Infanticide in Ireland
| DOI | 10.1177/002201834901300311 |
| Published date | 01 July 1949 |
| Date | 01 July 1949 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Infanticide in
Ireland
THE aphorism
that
legal practice lags behind public
opinion
may
be supplemented
by
the
fact
that
legal
rules lag behind legal practice. Thus, for
many
years
before 1922 cases of infanticide were in practice
treated
differently from
other
cases of murder.
Yet
a Bill intro-
duced
by
Lord
Loreburn in 1908
and
a Bill of which
Lord
James
of Hereford was
the
author
and
which passed
the
House
of Lords in 1909 failed to result in a legislative
recognition of
the
distinction acted on in practice,
and
it
was
not
until Mr.
Arthur
Henderson's Bill (as amended
by
the
Lords) became
the
Infanticide Act, 1922
that
the
rules
of law caught up
with
public opinion.
Even
thereafter,
law once again lagged behind (at least, 'advanced') popular
opinion, for
the
judicial construction of
the
term
'newly-
born
child' was a child no older
than
21 days (and not,
it
would seem, as
Lord
Atkin
stated
in
the
House of Lords in
1936, four weeks or a month),
but
medical opinion con-
sidered this to be too
short
aperiod. Hence, after two
unsuccessful
attempts
(in 1936
and
1937),
the
amendment
of
the
law
to
cover
the
first twelve months of
the
child's
life was introduced
by
Lord
Dawson of
Penn
and
enacted
in
the
Infanticide Act, 1938, which also recognised
the
effect of lactation consequent upon
the
birth
of
the
child
as a factor creating or contributing to
the
mother's mental
disturbance. Since these two amendments appear
to
reflect
the
only fundamental criticisms of
the
English
system,
it
is
not
without interest
to
find
that
the
Irish
Legislature, in introducing
the
distinction between
murder
and
infanticide for
the
first time, in
the
Infanticide Bill,
1939, does
not
intend
to follow
the
English practice in
its
amendment of
the
law-particularly
as
it
is suggested
b.
y
one member of
the
legislature (and a member of
the
Inner
Bar)
that
the
Irish Bill is "infinitely
better
than
the
English
one".
317
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