The late 1800s saw a substantial rise in the number of infanticide cases across Victorian Britain in general, but also in the number of cases that reached the courts, leading to what scholars have referred to as a moral panic across society.[i] The dominant historiography on infanticide cases in this period focusses on the cases of mothers who killed their children through the lens of contemporary ideals of motherhood; Jill Newton Ainsley and Samantha Pegg both argue that juror sympathies were not extended to fathers in the same way as mothers leading to less insanity verdicts in paternal infanticide cases.[ii] This post uses the cases of two men and two women who murdered their children to counteract these arguments, agreeing more with the work of Jade Shepherd whose work on trial records demonstrated that there are more parallels between the cases of male and female infanticide than had previously been supposed.[iii] The trial transcripts chosen for investigation here provide examples of a mother and father found ‘guilty but insane’ at trial alongside a mother found guilty of manslaughter and imprisoned, and a father found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. The comparable verdicts in the trials provide a solid basis for analysing wider themes in Victorian society such as motherhood and fatherhood. Ideas on motherhood and fatherhood will be examined within the trials as well as to what extent medical testimony influenced the outcomes of the trials, with each theme pointing to wider insights on contemporary society.
The idealisation of the role of the mother and the relationship she had with her children in contemporary society led to the belief that any woman who murdered her own child must be insane, consequently resulting in the rise of the use, and success, of the insanity defence from the 1860s onwards.[iv] The insanity defence was successfully used in the case of Annie Cherry who was found guilty but insane in 1887 after drowning her child and burying the body.[v] The first testimonies in Cherry’s trial came from her family members who gave evidence of her being kind to the child and concerned she would be ‘cruel’ to it if she used cold water to drown it.[vi] Although it may seem a contradiction to be concerned about the temperature of the water used to drown a baby in, the fact that Cherry was considering this when committing her crime clearly carried some weight with the Victorian jury. Infanticide was considered the most ‘horrible and hellish crime’, therefore that Cherry was found insane points towards her presentation as caring for the child up to the end of its life, adhering to the social ideal of motherhood and earning sympathy from the jury for her lapse in moral behaviour.[vii]
The importance of motherhood to contemporary juries when trying for infanticide is seen more clearly when comparing Cherry’s case to Sarah Jane Wiggins’. Wiggins was sentenced to ten years penal servitude after being found guilty of the manslaughter of her three-year-old son.[viii] In contrast to Cherry, Wiggins was presented as a neglectful mother throughout her trial and the children in her care even testified against her. The majority of the trial transcript is taken up by the testimony of a neighbour and the two daughters, all of whom give details amounting to the neglectful nature of the care Wiggins was providing. The neighbour repeatedly testifies to having heard ‘slaps’ from the apartment above and that the day the boy died he was ‘crying for a drink’ and ‘looked sickly’.[ix] The daughters also attest to the unmotherly nature of Wiggins as they had to care for themselves and saw ‘the woman slap [their] brother two or three times’.[x] What is interesting about Wiggins’ case is that she was not the biological mother of the children who she was caring for and their biological father had left them and Wiggins three weeks before the death of the boy. This, combined with the lack of care or affection she showed towards the children may account for the sentence of penal servitude instead of a, arguably lesser, insanity verdict as seen in the case of Cherry. Margaret Arnot has argued that more privilege was given to natural mothers in the justice system, highlighting how contemporary society upheld the values prescribed to being a mother.[xi] That Wiggins was neither a natural mother, nor a good stepmother lays in stark contrast to Cherry who was presented as gentle even in the act of killing her child. However, despite the nature of Wiggins’ crime pointing to murder, that she was only convicted of manslaughter suggests that even violent mothers were viewed with sympathy by juries. Towards the end of the nineteenth century there was growing reluctance to use of the death penalty, and this combined with some sympathetic views towards mothers who killed their children led to its decreased use; the manslaughter verdict therefore allowed juries to avoid the capital punishment whilst still administering a form of justice for the crime committed.
One case where the capital punishment was used however was in the trial of John Richard Jeffery in 1866 who hanged his son in a cellar after taking him from the care of his grandmother.[xii] Historians such as Newton Ainsley have argued that the sympathy and compassion shown to mothers in the courtroom was not so readily extended to fathers who murdered their children, and Melissa Valiska Gregory has built on this finding that fathers were treated as ‘savage tyrants’.[xiii] There are similarities between Jeffery’s case and Wiggins’ in terms of fatherhood and motherhood, which makes the difference in the harshness of the verdicts particularly interesting. Similar to Wiggins’s trial, family testimonies in Jeffery’s trial transcript give evidence of neglectful behaviour towards the boy before his death with Jeffery not paying ‘a farthing’ when his son was sent ‘entirely’ to live with his grandmother.[xiv] As an absent father, Jeffery did not fit the enforced ideal of a Victorian father, expected to be ‘loving, caring…with the desire and drive to financially support and protect one’s child.’[xv] These values attributed to the ideal father present the idea that there were parallels between fatherhood and motherhood in contemporary society, which thus raises the question of whether there were parallels between how fathers and mothers were treated in the courtroom. Shepherd argues that there were parallels between cases of male and female infanticide, and the cases of Jeffery and Wiggins support this.[xvi] Despite the verdict of Jeffery’s case being harsher than that of Wiggins’ this can be attributed to the nature of the crime, and not necessarily the gender of the defendant. Jeffery was shown to have intentionally killed his son by hanging him, whereas Wiggins tied her boy to a bed frame which led to his death through a multitude of other factors.[xvii] Whilst it is difficult to determine whether attitudes towards fatherhood impacted the jury’s decision on what verdict to give at Jeffery’s trial, his nonconformity to the social norm is likely to have had an impact, and this alongside the violent intentional nature of his crime is what is inferred to have led to the use of capital punishment.
However, as Shepherd also argues, if it was evidenced at trial that a father had adhered to the model of fatherhood before killing their child, they were likely to be found insane in the same way mothers were.[xviii] This is exactly the case in the trial of Joseph Wood who was found guilty but insane in 1890 after hitting his baby daughter on the head with a poker.[xix] Wood’s defence began with the presentation of him being a ‘good husband and a good father’, and mention of him going to ‘night school to try to improve himself’.[xx] This presentation is in direct contrast to Jeffery’s and also comparable to Cherry’s case where she was known to be caring until the impulse came to kill the child. Comparing Wood’s case to Cherry’s further emphasises the parallels between men and women who killed their children as both were seemingly found insane on the basis of their adherence to Victorian ideals of fatherhood and motherhood. This conclusion also sheds some light onto the importance of gender roles in contemporary society and the role of both the father and mother in the family unit.
Alongside social attitudes that strongly influenced jury decisions, both male and female infanticide trials provide evidence of how medical opinion was rising in prominence in the Victorian courtroom. Stephen Landsman found in his research on the Old Bailey that medical evidence came to be afforded greater authority towards the middle and end of the nineteenth century as juries became more likely to listen to doctors and surgeons as expert witnesses.[xxi] Dominant medical testimony is seen in both trials where the defendants were found insane with testimony from medical experts in the other two trials being more limited in comparison to that from family and neighbours. In Cherry’s trial the medical testimony concludes that she was ‘suffering from an attack of melancholia’ when she committed her crime, a symptom of puerperal insanity, yet the doctor declares her ‘quite sane’ at the trial.[xxii] Puerperal insanity was a common condition which women who killed their children were diagnosed with, and Hilary Marland argues that if a woman could be declared medically insane it caused relief amongst juries as they did not have to work out the exact cause of death.[xxiii] The medical diagnosis of and testimony to insanity is seen in the historiography as mainly linked to female cases as insanity was readily linked to their biology; however, in Wood’s case there is a heavy reliance on medical testimony that appears to aid his insanity defence.[xxiv] The doctor’s testimony in Wood’s trial transcript confirms that Wood suffered from epileptic fits which he links to insanity stating that ‘a large percentage of persons whose minds are affected are epileptic’.[xxv] Furthermore, the doctor identifies three generations of Wood’s family who suffer from insanity, his ‘great-aunt, in an asylum, the imbecile brother, and the prisoner, an epileptic’.[xxvi] Hereditary disposition was understood to be a physical cause of insanity and that two of Wood’s direct family members were viewed as mentally less able worked in his favour for his insanity defence, alongside epilepsy being viewed as a symptom of insanity. Both Cherry’s and Wood’s cases imply how medical testimony acted as confirmation for applying social values to criminal cases as in both cases the defendants are presented as caring parents by family members first, before this is supported by an expert witness.
The same conclusion can be drawn from the cases of Wiggins and Jeffery. In Wiggins’ trial transcript her family present her as uncaring and neglectful, emphasising her poor motherhood before the brief medical testimony which only confirms that her tying the boy to the bed frame led to his death.[xxvii] Similar can be said for the trial of Jeffery who is presented as an absent father for the majority of the trial before a medical witness confirms the violent nature of the boy’s death.[xxviii] In both of these trials it can be inferred that the jury had already been convinced that the poor level of parenting led to the child’s death, and, similar to where the parents fit the ideal, expert testimony was used to confirm this. When medical testimony is viewed in this way, the trial transcripts can be viewed as further insights into the extent to which social values were applied to infanticide cases in order to reach a final verdict. Although medical testimony is seen to be a factor in the trials investigated here, it is overshadowed by the jury’s attitudes towards motherhood and fatherhood, implied through the ordering of witnesses and their prominence in the trial transcripts.
An analysis of trial transcripts demonstrates the extent to which contemporary social ideals played a crucial role in the courtroom, particularly in the cases of infanticide. Attitudes towards motherhood have been closely studied within the historiography and it has been previously argued that these earned female defendants more sympathy from juries. However, attitudes towards fatherhood in this period afforded fathers who killed their children similar levels of juror sympathy due to the ideals of motherhood and fatherhood holding the same characteristics. By analysing the trial transcripts through the lens of motherhood and fatherhood it is possible to draw wider conclusions on the importance of these ideals in Victorian society, especially when comparing the prominence of medical testimony against them. Overall, a comparison between cases of men and women who killed their children lends itself to further investigation of the gender norms in Victorian Britain, as well as suggesting how medical experts were used as reinforcements to the dominance of social attitudes.
[i] Samantha Pegg, ‘’Madness is a Woman’: Constance Kent and Victorian Constructions of Female Insanity’, Liverpool Law Review 30:3 (2009), 207-223 (216); Anne Cossins, Female Criminality: Infanticide, Moral Panics and the Female Body (2015), 2.
[ii] Jill Newton Ainsley, ‘’Some Mysterious Agency’: Women, Violent Crime, and the Insanity Acquittal in the Victorian Courtroom’, Canadian Journal of History 35:1 (2000), 37-55 (45); Pegg, ‘’Madness is a Woman’’, 221.
[iii] Jade Shepherd, ‘’One of the Best Fathers until He Went Out of His Mind’: Paternal Child Murder, 1864-1900’, Journal of Victorian Culture 18:1 (2013), 17-35 (19).
[iv] Newton Ainsley, ‘’Some Mysterious Agency’’, 44; Pegg, ‘’Madness is a Woman’’, 216.
[v] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, accessed 17 January 2023), May 1887, trial of Annie Cherry. (21) (t18870523-659).
[vi] Cherry’s trial.
[vii] Cossins, Female Criminality, 2.
[viii] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, accessed 17 January 2023), November 1859, trial of Sarah Jane Wiggins (24) (t18591128-35a).
[ix] Wiggins’ trial.
[x] Wiggins’ trial.
[xi] Margaret Arnot, ‘Infant Death, Childcare and the State: The Baby-Farming Scandal and the First Infant Life Protection Legislation of 1872’, Continuity and Change 9 (1994), 271-311 (279).
[xii] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, accessed 17 January 2023), September 1866, trial of John Richard Jefferey (31) (t18660917-757).
[xiii] Newton Ainsley, ‘’Some Mysterious Agency’’, 45; Melissa Valiska Gregory, Child Murder and British Culture 1720-1900 (2003), 70-90.
[xiv] Jeffery’s trial.
[xv] Shepherd, ‘’One of the Best Fathers until He Went Out His Mind’’, 18.
[xvi] Shepherd, ‘’One of the Best Fathers until He Went Out His Mind’’, 19.
[xvii] Jeffery’s trial; Wiggins’ trial.
[xviii] Shepherd, ‘’One of the Best Fathers until He Went Out of His Mind’’, 12.
[xix] Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 8.0, accessed 17 January 2023), May 1890, trial of Joseph Wood (24) (t18900519-457).
[xx] Wood’s trial.
[xxi] Stephen Landsman, ‘One Hundred Years of Rectitude: Medical Witnesses at the Old Bailey, 1717-1817’, Law and History Review 16:3 (1998), 445-494 (449, 482).
[xxii] Cherry’s trial.
[xxiii] Hilary Marland, ‘Getting Away with Murder? Puerperal Insanity, Infanticide and the Defence Plea’, in Mark Jackson (ed.) Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550-2000 (2002), 168-192 (179).
[xxiv] Pegg, ‘’Madness is a Woman’’, 212; Wood’s trial.
[xxv] Wood’s trial.
[xxvi] Wood’s trial.
[xxvii] Wiggins’ trial.
[xxviii] Jeffery’s trial.
Mad or Bad? Criminal Lunacy in Britain, 1800-1900 