ABSTRACT

Employing a rigorous methodological approach and analysing a vast body of sources from towns and regions in Italy, France and England over 300 years, this book hints at the extent of "routine" infanticide of newborns by married parents in early modern Europe, a practice ignored by contemporary tribunals.

Death Control in the West 1500–1800 examines baptismal registers and ecclesiastical censuses across a score of communities in Catholic and Protestant Europe. Married women had little reason to hide their condition from priests, midwives, neighbours and friends; however, the practice of post-partum abortion was common everywhere, especially during times of hardship. By no means was it confined to the lower classes or to girls alone. Proposing a series of reflections on population control, this volume explores how families adopted a system of selective infanticide to manage resources and to safeguard social status, just like populations elsewhere around the globe.

This study is an excellent tool for students and researchers interested in the demographic mechanisms of the age and social and familial relationships in early modern Europe.

chapter |16 pages

Introduction

Grim reckonings from European archives

part I|106 pages

Italy

chapter 2|21 pages

Montefollonico

Infanticide by married couples in Early Modern Tuscany 1

chapter 4|6 pages

Pavia in Lombardy 1576–1700

The importance of neighbourhood

chapter 5|13 pages

Parma 1500–1800

Girls before boys

part II|125 pages

Southwestern France

chapter 12|37 pages

The massacre of the innocents

Routine infanticide in Mézin, 1649–1743

chapter 13|5 pages

Layrac, 1628–1711

A typical confessionally mixed community

chapter 14|6 pages

Nérac

A Huguenot stronghold in Gascony

part III|34 pages

England

chapter 17|12 pages

Leeds

A sprawling workshop of Western Yorkshire

chapter 18|10 pages

Sex ratios in an idyllic country town

Dorchester

chapter |6 pages

Conclusion

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