“Any elderly, sensible, prudent woman”

This chapter looks at the practice, competition, and professionalization in midwifery during the slave period in the British Caribbean. The practice of midwifery in the British Caribbean was a contested space with gender, race, free/enslaved status, and cultural beliefs dividing practitioners (both physicians and midwives) and the patients they attended. Although midwives held intimate knowledge of women’s bodies and pregnancy, their knowledge and practices were often marginalized by physicians who viewed them as both incompetent health practitioners and unworthy competitors in the health marketplace. Any elderly, sensible, prudent woman who has borne children, may easily be instructed in the art of delivering others. ‘Men of science’, however, may not have been adequately trained in midwifery practices or the expanding specialization of obstetrics. Western European formal medical training and practice clashed with African-derived, apprentice-based midwifery practice to create a competitive health-care marketplace in slave society to which both free and enslaved women had access.