"Constant Medical Supervision": locating reproductive bodies in Victorian and Edwardian Dundee

The literature on infant mortality has remained largely detached from the burgeoning literature on the body and embodiment. This paper reconsiders these two literatures in relation to the dynamics of industrialisation, social reform, and struggles over women's bodies in late 19th and early 20th century Dundee. During this period, Dundee was dominated by the jute industry which employed a largely female workforce. This industrial nexus was articulated within a broader environment of social improvement that was preoccupied with population growth and national power. As the need for healthy 'future citizens' became imperative, Dundee's infant mortality rate became a crucial marker in assessing working women's role and care of self. This paper pays specific attention to the strategies of reform that tracked, monitored and disciplined these working women and their 'reproductive' bodies. It focuses on the forms of knowledge and systems of knowledge production that characterised these projects, and how the conjunctures between power and knowledge were grounded in material spatial practices, transforming women's social and physical place in Dundee, and forming an urban geography of 'health reform'.