Depositions of Linda Downes of Colchester, Essex, accused of
a series of three infanticides, were taken on Nov. 12, 1638. Most modern
descriptions of the case do not state the woman’s name.
***
EXCERPT (1 of 3): Colchester was notorious in
late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth-century England as the site of a multiple
infanticide case: in the late 1630s, one of its inhabitants “buried one child,
poisoned another, [and] smothered a third – all of them illegitimate. During a
series of depositions following her crimes, she confessed to trying first to
abort her children with the help of her lover, who “by phisick [had] often
assayed to destroy the same child within her,” but did not succeed.
[Lisa Zunshine, Bastards and
Foundlings: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-century England, 2005, Ohio State UP, p.
51]
***
EXCERPT (2 of 3): Similarly, Linda
Downes at Colchester in Essex had tried ‘savin and physick’, in vain, to end
her pregnancy in 1638. [Note 10: Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, p. 49.]
[Caitlin Scott, “Birth Control and Conceptions of
Pregnancy in Seventeenth-Century England,” Retrospectives 2, Spring 2013]
***
EXCERPT (3 of 3): Thus a Colchester woman who was made
pregnant in the mid-seventeenth century took 'savin' and other 'phisick', but
neither was successful. When she again conceived illegitimately, her lover, an
amateur physician, 'by phisick often assayed to destroy the same child within
her', but again unsuccessfully. (28: The whole extraordinary set of depositions
is contained in a set of examinations taken on 12 November 1638, in the
Colchester Examination Book for 1619-45,
at County Hall, Colchester. I am grateful to Mr J. A. Sharpe of the University
of York for the reference.) [From: Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen and Richard
M.Smith (eds.), Bastardy and its Comparative
History (Arnold, 1980); p.71: Alan Macfarlane, “Illegitimacy and
illegitimates in English history.”]
[3014-1/1/21]
***
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