The Sad Subject of Infanticide: Law, Medicine and Child Murder, 1860-1938

Abstract

The (English) Infanticide Act 1922 created a partial defence to murder for a woman who killed her newly born child while the balance of her mind was disturbed as a result of giving birth. Prior to the Act, psychiatric defences were comparatively rare where the victim was new-born. Only in 1938 was the law extended to cover cases where the mother was likely to be diagnosed as suffering from puerperal or lactational insanity. The relationship between law and medical knowledge underlying this legislation is too complex to be captured by a simple notion of ‘medicalization’, and in some respects fits better with the account of law/science relations offered by autopoiesis theory. That theory, however, is much less satisfactory in its view of the role of lay knowledge and morality in the development and application of the law.