Infanticide and Baby-farming in Victorian England

This open access book explores the tragic case of the Torquay Murder of 1865, when the body of a young boy was discovered abandoned on the outskirts of Torquay in Devon, England . Having identified the child as three-month-old Thomas Harris, local police arrested the child''s mother, Mary Jane Harris, and his nurse, Charlotte Winsor, and charged them both with murder. Drawing on a range of original sources including police and inquest reports, court and prison records, witness depositions, newspaper accounts, census records, medical texts, Home Office documents and letters, Mark Jackson carefully reconstructs the complex story of this murder and explores the personal and political consequences of Britain''s first baby-farming scandal. Situating the case within the national infanticide crisis it coincided with, and exploring the debates it provoked around illegitimacy laws, abolishing capital punishment and regulating the practice of adoption, this book examines the impact this landmark trial had on British law and society. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University of Exeter, UK.

Product details

• Authors: Mark Jackson
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 13.11.2025
• EAN: 9781350532021
• ISBN: 978-1-350-53202-1
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: History of Crime, Deviance and Punishment
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Law > Criminal law, criminal procedural law, criminology; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, HISTORY / Social History, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / Women, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / Victorian Era (1837-1901), British & Irish history, Social and cultural history, Crime and criminology, Crime & criminology, 1837–1901 (Victorian period)