Abstract
Home Parenting and the State in Britain and Europe, c. 1870-1950 Chapter
Parenting, Infanticide and the State in England and Wales, 1870–1950
Daniel J. R. Grey
Chapter
First Online: 31 December 2016
375 Accesses
1 Citations
1 Altmetric
Abstract
In January 1886, Alice Jackson, a teenaged domestic servant, gave birth at her employer’s farm near Radnor to a baby girl, also called Alice.1 Three weeks later, the baby was thriving and Jackson was told that she needed to go to her father’s a few miles away, having been lent a number of baby clothes and told by Diana Pritchard, her employer’s wife, ‘to come back any time she liked if she had not welcome at her father’s house’.2 The following day, Jackson returned to the farm with some of the clothes but without the child, claiming the baby had died suddenly on the way to her father’s cottage and that the body had been taken by its father and paternal grandmother for burial. When she tried to simultaneously register the girl’s birth and death on 15 February with the Radnor registrar, Albert Shewell, however, he was immediately suspicious ‘because she had no medical certificate, and her answers to my questions were not satisfactory to me’.3 Not least of these for Shewell was the question of how it would have been possible for Jackson to have already arranged for the burial of her daughter without holding an appropriate certificate from the registrar, since this would have been illegal. Shortly afterwards, Jackson secretly fled the town, and was arrested while trying to get to Cardiff.
Parenting, Infanticide and the State in England and Wales, 1870–1950
Daniel J. R. Grey
Chapter
First Online: 31 December 2016
375 Accesses
1 Citations
1 Altmetric
Abstract
In January 1886, Alice Jackson, a teenaged domestic servant, gave birth at her employer’s farm near Radnor to a baby girl, also called Alice.1 Three weeks later, the baby was thriving and Jackson was told that she needed to go to her father’s a few miles away, having been lent a number of baby clothes and told by Diana Pritchard, her employer’s wife, ‘to come back any time she liked if she had not welcome at her father’s house’.2 The following day, Jackson returned to the farm with some of the clothes but without the child, claiming the baby had died suddenly on the way to her father’s cottage and that the body had been taken by its father and paternal grandmother for burial. When she tried to simultaneously register the girl’s birth and death on 15 February with the Radnor registrar, Albert Shewell, however, he was immediately suspicious ‘because she had no medical certificate, and her answers to my questions were not satisfactory to me’.3 Not least of these for Shewell was the question of how it would have been possible for Jackson to have already arranged for the burial of her daughter without holding an appropriate certificate from the registrar, since this would have been illegal. Shortly afterwards, Jackson secretly fled the town, and was arrested while trying to get to Cardiff.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Parenting and the State in Britain and Europe, c. 1870-1950 |
| Subtitle of host publication | Raising the Nation |
| Editors | Hester Barron, Claudia Siebrecht |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Pages | 73-92 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Edition | 1 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-3-319-34084-5 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-3-319-34083-8, 978-3-319-81674-6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2017 |