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Sara Beam, “Missing Babies and Tacit Tolerance of Infanticide in Early Modern Europe”
Sara Beam, “Missing Babies and Tacit Tolerance of Infanticide in Early Modern Europe”
Aggressive criminal prosecution of unwed mothers who killed their newborns in early modern Europe (1550-1750) has led historians to assume that Europe was less tolerant of illegitimacy and infanticide than other pre-modern societies, including China and Japan. New research throws this assumption into question. In early modern Geneva, authorities often turned a blind eye to […]