One of the Best Fathers until He Went Out of His Mind’
Paternal Child-Murder, 1864–1900
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12553296 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jade Shepherd (0000-0002-0027-7988, Queen Mary University of London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 17-35 |
| Publication date | 2013-02-26 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Victorian Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1355-5502 • E-ISSN: 1750-0133 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13555502.2012.751045 |
| PMID | 24764747 |
| PMCID | PMC3991316 |
| OpenAlex | W2090110197 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 3 |
In March 1873, George Wilson murdered his ten-year-old son, Thomas. According to a medical report, Wilson 'became disturbed and distracted by domestic [ . . . ] troubles and finally gave way to intense melancholy, accompanied by delusions and strong religious fancies' , and while his mind was under these 'insane influences' he murdered his child. 1 At the Old Bailey on 24 November 1873, witnesses testified to the distinct change in Wilson's character as a result of his insanity. His neighbour, Mr Oxley, told the court that Wilson would not have allowed 'a hair on [ . . . ] [his children's] heads to be injured' , and Wilson's eldest son William, when asked 'Has he always been a kind father?' replied 'Oh, yes: he has been one of the best of fathers until he went out of his mind'. uring the 1820s physicians refined and developed the term infanticide as a symptom of puerperal insanity. Since Victorian psychiatrists (alienists) cast infanticide as maternal, scholars have tended to focus on infanticidal women and questions surrounding illegitimacy, poverty and puerperal insanity. Partly because of contemporary beliefs about womanhood, infanticidal women were usually considered insane. Cases of paternal child-murderers in nineteenth-century England are less
Criminology · Insanity · Lunatic · Newspaper · Order (exchange · Political science · Psychiatry · Scholarship · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Law · Psychology
An astonishing human failure’. The influence of gender on the image of perpetrators of infanticide in the courtroom and crime reporting in the Netherlands, 1960-1989
Children, poverty and mental health in rural and urban England (1850–1907)
Gender and madness in nineteenth‐century Britain
The History of Mum and Dad
Life for the Families of the Victorian Criminally Insane
| Citations per year | 0.42 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2014 - 2022 (9) |
| Highly cited | No |