Monsters of the Vilest Kind

Women have killed throughout history but whether they killed men or women, new born babies or infants, revulsion for their crime was aggravated because of the very fact that they were women. Anne-Marie Kilday of Oxford Brookes University asserts that in Scottish society "Women were more morally responsible than men but less criminally culpable!"

Here, Billy Kay examines the tragic crime of infanticide and its visceral stories that leave an indelible mark on those touched by them, for such was the state of disassociation in many of the mothers that they used extreme violence to kill their babies. We explore whether Calvinism produced an atmosphere of public censure that made unmarried women go to extraordinary lengths to conceal pregnancy - a number of girls were said to have given birth in total silence for example, so that other members of the household had no idea what had occurred. One historian compares the attitudes against infanticidal women with the witch hunts of an earlier period. Finally though, the Act anent Child Murder which had prevailed since 1690 was abolished and by the late 18th and 19th centuries there was a huge shift in attitude influenced by Scottish doctors like William Hunter who were in the forefront of understanding temporary insanity and diminished responsibility. The women were now regarded as victims of poverty, of mental imbalance and of men, rather than as unnatural deviants. The change is expressed in one of our greatest novels The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott. We will also hear two of the great Scots ballads which deal with infanticide.. Mary Hamilton which is sympathetic to the woman and The Cruel Mother which is not. Show less