Abstract

This article explores the practice of neonaticide – the killing of an infant at the moment of birth – in Manchester during the first decades of the industrial revolution. Using a set of previously unexamined pre-trial witness statements, the author makes the case that newborn-killing was practised by working-class women in the town as a known and even accepted form of birth control. There is quite suggestive evidence that women had a language for this practice, shielded other women from having it reported, and in certain circumstances, assisted one another in carrying it out. This finding resonates with similar moral frameworks that have been studied from high-medieval England to early colonial Mexico. Nonetheless, it has also been well established that middle-class people throughout the nineteenth century in Britain abhorred infant killing, associated it strongly with stigmatized stereotypes of working-class maternity, and sought to suppress it using the punitive weight of the law. Period diaries and publications show that this ‘moral panic’ was as potent in Manchester as anywhere else. Taking these contrary patterns together, the author suggests that neonaticide and practices like it allow historians to observe the profound cultural divisions and frictions along class lines which structured life in the early industrial city.

中文翻译：

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阶级分析与婴儿的杀害：曼彻斯特，1790年至1860年

摘要

本文探讨了工业革命的前几十年在曼彻斯特的杀人药的行为-在出生时杀死婴儿。作者使用了一系列未经审查的预审证人证词，证明了镇上的工人阶级妇女从事杀新生儿是一种已知的甚至被接受的节育形式。有相当多的令人鼓舞的证据表明，妇女有这种习俗的语言，使其他妇女无法举报，并且在某些情况下可以互相帮助。这一发现与从中世纪中世纪到墨西哥早期殖民时期研究的类似道德框架产生了共鸣。尽管如此，在整个19世纪，英国的中产阶级人们仍然不赞成杀死婴儿，强烈地将其与工人阶级的产妇蒙受污名化的刻板印象联系起来，并试图利用法律的惩罚性力量来压制它。定期日记和出版物显示，这种“道德恐慌”在曼彻斯特和其他任何地方一样有效。综合考虑这些相反的模式，作者认为，新杀人剂和类似的做法使历史学家可以观察到沿阶级路线的深刻文化鸿沟和摩擦，从而构成了早期工业城市的生活。