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Turning a Blind Eye: Infanticide and Missing Babies in Seventeenth-Century Geneva

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2020

Sara Beam
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Extract

In August 1677, the Genevan consistory, a church court preoccupied with regulating sexual sin, summoned Louise Bouffa. Louise was a single woman recently hired by the wealthy Sarasin family as a wet nurse, an occupation that signaled to the consistory that she had recently given birth. The pastors and elders wanted to know who the father was and where the child was now. Louise was at first evasive. She claimed not to know the name of the father, although she did admit that the man with whom she had had sex was “very well dressed.” She said that she had given birth not far from Geneva, in the village of Gy, where the baby had been baptized and then had died. These claims turned out to be false. The Genevan consistory contacted the pastor in Gy who denied that her child had been baptized there. Summoned to tell the truth, Louise admitted that she had given the baby away to a man named Bertet to present as his own child for baptism, although she added that she was aware he had not done so. She also revealed that the father of the infant was a well-respected Genevan citizen and lawyer, Léonard Revillod, in whose household she had been working when she became pregnant. The consistory admonished Louise for lying about the baptism and sent her and her master to the criminal court to be prosecuted. This court, an elected body called the Small Council, duly fined Léonard for having had sex with his servant and for having “obliged her to give the baby to a stranger.” As for Louise, she was merely sent back to the consistory, which excluded her from participating in communion. No further investigation of the fate of the infant ensued.

Type
Forum: Rethinking the Criminalization of Childbirth: Infanticide in Premodern Europe and the Modern Americas
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 255 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2020

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Footnotes

She thanks the editors of the forum as well as the Centre for the Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria for a research fellowship that allowed for the completion of this research.

References

1. Archives d’État de Genève (hereafter AEG), Procès-verbaux des séances du Consistoire (hereafter R. Consist.) 63, f. 55v (August 30, 1677).

2. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 57v (September 20, 1677).

3. AEG Procès-verbaux des Régistres du Conseil (hereafter RC) 177, f. 344-45 (September 8, 1677); AEG RC 177, f. 362 (September 15, 1677); AEG RC 177, f. 364 (September 18, 1677).

4. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 57v (September 20, 1677); AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 89v-90 (December 6, 1677); AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 157 (August 29, 1678); AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 156-156v (August 22, 1678); AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 26-28 (May 17, 1677); AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 162v (October 3, 1678); AEG RC 177, f. 274 (July 6, 1677).

5. AEG Procès Criminels (hereafter PC) 1e Série 3812; and AEG PC 1e Série 3248. In contrast, the parents of most abandoned children in eighteenth-century Geneva were never identified. Aquillon, Daniel, “Hélène Chambras, Marie Passant, Georges Parvis. Ou le don et l'abandon d'enfants à l'Hôpital au XVIIIe siècle,” in Sauver l’âme, nourrir le corps, ed. Lescaze, Bernard (Geneva: Hospice Général, 1985), 203–28Google Scholar.

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25. Émile Rivoire and Victor van Berchem, eds. Les sources du droit du canton de Genève, 4 vols. (Arau: H. R. Sauerländer, 1927–35).

26. AEG PC 2e Série 1779, final sentence; Naphy, William G., “Secret Pregnancy and Presumptions of Guilt,” in Politics, Gender and Belief, ed. Nelson, Amy Burdett, Kathleen Comerford, and Karin Maag (Geneva: Droz, 2014), 265–87Google Scholar.

27. AEG PC 1e Série 2841; RC 177, f. 146 (April 4, 1677).

28. Brannan Lewis, Infanticide, 22–27; Soman, “Anatomy,” 250; and Rowlands, Alison, “‘In Great Secrecy’: The Crime of Infanticide in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, 1501–1618,” German History 2 (1997): 181–99Google Scholar.

29. Mottu-Weber, “‘Paillardises.’” Single mothers could be prosecuted in the absence of an infant corpse, but most of these trials were inconclusive. See AEG PC 1e Série 2435; and AEG PC 1e Série 2841. Married mothers were also sometimes investigated, although they were rarely convicted. See AEG PC 1e Série 2533.

30. Jilek, “Infanticide.” When the Small Council did not establish a full proof of guilt, the woman was usually flogged and banished. See for example AEG PC 1e Série 2795; and AEG PC 1e Série 4469.

31. AEG PC 1e Série 4876, testimony of Marthe Blanc, May 4, 1691.

32. AEG PC 1e Série 4820, summary of the trial, June 2, 1691.

33. AEG PC 1e Série 4876, interrogations of Jacquema Roch May 13, May 15, May 26, May 27, 1691.

34. Jilek, “Infanticide”; Brannan Lewis, Infanticide, 55–65; Bongert, “L'infanticide;” and Justine Semmens, “Rousing him with Wine: The Prosecution of Infanticide and the Application of Reasonable Doubt at the Parlement of Paris, 1550–1650,” unpublished paper presented at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference (October 2019).

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36. In 1621, for example, four individuals were executed: AEG PC 1e Série 2505; AEG PC 1e Série 2529; AEG PC 1e Série 2531; AEG PC 1e Série 2537; and Jean-François Pillet, “‘Tellement que l’âme soit séparée du corp’: la peine capitale à Genève au XVIIe siècle” (Master's thesis, University of Geneva, 1994), 13–18, 77–79.

37. Pillet, “‘Tellement que l’âme soit séparée du corp’”; and Jilek, “Infanticide.”

38. Brannan Lewis, Infanticide, 50–53; van der Heijden, Manon, Women and Crime in Early Modern Holland (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 53–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Porret, , “Crime des filles séduites”; and van Dülmen, Richard, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 138–42Google Scholar.

39. The percentage of women convicted of infanticide who were then executed declined in the eighteenth century in Geneva, as elsewhere. Porret, Michel, Le crime et ses circonstances (Geneva: Droz, 1995), 217Google Scholar; Soman, “Anatomy;” Hardwick, Sex in an Old Regime City; Harrington, Joel F., The Unwanted Child (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 305–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mary Nagle Wessling, “Infanticide Trials and Forensic Medicine, Württembergs 1757–93,” in Legal Medicine in History, ed. Michael Clark and Catherine Crawford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 117–44.

40. AEG R. Consist. 62, f. 22 (April 1, 1675).

41. AEG R. Consist. 62, f. 26 (April 22, 1675).

42. AEG RC 178, f. 180 (May 18, 1678); and AEG R. Consist. 62, f. 7 (February 11, 1675).

43. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 45v–46 (July 26 to August 3, 1677); and AEG RC 177, f. 316–18 (August 14, 1677).

44. AEG PC 1e Série 2991; AEG PC 1e Série 3303; and AEG PC 1e Série 3400.

45. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 39 (June 28, 1677); and AEG RC 177, f. 270 (July 4, 1677).

46. AEG RC 178, f. 37 (January 23, 1678); AEG RC 178, f. 129 (April 2, 1678); and AEG RC 178, f. 386 (December 10, 1678).

47. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 58 (September 27, 1677); and AEG RC 177, f. 445 (November 23, 1677).

48. AEG RC 177, f. 362 (September 17, 1677); AEG RC 177, f. 473 (December 12, 1677); AEG RC 177, f. 345, f. 353 (September 1677); AEG RC 177, f. 430 (November 9, 1677); AEG RC 177, f. 495 (December 29, 1677); AEG RC 177, f. 445 (November 23, 1677); AEG RC 177, f. 461–62 (December 5, 1677); and AEG RC 177, f. 61–62 (February 5, 1677). The Small Council also charged two couples with joint responsibility and insisted that they marry immediately. AEG RC 177, f. 335 (September 1, 1677); AEG RC 177, f. 274 (July 6, 1677).

49. By the mid-eighteenth century, the financial responsibility for illegitimate children often fell to the father in Geneva. Aquillon, “Hélène Chambras”; Chappuis, Loraine, “Enquêter, baptiser, réprimer: le contrôle de la bâtardise à Genève au XVIIIe siècle (1750–1770),” Crime, Histoire et Sociétés 18 (2014): 57–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. AEG RC 178, f. 3 (January 7, 1678); and AEG RC 178, f. 186 (May 24, 1678).

51. Trabichet, “‘Tant que l'on nourrit,’” 63–65; and Verdier, Camille Dominici, “‘Les enfants de la ville’: le consulat montpelliérain et ses nourrices à l'aube du XVIe siècle,” Annales du Midi 127 (2015): 349–66Google Scholar.

52. AEG PC 2e Série 2847.

53. AEG RC 178, f. 208 (June 12 1678), f. 210 (June 14, 1678).

54. AEG PC 1e Série 4476.

55. AEG PC 1e Série 3871, interrogation of Antoina Sauget, May 5, 1666.

56. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 82v (November 1, 1677).

57. A few women returned home and remained there to raise their child. See AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 51v–52 (August 23, 1677). The only account I have come across of a woman claiming to have left her infant with her family in the countryside was not deemed credible. AEG 4876, May 13, 1691 interrogation of Jaquma Roch.

58. Klapisch-Zuber, “Blood Parents”; and Winer, Rebecca Lynn, “The Mother and the Dida [Nanny],” in Medieval and Renaissance Lactations, ed. Spierling, Jutta (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 59–63Google Scholar. A few single mothers lived at the house of correction with their infants. See AEG RC 178, f. 184 (May 22, 1678).

59. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 6v (March 15, 1677); and AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 52v (August 28 1677).

60. AEG R. Consist 63, f. 172 (December 19, 1678); and AEG RC 179, f. 33 (January 25, 1679).

61. AEG PC 1e Série 4962, interrogation of Pernette Brochet, February 14, 1693.

62. Maza, Sara, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 61–72Google Scholar; and Schulte, Regina, The Village in Court: Arson, Infanticide, and Poaching in the Court Records of Upper Bavaria, 1848–1910 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 183–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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64. Trabichet, “‘Tant que l'on nourrit,’” 53–55.

65. Rivoire and Berchem, eds. Sources du droit, 4: 111, 4: 437, 4: 467.

66. Ibid., 2: 512.

67. Anne-Marie Piuz, “Les plus riches des genevois,” in A Genève et autour de Genève aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Lausaunne: Payot, 1985), 209.

68. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 171–171v (December 17, 1678); and AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 176 (December 26, 1678).

69. AEG R. Consist. 62, f. 40v (June 17, 1675).

70. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 156–57 (August 22–29, 1678).

71. AEG R. Consist. 64, f. 11v (March 6, 1679).

72. AEG R. Consist. 64, f. 48v (September 25, 1679).

73. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 156 (August 22, 1678).

74. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 162v (October 3, 1678); AEG RC 178, f. 317 (September 13, 1678); and AEG RC 178, f. 322 (September 21, 1678).

75. Mottu-Weber, “‘Paillardises.’”

76. Maza, Servants, 89–94; and Lipscomb, Suzannah, The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 230–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77. The average daily wage for a woman in Geneva was between 3 and 7 sols in the early seventeenth century. One écu therefore represented 2 months’ salary for a working woman. Anne Marie Piuz, “Salaires, prix, monnaie,” in Vivre à Genève autour de 1600, 1: 213–217.

78. AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 112v (July 29, 1686).

79. AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 54 (December 24, 1685); AEG RC 185, f. 186v (December 25, 1685); AEG RC 186, f. 162 (June 9, 1686).

80. AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 72v–73 (February 25, 1686).

81. AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 67v–70 (February 11, 1686); and AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 80 (March 25, 1686).

82. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 166–166v (November 14–21, 1678).

83. Lescaze, Bernard, ‘“Funus consistori, o miserere!’ L’égalité de traitement devant le consistoire de Genève autour de 1600,” in Sous l'oeil du consistoire, ed. Grosse, Christian, Tosato-Rigo, Danièle, and Staremberg, Nicole Goy (Lausanne: Étude de lettres, 2004), 41–55Google Scholar.

84. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 87v–88 (November 29, 1677); and AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 89v–90 (December 6, 1677).

85. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 92 (December 13, 1677); AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 114–114v (March 14, 1678); AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 140v (June 20, 1678); and AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 145 (July 4, 1678).

86. AEG PC 1e Série 4801.

87. AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 62–62v (January 28, 1686); and AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 97 (May 20, 1686).

88. AEG R. Consist. 64, f. 44 (September 4, 1679).

89. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 125 (May 9, 1678); and AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 99 (January 3, 1678).

90. Debra Blumenthal, “With my Daughter's Milk: Wet Nurses and the Rhetoric of Lactation in Valencian Court Records,” in Medieval and Renaissance Lactations, 101–14; Klapisch-Zuber, “Blood Parents”; and Trabichet, “‘Tant que l'on nourrit,’” 46–47.

91. AEG R. Consist. 64, f. 35v (July 10–17, 1679).

92. AEG R. Consist. 62, f. 19 (March 30, 1675), f. 22 (April 1, 1675).

93. AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 53 (December 24, 1685).

94. AEG R. Consist. 63, f. 168v (December 5, 1678).

95. AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 54v (December 31, 1685).

96. Klapisch-Zuber, “Blood Parents”; Harrington, Unwanted Child, 256–63; and Alvarez, Maria José Pérez and García, Alfredo Martín, “Nourrice mercernaires et mortalité infantile dans la ville de Leon au cours du XVIIIe siècle,” Annales de Démographie Historique 1 (2010): 67–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97. AEG R. Consist. 66, f. 182 (November 11, 1686).

98. AEG PC 1e Série 4635.

99. Ibid.