Susanna Calkins, Author
  • Home
  • Lucy Campion Mysteries
    • A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
    • From the Charred Remains
    • The Masque of a Murderer
    • A Death Along the River Fleet
    • The Sign of the Gallows
    • The Cry of the Hangman
    • Death Among the Ruins
  • The Speakeasy Murders
    • Murder Knocks Twice
    • The Fate of a Flapper
  • Short Stories
  • Blog
  • News & Events
    • Event Photos
    • Archived Guest Posts & Interviews
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • 17th c. England
  • Writing Resources
  • Nonfiction
  • New Page

Guest Post: Death and the Midwife, by historical mystery author Sam Thomas

1/5/2014

2 Comments

 
Picture
I'm delighted to have Sam Thomas join me on my blog today, talking about death and the seventeenth-century midwife.

Sam's first historical mystery, The Midwife's Tale (Minotaur Books, St Martin's), has received great critical acclaim (and I thought it was terrific!). (Check out the interview I did with Sam last year!)

His second in the series, The Harlot's Tale, will be out this week and I'm looking forward to getting my copy in the mail! I hope you don't miss out on this great read!


Death and the Midwife

PictureA midwife at work
When I tell people that I’m writing a series of murder mysteries about an English midwife, I often receive the kind of condescension that people reserve for the very young and the very old. That’s nice, they say with an uncertain smile, not entirely sure that they’ve understood me. Actually, that’s not true. They know they have understood me. They’re just not sure that I’m making any sense. After all, what could midwives have to with murder? Lawyer-sleuths? Sure, we’ll believe that. Crime-solving doctors? Absolutely. But midwives?

Yes, midwives. While we (rightly) associate midwives with bringing life in to the world, for several centuries midwives also sent people out. Most obviously, thanks to comparatively high infant and maternal mortality rates, midwives saw their share of death in the delivery room. But this is just the start, for midwives were key players in England’s legal and judicial system, and when a woman came into contact with the law, whether as a victim or a suspect, a midwife often was on the scene.

The most common legal task that midwives faced was to discover the fathers of illegitimate children so that they could be made to pay for the upkeep of their offspring. Midwives did this by – to be blunt – threatening the mothers: If a woman refused to name the father of her bastard child (perhaps she had been paid for her silence), the midwife was supposed to withhold care during the birth.

“You don’t want to name the father?” she would ask. “Then you’re giving birth alone. Good luck and Godspeed.” (It is not for nothing that I opened The Midwife’s Tale with just this situation.) And while most mothers probably relented, there are cases in which midwives did indeed make good on their threat. In thus was the midwife’s job to expose infidelity and lechery to public view – reason enough for some men to kill, no?

More dramatic – and mercifully less common –was the midwife’s role in infanticide investigations. When an infant’s body was discovered, the constable would summon the local midwife and she would search out and interrogate suspects. Imagine the scene from the mother’s perspective:

A young woman has given birth to an illegitimate child, and she has done this in secret and by herself. Perhaps the child is stillborn, perhaps not, but the mother panics and abandons the child out of fear of discovery and punishment.

Within days or even hours, the midwife arrives with a dozen women in tow. She corners the mother and squeezes her breasts to see if she is lactating. She then insists on examining the mother’s privities (to use the early modern word) for evidence of a recent birth. Then the midwife and her assistants begin to badger the mother in confessing to a crime which had only one punishment: death by hanging. In depositions from infanticide cases, the language of pressing is ubiquitous: “after much pressing, Jane did confess” or “we pressed her further and again, until Jane did confessed.” There were no lawyers, no Miranda rights, just the mother and the women who would not be denied. Such work was not for the tender-hearted.

Nor was this all. As the local expert on women’s bodies, it fell to the midwife to examine women or girls who had been raped, and to testify against their assailants. If a woman were sentenced to death and claimed to be pregnant (which would prevent execution), the midwife judged whether she was lying. When a woman was accused of witchcraft, the midwife examined her body for evidence of the Witch’s Mark, where Satan’s imp had suckled. Guilt or innocence lay in the midwife’s hands.

Midwives thus dealt in their community’s darkest secrets:  adultery, murder, rape and witchcraft were their stock in trade. And in these cases, the midwife’s word determined who lived and who died.

What more could you want from a protagonist?


(This post originally appeared in Poe's Deadly Daughters and was reprinted with permission by the author).


Sam Thomas is an author and teacher living in Shaker Heights, Ohio. The Harlot’s Tale, the second book in the Midwife Mystery series, is on sale now. It’s predecessor, The Midwife’s Tale, is now available in paperback. To find a copy of either book, follow this link. Also, he would be more than happy to visit with your book group, either in person or via Skype.
2 Comments

    Susanna Calkins

    Historian. Mystery writer. Researcher. Teacher.  Occasional blogger.

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    1660s
    16th Century
    17th Century
    18th Century
    1910s
    1920s
    19th C.
    20th Century
    21st Century
    A Death Along The River Fleet
    Advertisements
    Alcohol
    Alpha Reader
    Amazon Pre Order
    Amazon Pre-order
    A Murder At Rosamund's Gate
    Anagrams
    Anne Perry
    Anthology
    Art
    Authorship
    Award
    Awards
    Blogger's Block
    Blogging
    Blog Hop
    Blog Tour
    Bloody Good Read
    Bombings
    Book Events
    Book Giveaway
    Booksellers
    Book Trade
    Bouchercon
    Calendars
    Card Playing
    Caricature
    Cats
    Chambermaid
    Characters
    Charles I
    Charles Ii
    Charles Todd
    Chicago
    Chocolate
    Christmas
    Cia
    Cockney Slang
    Cocktails
    Coffee
    Coincidence
    Contemporary
    Cover Design
    Covers
    Creativity
    Crime
    Criminals
    Critical Thinking
    Cromwell
    Crossroads
    Csikszentmihalyi
    Cuckold
    Curiosities
    Defoe
    Detectives
    Detectives Oath
    Disease
    Dogs
    Early Modern
    Easter
    Editing
    Edwardian England
    Etymology
    Examples
    Excerpt Marg
    Excerpts
    Fairs
    Fate Of A Flapper
    Feedback
    Female Protagonists
    Female Sleuths
    Fire Of London
    Flow
    Food
    Forensics
    Forms Of Address
    French History
    From The Charred Remains
    Ftcr
    Future
    Games
    Gangs
    Giveaways
    Golden Hind
    Great Fire
    Great War
    Grit
    Guest Blogs
    Guest Interviews
    Guest Post
    Guest Posts
    Guilds
    Hanging
    Historical Fiction
    Historical Mysteries
    History
    Imagination
    Inspiration
    Interviews
    Ireland
    ITW Authors
    Jests
    Jewelry
    Language
    Last Dying Speeches
    Leisure
    Libraries
    London Bridge
    Lucy Campion
    Macavity
    Magistrate
    Malice Domestic
    Maps
    MARG
    Markets
    Masque Of A Murderer
    Matg
    Medicine
    Medieval
    Medieval Period
    Memory
    Merriments
    Merry-making
    Methodists
    Midwives
    Mindset
    Miscellany
    Monsters
    Moonstone
    Motivation
    Murder
    Murder At Rosamund's Gate
    Murder Ballad
    Murder Knocks Twice
    Mysteries
    Mystery
    Mystery Tv Shows
    Newgate
    Newspapers
    New Woman
    Nietzsche
    Nursery Rhymes
    Opera
    Orwell
    Persistence
    Pets
    Philadelphia
    Piracy
    Pirates
    Plagiarism
    Plague
    Poison
    Popular Film
    Popular Press
    Potions
    Printers Row Lit Fest
    Printing
    Private Investigators
    Proactive Interference
    Procrastination
    Prohibition
    Promoting Books
    Pseudonyms
    Psychology
    Publication
    Public Executions
    Publishing
    Punishments
    Puritans
    Puzzles
    Quakers
    Radio Shows
    Reader Questions
    Reading
    Receipts
    Reformation
    Rejection
    Religion
    Research
    Restoration
    Riddles
    River Fleet
    Samuel Pepys
    Scene Development
    Science Fiction
    Scold's Bridle
    Secret London
    Setting
    Seven Things
    Shakespeare
    Short Story
    Sign Of The Gallows
    Sleuths In Time
    Smithfield
    Speakeasy Mysteries
    Speech
    Spying
    Strange Things
    Teaching
    Thank You
    The 1640s
    The 1650s
    The 1660s
    Theater
    Thief-taker
    Timeline
    Titles
    Travel
    True Crime
    Tyburn Tree
    Valentine
    Wilkie Collins
    Winchester Palace
    Witches
    Women
    World-building
    Writier's Life
    Writing
    Writing Prompts
    Young Adult

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2020
    December 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    September 2018
    November 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • Lucy Campion Mysteries
    • A Murder at Rosamund's Gate
    • From the Charred Remains
    • The Masque of a Murderer
    • A Death Along the River Fleet
    • The Sign of the Gallows
    • The Cry of the Hangman
    • Death Among the Ruins
  • The Speakeasy Murders
    • Murder Knocks Twice
    • The Fate of a Flapper
  • Short Stories
  • Blog
  • News & Events
    • Event Photos
    • Archived Guest Posts & Interviews
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • 17th c. England
  • Writing Resources
  • Nonfiction
  • New Page