herself outside the protection of the law). 29 In 1249, Basilia, daughter of Christine of Wroxhall,
gave birth to her son and immediately hid him in a ditch [et ipsum statim post partum abscondit
in quodam fossato]. Unfortunately for her, a dog found the dead child and carried him through
the middle of the ville of Wroxhall, and Basilia ran away. The jury’s verdict was that she was
guilty and she was to be put into exigent and to be waived no chattels [Iuratores dicunt quod
culpavbilis est ideo exigatur et wayvitur nulla catalla]. 30
To conclude, more often than not, single women came under the eye of suspicion in
cases relating to infanticide. Pregnant single women were shunned from society due to their
sins and were thought to be the most likely culprits to do away with their unwanted and
illegitimate children. Helfer and Kempe have argued that ‘the mortality rate during the first year
of illegitimate babies’ lives was frequently reported to be twice as high as their legitimate
counterparts’ and the Middle Ages was no exception. 31 Single women often struggled to
support themselves and would almost certainly be unable to provide for a child. It may be that,
killing an infant upon birth was seen by some to be a more humane death than having the
child suffer. Single women accused of infanticide were less likely to be pardoned for the crime
and to be declared insane despite their insistence. Married women, on the other hand, seem
to have been declared insane and pardoned in almost all cases of infanticide within this study.
Married women were not suspected of having sinned or fornicated outside of their vow of
marriage in the way that single women had.
Furthermore, ‘the image of the nurturing and self-sacrificing mother is so deeply
ingrained in western society that child murders committed by a mother, throughout history,
have evoked horror and incredulity’. 32 Although, Barbara Hanawalt has argued infanticide did
not appear in statute law until the mid-sixteenth century because medieval English jurors did
not see it as an offence. 33 The evidence presented in this study, within both secular and
ecclesiastical courts, suggests that whilst infanticide may not have appeared in medieval
English statute law, it most certainly appeared in English common law. Unfortunately, the true
number of infanticides in medieval England will probably never be categorically known.
However, what can be said from a small selection of cases, is that infanticide was regarded
largely as a single woman’s crime. The bond of motherhood for married women was thought
to be so sacred that should a woman terminate this bond, she must be insane. Regrettably,
this did not extend to single women.
TNA: JUST 1/87, m. 39, 1288.
TNA JUST 1/996, m. 28, 1249.
31 Mary. E. Helfer and Ruth. S. Kempe, The Battered Child, (New York, 1930), 7
32 Butler, 60
33 Ibid., 75
29
30
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