Illegitimacy and Infanticide in Early Modern England
Content Warning: This article discusses cases of infanticide, child abuse and neglect
Introduction
The crime of infanticide was something closely associated with illegitimate births throughout Early Modern England and was a cause for public anxiety. The 1624 Infanticide Act existed under the premise that unmarried mothers who concealed illegitimate pregnancies, murdered their offspring, and then secretly disposed of them, were able to avoid conviction by claiming stillbirth. This Act punished the concealment of death rather than the act of infanticide itself and attributed the action of infanticide to unmarried women. Within the Act, infanticide was depicted as a common occurrence, stating “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.” While the consequences for bearing an illegitimate child could be severe, with many mothers facing both punishment at the hands of the parish and an impoverished future, it seems that relatively few women actually resorted to infanticide.
Infanticide in Popular Culture
The topic of infanticide was a particularly strong feature of the ballads, poems, and reports published in newsbooks. Such works tended to serve as cautionary tales, with the condemned women often presented as repentant, pitiful figures. One such example of this is the 1701 broadside poem The Lamentation of Mary Butcher. The figure of Mary is presented as penitent, with the poem stating:
“My new-born Infant I did destroy,
In grief I’m now surrounded.”
The ballad continues with a warning to other young women:
“So now observe, my pretty Maids,
And mind the Application,
And shun the base and deceitful Man,
Let what will be his Station;
Some only court their Will to gain,
Which oftimes prove our Ruin;
Shame and Disgrace to all our Friends,
And ends in our Undoing.”
The infanticide of Butcher’s child is presented as an unfortunate part of Mary Butcher’s fall, brought about by a “base and deceitful” man and Butcher’s failure to head her chastity. The character of Mary Butcher is presented as a sad figure, full of regret for her child’s death, rather than as a monster.
This presentation of condemned women is also seen in execution reports. The 1676 case of Elizabeth Simmons, who was executed at Tyburn for murdering her illegitimate child by throwing it into a pond, details her penance, with “expressing the sense of her wicked act in contimnal tears and lamentations, and defiring in very pathetik language.” As with the tale of Mary Butcher, this report includes a cautionary message, calling on “young maidens” to “take warning by her shameful death.”
An additional report on the case of Dorothy Lillingstone, who was executed in 1679 at Kennington, again depicts a repentant mother, although this report details the spiritual aspect of Lillingstone’s fall more explicitly. The report includes a statement purportedly from Lillingstone, in which she claims: “I had several thoughts of providing for the infant, and accordingly had taken a room, but the temptations of the devil overpower’d all good resolutions in me.” Dorothy Lillingstone’s testimony makes frequent reference to the unholy nature of her actions and her descent into sin, noting that as she went into labour, she abandoned “the principles of Christianity” and forgot “the laws of God and nature,” as she “basely and inhumanly strangled the issue of my womb.” Dorothy Lillingstone’s actions are presented as against both God and her nature, with her statement describing her as “laying aside the bowels and tenderness of a Mother.’’ Despite this, as in the tale of Mary Butcher and the case of Elizabeth Simmons, Dorothy Lillingstone is ultimately a piteous character, having fallen to the Devil.
Infanticide in Real Life
However, while infanticide cases featured prominently in popular culture, in reality they appear to have been relatively rare. In Essex, 86 percent of parishes never saw a prosecution for infanticide, while seventeenth and eighteenth century Welsh counties saw an average of one prosecution every four to seven years. The 1624 Infanticide Act presumed an unmarried mother guilty of murdering her child if she concealed a pregnancy and the child was found dead. Even with this act in place, however, very few prosecutions took place.
Despite the assertions of the 1624 Act that infanticide was committed by many mothers of illegitimate children, the relatively few prosecutions for infanticide indicate that this was not the case. The crime of infanticide appears to have been viewed as an unfortunate consequence of lapses of chasteness by mothers of illegitimate children. However, this seems to have been more of a public concern rather than the fate of many illegitimate individuals. A far more common threat facing illegitimate children was that of parental separation and neglect at the hands of the parish.
Life for Illegitimate Children
Illegitimate children frequently risked separation from their mothers, either at the hands of the parish authorities or in the form of parental abandonment. Parishes were expected to keep illegitimate children who required poor relief with their mothers until a minimum age of seven, before putting them up for apprenticeship. These apprenticeships tended to be pauper apprenticeships, normally in housewifery or husbandry, and resulted in the children being placed in other households, facing upheaval. Such apprenticeships may also have placed illegitimate children in the path of further threat at a young age, as pauper apprentices found themselves away from their parents’ protection and sometimes facing severe neglect and abuse.
Although the keeping of children with their mothers was encouraged, in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, parishes tended to board illegitimate children out. Parishes appeared perfectly happy to separate illegitimate children from their mothers before the minimum age that authorities encouraged.. This is seen in a 1619 petition, which discusses the case of Marie, a servant girl employed in the parish of Leigh, Lancashire, and her illegitimate child. The petition calls for the three-year-old child to be sent to the parish of Stoke, Staffordshire, and to be separated from its mother, on account of Marie giving birth in Stoke. The response to this petition denies this request, stating “it is not reasonable to take so young a child from the naturall mother” and calling for the child to remain with its mother until the age of seven, after which the parish of Leigh shall keep them, enforcing the requirement for illegitimate children to remain with their mothers.
The case of Marie indicates that, while it was encouraged for young children to remain with their mothers, some parishes still attempted to challenge these guidelines and lessen the financial burden that these families presented, resulting in familial separation for these young children.
Parental separation could also result from the sending of parents into the house of correction. A 1651 court order, entitling Mary “a little bastard child of James Smith of Answorth” to financial provision from the courts, lists both of Mary’s parents as absent, with “the father beeng gone into Scotland and the mother of it now sent unto the house of Correccon.” In this instance, the sending of an unmarried mother to the house of correction resulted in separation for an illegitimate infant and presumably saw the child boarded out. While accompanying their mothers into the house of correction was possible, it does not appear to have been the norm for illegitimate infants or a particularly common cause for parental separation.
Parental separation and the practice of boarding out by the parish could also place illegitimate children at further risk of neglect and infanticide. In 1684, the nurse Mary Compton was accused of murdering several infants at the Middlesex Quarter sessions. In 1714, the House of Commons reported that children were “inhumanely suffered to die by the Barbarity of nurses, especially Parishes Nurses.”
Furthermore, for some illegitimate children, a lack of wider family could again place them at the mercy of the parish authorities, in the event of maternal death. This is seen in the April 1707 entry to the records for the London sessions. The sessions orders that the churchwardens and overseers of the parish of St. Andrew’s Holborn receive into their care Barbara Cook, “a poor child aged 3 years, daughter of Alice Cook, upon the petition of Thomas Butcher, a labourer in whose house the said Alice Cook lately died.” Barbara’s illegitimacy is inferred from the listing of only her mother and the apparent lack of any husband or widowed status on Alice’s part. The death of Alice left Barbara without any apparent relatives and placed the three-year-old in the hands of the parish. Barbara’s case serves as an example of the poor prospects of illegitimate children left without kinship links.
It is possible that some may also have been relieved inside institutions. Some towns had established municipal hospitals during the sixteenth century to provide charitable care for the poor, including children. During the 1550s and 1560s, Christ’s Hospital in London counted illegitimate children among the over four hundred children receiving indoor relief. These children were boarded out to nurse while they were small. Once they reached the age of six, received some schooling or practical training, before being placed in apprenticeships or service between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. Similarly, two centuries later in 1739, the London Foundling Hospital was established.
Conclusion
Infanticide appears to have been a relatively uncommon fate for illegitimate infants, despite the public anxiety and presence in popular culture. A far more prevalent threat was that of parental separation, either at the hands of the parish or in the form of parental abandonment. This separation could place illegitimate children at further risk of infanticide or severe neglect.
Written by Olivia Boyle
Bibliography
Images
Little Girl Playing With A Baby In Its Mothers Arms, (image credit: Adrian van Ostade, 1610-1685).
The Lamentation Of Mary Butcher, (image credit: Early English Books Online, 2019).
The Manner Of Execution At Tyburn, (image credit: Rabanus Flavas, 2012).
Three Midwives Attending To A Pregnant Woman, (image credit: Christoffel Froschover, 1554).
Primary Sources
British History Online, Sessions Book 648-April 1707, 1707.
British History Online, The Inhabitants of Stoke upon Trent, 1619.
Civil War Petitions, Payment to Mary Smith Alias Haslome, 1651.
Early English Books Online, Anno Vicesimo Primo Jacobi Regis, &c. An Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murthering of Bastard Children, 1680.
Early English Books Online, Gods Mercy and Justice Displayed, in The Wicked Life and Penitential Death of Dorothy Lillingstone Executed the 7. April, 1679, At Kennington, for Murthering her Bastard-childe, 1679.
Early English Books Online, The Lamentation of Mary Butcher, Now Confined in Worcester-City-Goal, on Suspicion of Murdering Her Male Bastard Child, in April Last. 1701.
Early English Books Online, News From Tyburn, or, a True Relation of the Confession and Execution of John Smith, George Marshal, John Darkin, for Stealing Plate Out of St. Giles’s Church Michael Jones, Charles Potter, for Robbing a Merchant’s House[sic] in Duke’s-Place: John Maxfield, for Robbing on the Road Neer Islington: Anthony Taylor, for Felony and Burglary: Eliz Simmons for Murthering her Bastard Childe: Who Were Executed the 19th of This Instant April, 1676.
Secondary Sources
Crawford, P., Parents of Poor Children in England, 1580-1800 (Oxford, 2010).
Gibson, K., Illegitimacy, Family, and Stigma in England, 1660-1834 (Oxford, 2022).
Tarbin, S., ‘Caring For Poor and Fatherless Children in London, c. 1350-1550’, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 3/3 (2010), pp.391-410.
Wrightson, K., English Society 1580-1680 (Abingdon, 2003).