ABSTRACT
Childbirth can be easy or difficult, rapid or protracted, trouble-free or attended with complications. A more difficult problem is that the very categories with which one seeks to describe the bodily process of birth are themselves theory-laden in both past and present. For eighteenth-century London the chapter discusses three different sources of evidence. First, the cases of William Giffard offer a cross-section of difficult deliveries from around 1730. Secondly comes an estimate offered by William Smellie, embracing both the relative and the absolute rates of births according to the presentation-type and the degree of difficulty. Thirdly, and apparently equally original in conception, in 1781 Robert Bland published an analysis of some 1897 births delivered under the auspices of the Westminster General Dispensary, classified by presentation-type and incidence of difficulty. These three sources complement each other and yield a consistent picture, once due allowance is made for their special characteristics.
