Non-compos mentis: An Exploration of the Link between Infanticide and
Pleas of Insanity in Medieval England
Lauren Dale | MRes in History
Infanticide, the act of killing one’s children, has long been condemned by the
West and the middle ages is no exception. The modern interpretation of
infanticide is the deliberate killing of an infant under the age of one year old,
however, despite Kellum’s claims that infanticide in the middle ages was ‘the
killing of child of twelve months or less’, Cushing asserts that ‘many agreed
that infancy lasted until age seven’. 1 Therefore, for the purposes of this
investigation, the term infanticide will include children up to the age of seven
who were slain. Historians and sociologists have described infanticide as ‘a
crime of desperation, branding it a woman’s crime, and often specifically a
single woman’s crime’; due to poverty and insufficient access to effective
contraception, single women have become the villains of these
circumstances. 2 In order to ascertain the extent to which infanticide was
prevalent through medieval English society, it is important to examine sources
of various methods and examples of child murder. Despite ‘much literary
evidence, however, the continued existence of widespread infanticide in the
middle ages is usually denied by medievalists’. 3 There is evidence of
infanticide crossing over into both ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction. In
whichever dominion the cases fell, there seems to be a consensus amongst
officials of a genuine concern for the murdered child and a determination to
discover what had happened. As the records demonstrate, the motives behind
child murder varied in terms of gender, marital and social status, as did the
punishments. Given that infanticide was the murder of a living child not a fetus,
surely this would be considered a crime rather than a sin? An examination of
prescriptive texts as well as justice itinerants and coroner’s rolls is necessary
in order to determine the classification of infanticide within medieval England.
Keywords | Infanticide, medieval England, Kellum, Demause
In affiliation with Demause’s (1974) contention, ‘the history of infanticide in the West has yet
to be written, and I shall not attempt it here’. 4 However, this study will demonstrate that
infanticide was not only present but also considered a crime in the Middle Ages and as such
it was indicted in ecclesiastical, although more prominently, in secular courts. The definition of
infanticide has changed somewhat throughout history; more modern interpretations define it
as the deliberate killing of an infant under the age of one year old. Despite Kellum’s claims
that infanticide in the Middle Ages was ‘the killing of child of twelve months or less’, Cushing
Barbara. Kellum, ‘Infanticide in England in the Later Middle Ages’, History of Childhood Quarterly 1,
1, (1974), 373; Kathleen.G. Cushing, ‘Pueri, Iuvenes, and Viri: Age and Utility in the Gregorian
Reform’, The Catholic Historical Review, 94, 3, (2008), 439
2 Sara. M. Butler, ‘A Case of Indifference? Child Murder in Later Medieval England’, Journal of
Women’s History, 19, 4, (2007), 60
3 Lloyd. Demause, ‘The Evolution of Childhood’, in (ed.) Lloyd. Demause, The History of Childhood,
(New York, 1974), 29
4 Ibid., 25
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