ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 covers the commissioning of lying-in hospitals, which continued across London and other large cities. The publication of Frank Nicholls’s ‘Petition of the Unborn Babes’, criticising the work of accoucheurs; the creation of the Ladies’ Medical College and the growth of lying-in hospitals are chronicled. Public health and mortality rates published in the bills of mortality, replaced by General Registration Act 1836, would challenge the claims of obstetricians regarding the safety of midwifery practice. Industrialisation, immigration and the social health divide resulted in soaring mortality rates. Poverty and hopelessness were documented by Dickens and Mayhew. The creation of the Midwives Obstetrical Society of London would finally lead to the first Midwives Act.
