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Medicine, Property and the Law in Britain 1800–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

M. A. Crowther  and
Brenda M. White
M. A. Crowther
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Brenda M. White
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
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Extract

Property, in spite of its solid sound, is an elusive idea. As C. B. MacPherson puts it:

The actual institution, and the way people see it, and hence the meaning they give to the word, all change over time… The changes are related to changes in the purposes which society or the dominant classes in society expect the institution of property to serve.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 853 - 870
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 MacPherson, C. B., Property: mainstream and critical positions (Oxford, 1978), p. 1Google Scholar.

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38 EUL DK.4.57 Introductory lecture, Christmas 1830.

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40 Christison, R., ‘Cases and observations in medical jurisprudence – case X. On the effects of opium-eating on health and longevity’, Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, XXXVII (1832), 133–35Google Scholar. After an appeal the parties compromised on payment.

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42 Source: random sample of 200 doctors from each area in each year, drawn from the Medical Directory.

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44 Behlmer, G. K., ‘Deadly motherhood: infanticide and medical opinion in mid-Victorian England’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, XXXIV (1979), 408CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Behlmer puts particular stress on the bastardy clauses of the New Poor Law as a possible cause of infanticide.

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46 Sauer, R., ‘Infanticide and abortion in nineteenth-century Britain’, Population Studies, XXXII (1978), 87–8Google Scholar, considers the contemporary evidence that insured babies did not have a higher mortality rate than uninsured ones, and concludes generally that poverty was the main pressure for infanticide. See also Rose, Lionel, The massacre of the innocents: infanticide in Britain 1800–1939 (1986)Google Scholar, chs XV–XVI for an outline of legislation on burial insurance.

47 Reports from the select committee on death certification, PP 1893, cmd 373 and 402, p. iv.

48 SC children's life, p. 27.

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68 See Parry and Parry, Rise of the medical profession, passim.

69 EUL Gen. 779–80D, p. 3.

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71 For a full discussion of the history of this theory see Meek, Ronald L., Studies in the labour theory of value (1973)Google Scholar.