Infanticide and Baby-farming in Victorian England : The Torquay Murder of 1865

Abstract

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.