Conférence : Infanticides en Morbihan au 19ème siècle

by Philippe DELAGE, an engineer by training, passionate about history and in particular that which relates to the events of the 19th century in Brittany. From 1850 to 1920, the press regularly brought its share of macabre discoveries: bodies of babies in rivers, ports, fields, woods, wells, piles of rubble... In Morbihan alone, infanticides numbered in the hundreds during these 70 years. Infanticides were indeed a scourge of society at that time. But who were these women accused of infanticide? Day laborers or farm servants, they very often placed themselves at the bottom of the social ladder, in the many hamlets of the Morbihan countryside who lived isolated from the world. Crushed by shame and poverty, they hide their illegitimate pregnancy and deny it against all evidence, lock themselves in their misfortune, give birth clandestinely, in sordid conditions and kill their newborn because it is, for them, the only solution to a hopeless situation. Their legal journey will be long and incomprehensible. The penal code, at least until 1900, is merciless and they will often pay for their crime and their poverty with years of forced labor. Their interrogations during the investigation, the hearings of their neighbors, employers, parents ... their statements in court are all testimonies that allow us to give them back some flesh. We must also emphasize the play of the actors who gravitate around these dramas: the judges, the jurors, the prosecutors, the experts, the police, the witnesses ... Without forgetting the voice of society which is expressed through the press of the time.

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