@article{ref1,
title="Religion, Community and The Infanticidal Mother: Evidence From 1840s Rural Wiltshire",
journal="Family and community history",
year="2008",
author="Watson, Katherine D.",
volume="11",
number="2",
pages="116-133",
abstract="The existing literature on the history of infanticide has typically considered the crime as a reaction to a specific set of difficult individual circumstances, but has not attempted to place the infanticidal mother within a longer personal timeframe. Nor has the role of her religious belief been much examined. This article investigates three key elements in the case of Rebecca Smith (1807-1849), the last woman executed in England for the murder of her own infant: her bad marriage; her poverty; and her Baptist religion. These factors provide context for her socio-economic and psychological development, and thus for her status as England's best documented serial infant killer. The article suggests that, as a married woman, Smith's choices were influenced by conditions both wider and deeper than the more immediate issues which have tended to be associated with infanticide by unmarried women.<p />",
language="",
issn="1463-1180",
doi="10.1179/175138108X355148",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/175138108X355148"
}