TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2008//
TI  - Religion, Community and The Infanticidal Mother: Evidence From 1840s Rural Wiltshire
JO  - Family and community history
A1  - Watson, Katherine D.
SP  - 116
EP  - 133
VL  - 11
IS  - 2
N2  - 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 />
LA  - 
SN  - 1463-1180
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/175138108X355148
ID  - ref1
ER  -