Women’s Policy Networks and the Infanticide Act 1922

This article examines the reason for the passage of the 1922 Infanticide Act, arguing that it owes much to the influence and work of women’s policy networks. Historians have disagreed as to why the Act was passed with relative suddenness in the early 1920s, at a time when infanticide was generally c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Twentieth Century British History 2010-01, Vol.21 (4), p.441-463
Main Author: Grey, Daniel J.R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Civil Service
England
Female
Feminism - history
Freedom
History of law
History of medicine and histology
History, 20th Century
Homicide
Humans
Infant, Newborn
Infanticide
Infanticide - history
Infanticide - legislation & jurisprudence
Law
Legislation
Policy Networks
Political action
Political history
United Kingdom
Wales
Women - history
Women and politics
Women's organizations
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Summary:This article examines the reason for the passage of the 1922 Infanticide Act, arguing that it owes much to the influence and work of women’s policy networks. Historians have disagreed as to why the Act was passed with relative suddenness in the early 1920s, at a time when infanticide was generally considered a much less pressing social issue than it had been in Victorian England. Moreover, several Bills brought between 1908 and 1913 proposing that the law on this subject be amended so that women who killed their newborns no longer faced the death penalty had all failed. Importantly, the roles of juror and lay magistrate had become open to women in 1920, following the passage of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919. The public interest generated by a case of newborn murder tried at the Leicester Assizes in 1921 (particularly amongst women’s organizations, including the suffragette group the Women’s Freedom League) led several leading women with political connections to push for a change in the law. Without the pressure these women could bring to bear on civil servants and politicians, attempts to bring in new legislation on infanticide would have been postponed well into the twentieth century.
ISSN:0955-2359
1477-4674
DOI:10.1093/tcbh/hwq024