Abstract
This book has focused on the type of criminality with which women, historically, have been associated—child-murder and infanticide. By contextualising this crime within a framework of moral regulation, I have investigated the role of the sexed body in morally regulating infanticidal women during two different periods:
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(i)
the moral panic response to female baby-farmers during the mid-nineteenth century when rates of illegitimacy and infanticide were at an historical high and infanticide was a largely unpoliced, hidden crime which rarely resulted in arrests and convictions; and
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(ii)
the exaggerated responses to cases of multiple familial infant deaths which resulted in the wrongful convictions of three women during the late twentieth century.
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© 2015 Annie Cossins
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Cossins, A. (2015). The Implications of the Body for Female Criminality. In: Female Criminality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137299420_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137299420_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45274-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-29942-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)