“I did not mean to make away with the child, I did not know what I was about”: Autobiographical Traces of Infanticide in Eighteenth-Century Trial Records
Abstract:ABSTRACTin this essay, i am interested in the possibilities and limitations of maternal autobiography in court documents. i focus specifically on the trial records of mothers charged with infanticide between 1700 and 1800. Drawing on the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org), i consider these narratives both through the lenses of legal and social histories of infanticide, and in relation to Marlene Kadar et al.'s notion of "autobiographical traces," fragmentary stories that emerge … Show more
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