ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which the bodies of unmarried women who were suspected of being pregnant, or of having given birth in secrecy, and the infants they were accused of killing, were read for signs of pregnancy, childbirth, and in the case of infants, violence. Narratives found in Court of Great Sessions infanticide trial records reveal diverse understandings and experiences of conception, pregnancy and childbirth, as well as anxieties elicited by unmarried pregnant bodies. These anxieties meant that unmarried women’s bodies were highly visible and open to public scrutiny; however not all single women’s bodies were interrogated in the same way. Murdered and stillborn infants also presented authorities with bodies that could be read for signs of deviant reproduction. Surgeons, midwives, neighbours, families and suspects all had their own ways of reading, interacting with, and describing pregnant women’s and infants’ bodies. The cases examined are undeniably extreme, and the ultimate outcome of these incidence is not representative of the experience of all single pregnant women in general. However, many of the negotiations and confrontations found in court records would have been experienced in very similar ways by unmarried women whose pregnancies and deliveries were not concealed.
