Lilith's Midwives: Jewish Newborn Child Murder in Nineteenth-Century Vilna

Abstract

This article examines a court case of newborn child murder in nineteenth-century Vilna. In 1890, the state indicted a group of Jewish women for running a lucrative baby-farming business in which they hired out unwed mothers as wet nurses and extorted their salaries in exchange for the care of their illegitimate offspring—most of whom died from neglect or abuse. I argue that this illegal network on the outskirts of town threatened the legitimate, respectable Jewish world at the center but was indispensable to it. It provided families with wet nurses, domestic servants, and even infants for childless wives to adopt. It also allowed a legitimate way for unwed mothers to abandon their unwanted offspring. Scrutiny of this lower-class women's space sheds light not only on the lives of unwed mothers but also on the complicity of Jewish society in the fate of their illegitimate children.