Women, Infanticide and the Press, 1822–1922: News Narratives in England and Australia PDF
Preview Women, Infanticide and the Press, 1822–1922: News Narratives in England and Australia
Women, Infanticide and the Press, 1822–1922 News Narratives in England and Australia Nicola Goc Women, InfantIcIde and the Press, 1822–1922 This book is dedicated to my mother – my inspiration Maureen Jean Miller (née Gayton) Women, Infanticide and the Press, 1822–1922 news narratives in england and australia nIcola Goc University of Tasmania, Australia © nicola Goc 2013 all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. nicola Goc has asserted her right under the copyright, designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company Wey court east 110 cherry street Union road suite 3-1 farnham Burlington, Vt 05401-3818 surrey, GU9 7Pt Usa england www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Goc, nicola. Women, infanticide and the press, 1822-1922 : news narratives in england and australia. 1. Infanticide--Press coverage--england--history--19th century. 2. Infanticide--Press coverage-- australia--history--19th century. 3. Women murderers--Press coverage--england--history-- 19th century. 4. Women murderers--Press coverage--australia--history--19th century. 5. english newspapers--language. 6. australian newspapers--language. 7. Journalism-- Political aspects--england--history--19th century. 8. Journalism--Political aspects-- australia--history--19th century. 9. Journalism--social aspects--england--history--19th century. 10. Journalism--social aspects--australia--history--19th century. I. title 070.4'493641523'0852-dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Goc, nicola. Women, infanticide and the press, 1822-1922 : news narratives in england and australia / by nicola Goc. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. IsBn 978-1-4094-0604-4 (hardcover) -- IsBn 978-1-4094-0605-1 (ebook) 1. Infanticide--Press coverage--england--history. 2. Infanticide--Press coverage--australia-- history. 3. Unmarried mothers--Press coverage--england--history. 4. Unmarried mothers- Press coverage--australia--history. I. title. Pn5124.I554G63 2013 074--dc23 2012026156 IsBn 9781409406044 (hbk) IsBn 9781409406051 (ebk – Pdf) IsBn 9781472402820 (ebk – ePUB) III Printed and bound in Great Britain by the mPG Books Group, UK. Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 PART I: InfAnTIcIde news In The London Times: 1822–1871 1 Personal Tragedies, Public Narratives: 1822–1833 21 2 A Press Campaign and the 1834 New Poor Law 47 3 The 1860s Maternal Panic 71 PART II: InfAnTIcIde news In The RegIonAL PRess: 1830–1922 4 Infanticide in the Van Diemen’s Land Press 97 5 ‘Bush Madness’ in the Mercury 125 6 ‘The Hinkley Girl-Mother’ and the Leicester Mercury 145 Conclusion 171 Bibliography 177 Index 193 This page has been left blank intentionally Acknowledgements This book could not have been written without the support of Professor Lucy Frost whose passion for bringing the lives of nineteenth-century women to readers today has been a continuing inspiration to me. To Ann Donahue at Ashgate who has been the personification of patience and to Elaine Couper and the Ashgate editorial team – thank you for your support. A special acknowledgement to the readers for their thoughtful suggestions – you made this a better book. Finally where would any writer be without the support of those who, through no fault of their own, are taken on the journey of discovery? Thank you to my sons Tristan and Xavier for their love; to Tamlyn for a summer Sunday, a Greek festival and Foucault, and thank you especially to Romak for tolerating my obsession(s) and for creating this beautiful space in which I write. This page has been left blank intentionally Introduction It is hard to imagine a woman, recently delivered, taking her newborn child’s life, and yet mothers have been killing their babies for millennia. In nomadic tribes infanticide was a routine practice, a form of contraception for hunters and gatherers constantly on the move. Today sensational news stories alert us to mothers who have killed their newborn babies and we are still confounded and uncertain about how to ‘deal’ with the infanticidal woman. She is either demonized or pathologized, but rarely understood, because how do you make sense of such a brutal act? This book examines how societies in England and Australia, at different moments in time from 1822 to 1922, made sense through news discourse of the act of infanticide and of the woman who killed her newborn baby. News texts are an important resource in historical studies as they are often the only surviving texts, or the only comprehensive texts to survive, on an issue such as infanticide. News texts are regularly used in historical studies as uncomplicated reflections of a historical reality, while what they offer is one reporter’s view of a newsworthy event. However, as this study will show, through a close reading of news it becomes clear that news texts are the nexus of multiple discourses, they are far more complex texts than they may at first appear and offer fertile ground for researchers. By applying Critical Discourse Analysis to this study of infanticide news the ways in which knowledge and power were acquired, maintained and understood discursively at given moments in time is better understood. All discourses interact with other discourses in the social moment in which they are produced and consumed, and news texts are an important record of the formation of influential infanticide discourses in the period 1822–1922. Infanticide news, as this study shows, was woven into interconnected discourses about the regulation of women through the family, through law and justice, and through welfare and medicine, reinforcing the central role of discourse in the creation and maintenance of power relations. News texts are, as Kieran McEvoy argues, ‘active participants and vital contributors in an ongoing dialectic with their readers’ (1996, p. 179). It is through an analysis of this dialectic between newspapers and their readers that insight is gained into how infanticide was understood in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how power was influenced over the infanticidal woman and how the infanticidal woman herself held power through news discourse. This study takes Foucault’s perspective that the production of knowledge, of ‘facts’ and truth claims, and the exercise of power, are inextricably connected to discourse. Newspaper discourses provide a way to investigate the discursive practices that brought the nineteenth-century infanticidal woman – known as ‘the Infanticide’ – into being. Infanticide news also created oppositional ways of
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