Infanticide reached record levels in Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century. Although the rising population and increasing poverty provided the essential precondition for this, the sharp rise in the practice identified by contemporaries in the 1820s and 1830s might not have taken place had the Dublin and Cork Foundling Hospitals continued to assume responsibility for the care of foundling children. But once they were no longer available to receive them, the women who give birth to the children that society identified as illegitimate chose to terminate their lives in record numbers in an attempt to avoid the severe stigma that this brought and the practical difficulties of taking care of a child alone. Using the cases that came before the coroners court and the crime figures assembled by the Royal Irish Constabulary from the 1830s, this article combines the quantitative analysis of the practice that this permits with a reliance on the qualitative approach that informed a previous investigation of the phenomenon in the eighteenth century to track its evolving trajectory, to identify its main features and to explain how it had arrived at a point by the 1840s when it exceeded homicide as the primary cause of violent death.

中文翻译：

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“非自然犯罪”：19 世纪初爱尔兰的杀婴

19 世纪中叶，爱尔兰的杀婴人数达到了创纪录的水平。尽管不断增长的人口和日益严重的贫困为这一点提供了必要的先决条件，但如果都柏林和科克弃婴医院继续承担照顾弃婴儿童的责任，那么 1820 年代和 1830 年代同时代人所确定的做法可能不会发生. 但是，一旦她们不再能够接受她们，那些被社会认定为私生子的妇女选择以创纪录的数量结束她们的生命，以避免由此带来的严重耻辱和照顾的实际困难一个孩子的孤独。使用死因裁判法庭审理的案件和爱尔兰皇家警察从 1830 年代收集的犯罪数字，