
When reading through Defoe’s Moll Flanders, one thing that struck me as a reader was the complete disregard Moll had for all of the children to which she gave birth over the course of the novel. While Moll takes pains at every turn to account for her stock of money and goods, she doesn’t bother to keep count of her offspring, let alone give any sign of concern for their well-being. Recognizing that this isn’t a focus of the overall narrative and that views towards children varied greatly in the 1700s from our views and beliefs today, I was willing, somewhat, to give Moll a pass for her laissez-faire approach to child-rearing.
Willing, that is, until I began to browse through the Old Bailey Session Papers, which are available online. I thought it would be interesting to see if any papers came up under the search for “offense: infanticide” and “verdict: not guilty”. I didn’t expect to find more than four of five instances of this, so on can imagine the shock I felt when 46 cases popped up under my results. I was astounded, that within the span of 30 years, over 46 cases of infanticide had been brought to court in which the defendants were acquitted. Upon further examination, I found that of these 46, only 4 of the cases involved the death of an infant that was not designated by the court as a “bastard”.

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