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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    child’s death {R. v. Emma Ingram^ Worcester Wnt. Ass.). Until the punishment for neonaticide is assimilated to that for procuring abortion, or until child-slaying becomes an offence sui generis^ the more lenient retreat will be commonly effected, and the prosecution, often at the instigation of the Bench, will either abstain from offering evidence (R, v. Eliz. Wills, sup.) or abandon the primary charge. ‘ Human nature is the same in all the professions.’ Comparatively rare are civil actions which call for a claimant’s proof of live-birth to rebut the negative presumption. Occasionally a medical certificate of live-birth may be required for a Birth Insurance Society, for compensation payable to a posthumous child, or in connexion with an insurance policy at Lloyd’s against the birth either of twins, or of issue, when the mother is pre- sumably beyond the procreative age referred to in the rubric of the Marriage Service. Excluding such curiosities, the claim is usually asserted some years subsequently to the brief natal event in dispute : its witnesses are then scattered. The direct evidence of an ephemeral postnatal life in being is often vague, and only perhaps obtainable from the long memory of a now ancient midwife or other party (including the mother) present at the birth, or from the case-books of a deceased accoucheur (who, unwisely, has not ordered their immediate destruction by his executors). Collateral facts may be relied upon in indirect support or denial of the pro- pounded live-birth: the maturity of the child and the means adopted in striving to resuscitate a weakling may be recalled, especially if they ‘talked obstetrics when the little stranger came.’ Canonical paedobaptism may or may not have been administered and recorded. Discovery of certificates of birth, death, or still- birth may be called for in vain [Llewellgn v. Gardiner, 1854, Stafford Advertiser, March 25, retried 1856 Stafford Sum. Ass. No direct medical evidence was given). The fact of live-birth may be assumed from its implied recognition by reputation among rela- tives {Jones V. Ricketts, 7 L. T. R. 43). Since descent is now, by statute, traced from the purchaser, possessio fratris is obsolete, but there still remain as civil occasions when positive proof of live-birth is all-important, (i) sporadic cases depending upon the construction of terms in documents, (2) the widower’s tenancy by the curtesy of unsettled property, as to which his wife was actually seised but died intestate. This jtis mariti rarely arises. It is unaltered by the ‘Wives’ Charter of 1882’ {Hope v. Hop)e, [1892] 2 Ch. 336 ; cf. Eager v. Eurnivall, 17 Ch. D. 115). A notable provision is that a child, capable of inheriting, must be born alive at any period during the coverture, so that the birth of Benjamin would have sufiiced, caeteris paribus, to establish the con-