Life, birth, and live-birth : a medico-legal study / by Stanley B. Atkinson.

  • Atkinson, Stanley Bean.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Life, birth, and live-birth : a medico-legal study / by Stanley B. Atkinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    of prenatal breathing must not be maximized: as a rule, the children either live after birth or are not brought forth rapidly in the absence of witnesses. A timely note as to the sex of the child and the exact moment of nativity should be made by the accoucheur. The time of the most reliable clock available should be taken. The actual midnight birth- day may be disputed later, as with David Copperfield in fiction and the Duke of Wellington (1769) in fact (cf. re Goodrich, L. R. [1904] P. 138). The attendance of a Secretary of State at a royal accouche- ment recalls the possibility of a feigned delivery or of the introduction of a supposititious child. The depositions taken relative to the bii*th of the son of King James II illustrate this point (1688, St. Tr.). In the case of twins priority in age pertains to him who is first wholly expelled, as with Tamar’s boys: in later references Perez always precedes Zerah (cf. The male triplets case, 1731, Exeter Spr. Ass.). It is claimed that a birth by Caesarean extraction ranks with one per vias naturales (cf. m re Burrows [1895] 2 Ch. 497). III. Live-eirth. In the absence of authority, scientific or statutory, the precise definition of live-birth has long vexed students of obstetrical juris- prudence, limited as they are by fixed physiological facts and by judicial dicta progressive with the recognition of those facts, a progress restricted by the terms of the definition of ‘murder.’ In Criminal Law, with one recent notable exception, the genesis of a life —that is, of the legal personality of a human being—is simultaneous with complete birth; the physiologist declares this incident to be merely the moment of exodus of a surviving foetus, the passage from a prenatal to a postnatal phase. In correlating these and other differing views, judges have at times discredited medical ‘ suspicions,’ ‘ hypotheses,’ and ‘ opinions.’ A remarkable example was R. V. Bllen Sheppard, where Pigott B. affirmed that a delivered mother might have swooned and so fallen upon and killed her mutilated child Hampshire Chronicle, Dec. 5). The importance of a fixed view of live-birth is patent, for quite apart from the theory of jurisprudence, in practice an application most commonly arises in a prosecution where, on a coroner’s inquisition, a woman is indicted for and charged with child-slaying. Not until the child is disproved dead-born can live-birth, connoting the common rights of citizenship, be affirmed in court. Unenviable in such a case is the position of the medical witness who can prove live-birth, preferably does he give the truthful though schoolboy answer: ‘ Not knowing, cannot say.’ A secretly delivered foetus of under five months’ gestation may be absolutely regarded as lifeless after