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Infanticide and Baby-farming in Victorian England

This open access book explores the tragic case of the Torquay Murder of 1865, when the body of a young boy was discovered abandoned on the outskirts of Torquay in Devon, England . Having identified the child as three-month-old Thomas Harris, local police arrested the child’s mother, Mary Jane Harris...

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Hovedforfatter: Jackson, Mark
Format: Online
Sprog:engelsk
Udgivet: Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) 2026
Fag:
Infanticide
Crime
Baby-farming
Victorian England
Law
Legal history
Courts
Murder
Capital punishment
Illegitimacy
Adoption
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTB Social and cultural history
thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JK Social services and welfare, criminology::JKV Crime and criminology
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology
thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day
Online adgang:ONIX_20260415T184305_9781350532045_40
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Summary:This open access book explores the tragic case of the Torquay Murder of 1865, when the body of a young boy was discovered abandoned on the outskirts of Torquay in Devon, England . Having identified the child as three-month-old Thomas Harris, local police arrested the child’s mother, Mary Jane Harris, and his nurse, Charlotte Winsor, and charged them both with murder. Through careful analysis of a range of original sources including police and inquest reports, court and prison records, witness depositions, newspaper accounts, census records, medical and legal texts, Home Office documents and letters, Mark Jackson reconstructs the complex story of the Torquay murder and explores the personal and political consequences of England’s first baby-farming scandal. Situating the case within the context of mid-Victorian concerns over rising rates of illegitimacy and infanticide, debates about the abolition of capital punishment and attempts to regulate child-care and adoption practices, this book examines the impact this landmark trial had on British law and society. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University of Exeter, UK.

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