Poor Babes, Desperate Mothers: Concealment of Dead Newborns in Early Virginia

Abstract

abstract:In 1624, Parliament passed An Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murdering of Bastard Children. The Virginia General Assembly enacted a similar law in 1710. Those statutes treated the concealment of a nonmarital newborn's death as presumptive murder. The essay argues that colonial Virginians' main objective in enforcing these acts was to scare pregnant servants into revealing their condition so that their masters could extract additional service without pay. Convictions for concealment alone, and not willful murder, rarely, if ever, resulted in execution. Deterrence was achieved through show trials and the criminal process, mitigated by a liberal pardon policy.