Indispensable Midwives?

A Post in Honour of International Day of the Midwife

5 May 2018 is International Day of the Midwife and we’re sure not many women would want to give birth without the calm reassurance and expertise of a midwife. They were clearly indispensable to many early modern women as well. We have already looked at the diseases midwives risked catching while they worked and how they used their expertise in Scottish court cases for infanticide.

But at least one early modern physician, Percivall Willughby (1596–1685), was at pains to point out that while it was desirable to have midwives in attendance, it wasn’t entirely necessary. He wrote,

It is a good and fitting thing that every woman should have her midwife with her, at the time of her delivery. But it is not absolutely necessary, for that many bee delivered without the help of midwives.[1]

Indeed, hadn’t the biblical figure Eve, often in this era referred to as the first mother, been delivered alone by Dame Nature, proving that women were quite capable of birthing unaided?

I have known severall women, that have been delivered without a midwife. Therefore to have a midwife is not absolutely necessary, yet very convenient, to assist the woman, and so to avoid all future suspicions, and to free some of the looser sort from the danger of the statute-law, in case that the child should bee found dead.

A remarkable story from Derby

Willughby went on to recount a harrowing story of a homeless woman who gave birth to her daughter outside in the cold as another example of a successful unaided birth.

In Darby, Feb the ninth, 1667, a poor foole Mary Baker, wan-

dering for sustinence, wanting cloths to keep her warm, having gone

barefooted for many years, was, in an open, windy, cold place, nigh to a

house of office, delivered by the sole assistance of Dame Nature, Eve’s

midwife, and freed of the after-birth, without the help of any other mid-

wife, or any assisting woman present with her. It was reported, That

the child, being a wench, lay naked upon the cold boards more than a

quarter of an houre. Shee, being found out by the child’s crying, was

not immediately succoured, but neighbers being called they took up the

child and found the navel-string separated from the after-birth, which

came of itself afterward. In her extremity shee was destitute of a warm

place and bed, wanting necessaries fitting for a woman’s releef. This

poor creature, leaning with her back against a wall, was quickly deli-

vered and more easily than many have been by midwives in warm places

Remarkably, both mother and child survived this ordeal.

Man-Midwife

Percivall Willughby was a physician who specialised in midwifery, having a successful practice in both his home town of Derby and in London.[2] His purpose in writing his book was to teach country midwives in the best practices. He claimed that many poorly trained women harmed their patients by using clumsy methods to try and hasten deliveries, and that while there were many learned books on foetal development and ‘diseased of the womb’ now in print, these were not reaching women practitioners. So

My endeavours shall bee very little to meddle with diseases, physick, or medicines, but to shew the handy operation to midwives, how to produce the fetus, when perfectly formed, and how to help poor suffering women in distresses, and, chiefly to direct the country young midwives, with what I have read, seen and performed, giving them severall examples, and caveats, with persuasions, intreating them not to bee too busie afore fitting time. So their women will bee more easily, and better helped in their sufferings, and their own repute advanced in the practice of midwifery, by observing what hath been by mee performed at severall times in diverse places.

The reasons this text wasn’t published in the seventeenth century aren’t clear. Given that there were a number of similar versions, it may be that it had some manuscript circulation.

More on the history of midwifery

Sara wrote a piece on the history of midwifery My Ancestor was a Midwife for Who Do You Think You Are? magazine in 2017 which can be read here. You can read more of Percivall Willurhby’s notes in Maladies and Medicine.

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[1] Observations in Midwifery as Also The Countrey Midwives Opusculum or Vade Mecum, ed by Henry Blenkinsop (1863). In the Victorian era many early manuscripts were published like this one, based on the original calf-bound manuscript Blenkinsop came across. It is possible manuscript copies of the book were in circulation since Blenkinsop noted that his text was comparable with Sloane MSS 529 for example.

Observations in Midwifery is available digitally here.

[2] Peter M Dunn, ‘Dr Percivall Willughby, MD (1596–1685): pioneer “man” midwife of Derby’.  http://fn.bmj.com/content/76/3/F212