Gender and Obstetric Violence in Britain, ca. 1750–1830

Abstract

ABSTRACT Obstetric violence is a form of gendered violence experienced by pregnant and birthing people, particularly women, during medical care provided in the hospital, clinic or home. Recent scholarship has explored how obstetric violence and obstetric racism manifested historically, from post‐war Canada to colonial and postcolonial Mexico. Drawing on existing work and historical studies of domestic and sexual violence, this article argues that historians can take up the framework of ‘obstetric violence’ to study past iterations of this form of gender violence. To explore these suggestions, the article traces concerns and discussions about harmful and violent midwifery and obstetric care in Britain from the mid‐eighteenth to early‐nineteenth centuries. It draws on the under‐explored records of the Royal Maternity Charity, a philanthropic organisation that provided free midwifery care to poor Londoners, and the work of obstetrician James Blundell, a midwifery lecturer at Guy's Hospital London who is credited with first using the term ‘obstetrical’ and ‘obstetric’ violence in the 1820s. Analysing these materials, the article contends that the framework of ‘obstetric violence’, understood today, helps historians map out harm done towards pregnant and birthing women in the past, in similar ways to historical configurations of familial and sexual violence.