Aug 07 2022 39 mins 8
Today we begin to talk about a very special kind of homicide: infanticide.
Infanticide, or the killing of newborn children, is a surprisingly large topic in the history of murder, and we're going to cover it over the course of two episodes. This topic has a colourful history because Parliament, judges and juries aren't sure what to make of it. If a woman kills her child, is it murder? In some respects, it sounds like murder; after all, it's one person killing another. But in other respects, it doesn't really resemble the classic murder cases we've seen so far. A mother who kills her child out of desperation doesn't seem to be committing the same crime as someone who stabs his rival to death over some trivial insult.
In today's episode, we'll look at the 1624 law called An act to prevent the destroying and murthering of bastard children. We'll see Parliament attempt to crack down on "lewd women" who kill their "bastard children" and get away with it. Then, we'll see that this law has some serious flaws (namely, that it lumps together innocent and guilty women and tells courts to execute the lot of them). Finally, we'll see how judges and juries think that that's a bit extreme, how they walk it back, and how they redefine infanticide going forward. We'll wrap up by considering the strange relationship between courts and legislators.
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