Child-Killing and Emotion in Early Modern England and Wales

Abstract

This chapter explores emotional responses to infanticide and concealed deaths of bastard children which were prosecuted under the 1624 Concealment Act in early modern England and Wales. The chapter not only revises our view of contemporary attitudes to women suspected of killing infants but also draws attention to the range of emotions experienced by those who discovered infant corpses. The chapter ends by considering the nature of any subjectivity we might have access to in primary sources concerning infanticide, and suggests that individuals occupied multiple subject positions. Emotional reactions to child-killing were complex and variable, and cannot be reduced to a narrative in which premodern harshness was replaced by modern empathy.