"Killed by its mother": infanticide in Providence County, Rhode Island, 1870 to 1938

This article analyzes infanticide based on the Coroners' Records for Providence County, Rhode Island, from the 1870s to 1938 to determine doctors' and coroners' attitudes toward mothers who killed. The nineteenth century witnessed a medical discourse on the possibility of postpartum insanity as a cause of infanticide. While some women claimed temporary insanity, and some doctors and coroners legitimated this defense, its application to mothers who killed was arbitrary. They determined who deserved this diagnosis based on the woman's character, her forthrightness, and extenuating circumstances. Infanticide divided the profession nationally and at the local level and prevented doctors or coroners from speaking in a united voice on the issue. This article does not attempt to follow cases of infanticide through to jury verdicts. Instead, it provides an opportunity to analyze the circumstances women faced that led them to kill their newborns, and to analyze the responses of doctors and coroners to these mothers who killed. Unlike the findings of other studies, neither physicians nor coroners in Rhode Island were united in a claim of ignorance to save these women from guilty verdicts.