A harrowing new study into the history of infanticide, child murder, in early-modern Europe, has presented a slate of horrific facts. It turns out child murder was so common in Italy, France and England, that it was practiced “routinely”.
According to a new book by a French-trained Canadian Professor of History, and behavioral historian, Gregory Hanlon, historically in Italy, France and England married couples “routinely killed their children” to control resources and maintain their social status.
Published by Routledge in London, and titled “ Death Control in the West 1500-1800: Sex Ratios at Baptism in Italy, France and England ,” this stirring new book explores the numbers of infants whose lives were taken, without their murderous parents having been charged with infanticide.
When Humans Killed their Children Without Suffering Grief
Dr. Hanlon, who is a distinguished research professor at Dalhousie University, writes in his new book that Western historians have erroneously derived infantile statistics from the records of criminal trials in which pregnant mothers, or married women fertilized by men other than their husbands, hid their pregnancies.
Hanlon argues that pregnant women carrying unwanted children generally “killed their newborns alone or with female accomplices.” And in most historic cases, according to the new book, “infanticide was a crime leaving no aggrieved party seeking revenge if it was committed…
