The contentions in this paper arose tangentially from a study of London coroners I began in the summer of 1998. I had intended to examine the verdicts from nineteenth-century coroners’ courts in order to assess the differences in verdicts that might arise depending on whether the coroner was a doctor, a lawyer, or neither. Was a physician more likely to detect murder as a cause of death than a lawyer or a “civilian?” Instead, as I read hundreds of inquest reports and explored the history of the coroners’ courts, I began to realize that no matter who the coroners were, it was rare for any of them to bring in a verdict of “wilful murder,” even in cases that seemed very suspicious to me.

Historians often despair of their ability to write histories of child murder,because the crime was easy to commit and conceal. Even today, coroners candetermine only in rare instances whether a deceased infant or newborn wassuffocated or died of natural causes (Knight 1996: 441–44,345–60). No reliable test can determine, once decomposition has begun,whether a deceased newborn ever took a breath; and suffocation, unlikestrangulation, leaves no physical marks, unless excessive pressure is applied tothe face or lips. A murderer needed but a few moments to smother a child andcould claim that the child was stillborn, had been accidentally overlain, or haddied from natural causes. Unwanted pregnancies could be kept from public noticewith the help of family or friends, especially pregnancies that came to term inlate winter or early spring, when expectant mothers could live quietly out ofthe public eye or stay wrapped in heavy clothing. In New England, a largeproportion of suspected neonaticides—nearly a quarter—occurred inApril or early May, “mud season” in the Yankee vernacular,whenpeople emerged from their long winter “hibernation.”