Infanticide Cases, Expert Evidence, and the Sympathetic Jury, in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century England

Abstract

Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a noticeable shift occurred in the attitude towards infanticidal women within the English criminal justice system. Women, who had previously been found ‘guilty’ of murdering their newborn infant, faced the death penalty. However, during this period, an increasing number of women were found ‘not guilty’ of the offence by an increasingly sympathetic jury. Arguably, this transformation occurred as a result of a lack of definitive medical evidence and was shaped by both the uncertainty acknowledged by medical men, and an increase in the jury’s humanitarian sympathies. Through the examination of six infanticide cases held at the Old Bailey and by drawing on the humanitarian approach identified by Mark Jackson and the attention to medical discourse identified by William Hunter, this chapter seeks to examine how the shift in verdict may have occurred as the acknowledgement of the uncertainty of the lung test by medical men preserved a sense of professional authority, and the jury’s humanitarian sensibilities became interconnected during the eighteenth century.