“Closer to God”: Child Death in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Those working within the sub-field of the modern history of childhood have rarely taken the dead child as their starting point. However, in a secularising, post-Enlightenment world, elites pursuing “progress” contemporaneously, and very publicly, reinterpreted death in relation to redefinitions of childhood as evidence of the divine. Dead children featured prominently within public modern mourning practices until, late in the nineteenth century scientific explorations of child death drove societies to occlude the presence of dead children. As infant mortality rates fell, perceptions of children as a dangerous, unstable presence, and a threat to the nation grew. New spaces emerged to receive and conceal dead children. New literary and visual cultures recast living children’s relationship with death. And in the early twentieth century accidental deaths in commercial space, in reformatories, and within the home inspired powerful debates over the future of childhood and society. This article surveys recent literature, raises key themes, and introduces the articles featured in this special issue on the relatively underresearched theme of child death.