitide-in-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Infancitide in History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I<\/span>n a TLS review<\/a> of James Sharpe\u2019s history of violence in England (A Fiery & Furious People<\/em><\/a>), David Horspool calls attention to Sharpe\u2019s account of infanticide in the 18th and 19th centuries. <\/p>\n

He claims that it was \u201can all too common last resort\u201d in an age \u201cwhen rigid public morality over illegitimacy combined with a lack of contraception.\u201d As if removing stigmas regarding illegitimacy and improving contraception has reduced<\/em> the rate of baby-killing.<\/p>\n

Sharpe\u2019s data is sobering: \u201cThe absence of fathers from the stories Sharpe tells is in itself instructive: by allowing the mothers to bear illegitimately, they avoided culpability only in a technical sense. The result was that, even towards the end of this period, \u2018young children were the most vulnerable of all groups in Victorian England,\u2019 with 20 per cent of victims of homicide being aged under twelve months. . . . the numbers of newborns killed continued at an alarming rate through the nineteenth century. In London in 1895, 231 babies were allegedly killed. Victims\u2019 \u2018bodies turned up in the Thames, in canals, under railway arches, in doorways, in cellars.\u2019 . . . attempts at abortion were \u2018not necessarily effective and could prove fatal.\u2019 It would seem that only with the spread of adoption, beyond the \u2018hopelessly overstretched\u2019 Foundling Hospital, which opened its doors in London in 1739, did the horror begin to abate.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are used to recalling how widespread infanticide in the ancient world. Its persistence into the Victorian era comes as a shock.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"