Childbirth in Victorian Birmingham

[RichSmith]

Hello everyone

I’m still researching my book about my great grandfather (only been doing it for ten years so far!)

I’m wondering about who would help women in childbirth before midwives.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that older women skilled in natural remedies were employed as midwives, although it may have been a dream! I’m sure expectant mothers sent one of their other children off with a half crown to the local hedge-witch to procure their services?

Does anyone know whether this rings true or not?

 

[Morturn]

Hello everyone

I’m still researching my book about my great grandfather (only been doing it for ten years so far!)

I’m wondering about who would help women in childbirth before midwives.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that older women skilled in natural remedies were employed as midwives, although it may have been a dream! I’m sure expectant mothers sent one of their other children off with a half crown to the local hedge-witch to procure their services?

Does anyone know whether this rings true or not?

This is a good question, but I think you will not really find a definitive answer for.

I suggest that you think about the question differently and is something you can do a lot of research on.

Women have always assisted other women in childbirth since the evolution of modern humans, men were largely uninvolved in birth itself. Knowledge of midwifery was passed on from one generation to the next by members of a community. So, in terms of a midwife, it really is a question of qualification in a formal setting. The Royal College of Midwives was established in 1881.

It was only as medical knowledge progresed that doctors started delivering baby’s, which in terms of infant mortality was bad news. A pattern soon emerged that ging into hospital to give birth was a death sentence. Women and often babies were dying of infections due to the lack of knowledge of gem theory.

In the early nineteenth century doctors/surgeons gained kudos from the blood on their clothing. Unfortunately, it was also a source of infection spread as they went from patient to patient, unknowingly carrying the bacteria on their instruments and their unwashed hands.

It was Ignaz Semmelweis who try to encourage doctors to wash hands etc, but his ideas were a little bit like pushing sand uphill to the medical profession at the time. We know better now.

There are a couple of good websites here:

The History of Childbirth

The Historical Horror of Childbir

 

[Stokkie]

To add to the websites Morturn has suggested, I would recommend getting hold of Roy Porter's History of Medicine which is a general book then consider.

Midwifery from the Tudors to the 21st Century: History, Politics and Safe Practice in England Hardcover – 2020​

by Julia Allison. She is currently Vice President of RCM. The Kindle edition is £31 or there's a paperback. The word midwife meaning 'with woman' is Anglo-Saxon in origin, so midwives have been about for a long time.

Do you know when your great grandfather was born and if it was a home birth?

 

[Eric Gibson]

I recall being told that when my mother gave birth to her first there was a neighbour who attended and that that was the norm, my grandfather was there and the local doctor attended, was blind drunk and got thrown out by granddad.

 

[Pedrocut]

Victoria was Queen from 1837-1901. Interesting to note that the second wife of Joseph Chamberlain died in childbirth at her residence, Southbourne, Edgbaston on the 14 February 1875.

 

[Pedrocut]

Available on the Internet Archive is The Victorian house : domestic life from childbirth to deathbed. Although I believe it doesn’t deal with the real working class problems.

“Serious illness always lurked. Although women had a slightly longer life expectancy than men throughout the period, all joined in regarding them as the frailer vessel. The most dangerous time was Childbirth childbed fever (or puerperal fever, now simply septicaemia) was the most common cause of death in Childbirth From 1847 to 1876, 5 women per 1000 live births died, with puerperal fever causing between a third and a half of these deaths.

There was no cure available: doctors merely prescribed opium, champagne, and brandy-and-soda, trying to ease the passing, rather than making a vain attempt to cure a mortal illness.”

 

[RichSmith]

thanks for all your help... sorry it took me a while to get back to you

 

[mw0njm.]

A Dangerous affair … a Californian woman, circa 1840, being helped to give birth on a birth chair by two midwives, each pulling on a cloth wrapped around her belly.

Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

How to give birth (100 years ago)

Don't forget to stock up on the Lysol and the leeches

theweek.com