Author Archives: Catherine

About Catherine

Web editor, De Partu

‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ episode 21/09/11

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We are informed that the Robin Gibb episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ will now be shown on Wednesday 21st September 2011 at 21:00. This is due to changes being made to the schedules by the BBC.

Wall to Wall Media (the producers) hope that you will be tuning in.

The company has expressed thanks to De Partu  and members of the MIDWIFERY-HISTORY JISCmail list for the assistance given to the researchers for the Robin Gibb episode, in which one of Robin’s ancestors, who was a midwife in Salford, is to be featured.

'Who do you think you are?' programme dates autumn 2011

 

Of men-midwives, murderers, and historians …

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The work of Don Shelton, featured in his article ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes‘, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 103 (2010) 46–50., where he claims that the eighteenth-century men-midwives William Smellie and William Hunter had women murdered to order, to provide the illustrations for their impressive atlases of obstetrics, has given rise to considerable controversy.

Helen King discusses his work in a recent article ‘History WIthout  Historians? Medical History and the Internet‘, Social History of Medicine, published online ahead of print 8th June 2011, which she has based on a paper delivered at the De Partu colloquium held in Manchester in June 2010.  She argues that Shelton’s claims raise fresh questions about how medical history is generated, presented and evaluated in the media and, in particular, on the internet. She traces the generation and subsequent reception of what, for some, has now become a ‘historical fact’, in order to illustrate how attempts by medical historians to engage with policy and with the public exist alongside a shift towards the deprofessionalisation of history.

 

 

 

Bob Woods RIP

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Regrettably, I have been informed that Bob Woods, John Rankin Professor of Geography at the University of Liverpool, has died. Some of you will have met him last year. Bob became an active supporter of De Partu in 2009. He attended the first annual lecture and was involved as an ‘expert’ at the first colloquium. His academic interests included historical demography and trends in fetal mortality, and his publications included Death before Birth (2009).
I have included below a link to Bob’s obituary from Liverpool University, kindly sent by Julia Allison.
RIP Bob.
Janette Allotey

 

De Partu at ICM 2011

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De Partu at ICM 2011
De Partu at ICM 2011

Dr Tania McIntosh, Secretary of De Partu (centre) with Professor Billie Hunter, member of De Partu Steering Group (right) and Dr Jayne Marshall, first member of De Partu, in front of poster at the ICM in Durban, South Africa, 19-23 June 2011

The history of midwifery was well represented at the conference with not only the poster advertising our work, but an oral history workshop run by Billie and Tania, and a paper given by Tania on the history of English district midwifery.  The workshop was over-subscribed, and generated a real buzz about the possibilities of history.  Several people talked of using oral history, as well as written sources, to explore the history of indigenous and traditional midwives.

“They gave us hope again”: Dachau concentration camp memorial site

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On the 29th of April, which is the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau Concentration Camp, the exhibition “They gave us hope again” was opened at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site. The exhibition is dedicated to an historical aspect of the Dachau Concentration Camp which has received only little consideration hitherto: the fate of female prisoners, among whom there were also pregnant women. Between December 1944 and February 1945, seven Jewish women brought children into the world amidst the terror at Kaufering I, a satellite camp of the Dachau Concentration Camp – all of them survived.

While pregnancies were not uncommon in concentration camps, women and their children were usually murdered. In order to clarify the exceptionality of these seven mothers surviving in the murderous concentration camp system, the exhibition implements the stories of the persecution of these women in historical context.

The biographies of the women are presented in seven parts: life before deportation, arrival and imprisonment at the concentration camps Auschwitz and Plaszów, transfer to the Dachau satellite camps, their experiences as female prisoners, the discovery and handling of their pregnancy and the births of their children at Kaufering I, the conduct of the SS, the evacuation of the camp and their liberation in Dachau as well as their lives after the Holocaust. All seven women were from Hungary or from regions annexed by Hungary and were already pregnant at the time of their deportation. They survived the selection process at Auschwitz and other concentration camps until arriving at the Dachau satellite camp Kaufering I in early December 1944, after discovering the pregnancy. They brought their children into the world there under catastrophic conditions.

After giving birth, the mothers Eva Fleischmannovà, Sara Grün, Ibolya Kovács, Elisabeth Legmann, Dora Löwy, Magda Schwartz and Miriam Rosenthal formed a so-called Schwangerenkommando (pregnant unit) and were forced to work in the prisoners’ laundry. As late as 13 March 1945, the head SS camp physician at the Dachau Concentration Camp issued an order for the mothers to be transferred to the Bergen-Belsen death camp. The order, however, was not carried out.

The exhibition can be visited from 30th April 2010 to 31st May 2011.

Guided tours for groups through the exhibition can be requested under: bildung@kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de

Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
Alte Römerstraße 75
85221 Dachau

Report of the De Partu and United Kingdom Centre for the History of Nursing and Midwifery (UKCHNM) first history of childbirth colloquium held on 23rd June 2010

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The De Partu History of childbirth research group aims to provide a supportive network for active researchers working on research projects concerned with the history of childbirth and human reproduction or the history of midwifery.

The most recent event, a history colloquium, was held in June 2010. A report follows by Julia Allison, freelance historian and PhD student, University of Manchester and Janette Allotey:

On a gloriously sunny day, a diverse group of academics, researchers and practising midwives gathered in the Kanaris Lecture Theatre at Manchester Museum for the inaugural De Partu annual history of childbirth research colloquium.  

A lively morning programme included presentations on a variety of topics including menstruation and how it was accounted for in early modern England (Sara Read), childbirth and midwives in rural Elizabethan East Anglia (Julia Allison), the use of the vectis in midwifery practice (Louise Jenkins), and eighteenth-century midwifery education in the Free Hanseatic City and Lübeck, presented by our German guest Christine Loytved, from the University of Osnabrück. 

Following a delicious lunch and an opportunity to network, Samuel Alberti from the Centre for Museology, Manchester Museum, presented a short account of the history of the museum, its design and its collections. Resuming the midwifery theme, Helen Bryers gave a paper on the development of maternity services in the Gàidhealthachd (Highlands and Islands of Scotland) 1912 – 1967. Finally, a thought-provoking paper was given by Helen King in which a recent sensationalist claim that the eighteenth-century men midwives William Harvey and William Smellie were murderers was skilfully deconstructed. This led to a lively debate, raising issues about the nature of ‘expert authority’, the conduct of historical research in the age of the internet and peer review processes. 

This new academic forum offered attendees from a wide variety of different disciplines an ideal opportunity to network and to share their wide and rich range of expertise in the field. These events, which will take place on an annual basis, aim to enrich future work by fostering informal support and peer review, interdisciplinary learning and collaboration.