Author Archives: Janette Allotey
The Foundling Hospital: Big with child on stage – fictional and real occurrences of pregnancy in the Thespian world of around 1700
Hear about fictional and real occurrences of pregnancy in the Thespian world of around 1700.
Wednesday 21st April 13:00 | Online via Zoom, free but must be booked in advance
Researcher Anita Sikora uncovers the intriguing world of pregnancy on the London stage in the early 18th century. English actor Ann Oldfield and Italian opera singer Margherita Durastanti both continued to perform well into advanced pregnancy. Come and discover what reactions this caused – and how pregnancy was depicted in the theatre during this period.
A new online feature on George Spratt’s Obstetrical Tables (1833) by Dr Rebecca Whiteley
Dr Rebecca Whiteley writes, ‘By studying Spratt’s tables alongside comic and satirical mobile prints, obscene and pornographic prints, and “fine art” nudes, this article demonstrates how medical images can be addressed as rich and complex resources for histories that are medical, visual, and cultural’.
Brief Excursion: A visit to a maternity hospital – University College Hospital London circa 1953
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A time when cookery classes were on offer in the antenatal clinic and it was novel for fathers to attend births…BBC archive sound recording
Sixteenth Cambridge Wellcome Lecture in the History of Medicine
Doctors v. Midwives: Caribbean Medical Encounters in the Age of Pronatal Abolition
Dr Sasha Turner (Johns Hopkins University)
11 February 2021
4pm -5:30pm (Cambridge, UK)
Zoom meeting (please click link here to register) : Cost free
Sixteenth Cambridge Wellcome Lecture in the History of Medicine
Doctors v. Midwives: Caribbean Medical Encounters in the Age of Pronatal Abolition
Dr Sasha Turner (Johns Hopkins University)
11 February 2021
4pm -5:30pm (Cambridge, UK)
Zoom meeting (please click link here to register) : Cost free
A funded PhD studentship: ‘Public Understandings of Fertility, Pregnancy or Post-Natal Health: A Cultural History’
The topic is Public Understandings of Fertility, Pregnancy or Post-Natal Health: A Cultural History; the supervision is split between Birkbeck’s School of Arts and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Students are asked to define their project, specifying a period of history, and a specific health topic within maternity health, broadly conceived.
Stories from inside the Wellcome collection
There are several short illustrated historical features relating to birth, imaging the fetus and contraception on the Wellcome Collection website. Today’s new feature called Testimonies of Birth is about birth in the 1980s.
Please contact the Book Reviews Editor if you would like to volunteer to review this new book for De Partu
Have you read this years book review selection in the menu above?
The sixth book review of 2020, is of an historical novel, The Gossip’s Choice by Sara Read.
Interesting paper ‘Reviewing the Womb’
In the current issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, Dunja Begovi, Elizabeth Chloe Romanis and Alexandra Mullock suggest in an open access article ‘Reviewing the womb‘ that women’s reproductive freedom is under threat in many ways as the uterus becomes more accessible and amenable to medical management. It discusses some of the associated ethical and legal dangers which have emerged from developments in reproductive technology, and reflects on the historical notions of woman as the (sometimes incompetent) vessel for the nurturing of the male seed, where the focus lies on the fruit of the womb, on the fetus rather than the mother.
Free access to digital records at the National Archives…
For a limited period only, just register to use the archives. The process takes less than five minutes.
Mary Toft in eighteenth-century England…
Whether or not you have read The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder, reviewed for De Partu by Dr Ashleigh Blackwood, you may enjoy listening to an interview with the author, Professor Karen Harvey, who asks why on earth would a woman wish to pretend to give birth to rabbits…how could it be true …and why would contemporary medical men appear to believe this and investigate it?
The interview is from an ‘History Extra’ podcast for BBC History Magazine.
Books available for review
The following new publications will soon be available for review:
— The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America by Lara Freidenfelds (Oxford University Press, 2020)
— Midwifery from the Tudors to the Twenty-First Century: History, Politics and Safe Practice in England, by Julia Allison (Routledge, 2020)
NB the latter is in PDF format only; publishers are no longer posting out review copies owing to the coronavirus pandemic.
Please contact the Book Review Editor, Dr Alison Nuttall (alison_m_nuttall@hotmail.com) if you are interested in reviewing either of these titles.
History of childbirth event at the Foundling Museum – POSTPONED
We are very sorry indeed, but in view of the very sensible concerns of a number of delegates and the rapidly evolving public health warnings about the coronavirus, we have this morning taken the decision to postpone our study day at the Foundling Museum in London scheduled for Saturday March 14th. We’re aware that our delegates include quite a number of people who have care responsibilities for the more vulnerable, and we wish to avoid exposing them to any additional risk at this time. We hope you will understand this decision – which we’ve taken with much regret – in these exceptional circumstances. We are currently firming up with the Foundling Museum an alternative Saturday date – on this same theme and in a similar format (with their summer exhibition to visit) – a little later in 2020, hoping the coronavirus outbreak will then be safely behind us.
Valerie and Janette
Valerie Worth (Mellon-TORCH KE Fellow, Oxford University)
Janette Allotey (Chair of de Partu)