ABSTRACT
By the 1750s the man-as-midwife had been summoned into being, and the female midwife had lost her former monopoly, yet the rivalry between them was only beginning. Formerly the midwife's standing had derived from her position as the central figure in a unified women's culture. As that culture broke up, so there developed a new demand that it should be technical expertise that qualified the midwife to practise; and this demand began to be met, at least in London, by a new cadre of trained midwives. Those midwives who were taught in the lying-in hospitals and by private male teachers probably acquired a restricted set of skills, just enough to "know" what male practitioners prescribed to be their limits. The main lines of resistance against the new form of man-midwifery were laid down by Frank Nicholls as early as 1751 — "modesty", opposition to instruments and the defence of the midwife.
