INFANTICIDE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

INFANTICIDEAuthored

The Law Mind • 1063 words

Definition

The killing of a newly born infant. In its classic legal formulation, infanticide requires that the child have been born alive and wholly delivered before the act of killing — a requirement that distinguishes it from feticide (destruction of a fetus in the womb) and procuring abortion.

In jurisdictions that have enacted specific infanticide statutes — most prominently England and Canada — the term carries a narrower, technical meaning: the killing of a newborn child by its mother while her mind is disturbed by the effects of childbirth or lactation. Under this statutory definition, infanticide is treated as a lesser offense than murder, recognizing a mitigating mental condition as part of the offense itself rather than as a defense raised at sentencing.

In American common law and most U.S. jurisdictions, no separate statutory offense of infanticide exists. The killing of a newborn is charged as murder or manslaughter, with mental disturbance addressed through defenses such as insanity or diminished capacity. The distinction between the English statutory model and the American common law approach is one of the most practically significant jurisdictional splits in this area.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The murder of an infant; the murder of a child by a parent (filicide); in some definitions, a criminal offense specific to a mother who kills her newborn while psychologically disturbed. Also used in biology for the killing of young animals by adults of the same species.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The murder of an infant born alive; the murder or killing of a newly born or young child; child murder.

The common English usage is broader than the legal term in one direction and narrower in another. Ordinary usage tends to extend infanticide to any killing of a young child — sometimes covering children beyond the newborn stage — while the legal definition in its classic form is tightly confined to the newly born. Conversely, the specific statutory meaning in English and Canadian law is narrower still: it applies only to the mother as perpetrator and only when a qualifying mental disturbance is present. Researchers using the common word as a search term in historical sources risk both over-inclusion and under-inclusion.

Common Confusion

Infanticide is frequently conflated with feticide and procuring abortion. The historical dictionaries are consistent and emphatic on the distinction: infanticide requires live birth and complete delivery. Acts against a child en ventre sa mère — still in the womb — are not infanticide in the legal sense, however morally analogous they may appear. In historical sources, the word "murder" often appears in the definition of infanticide; researchers should not read this as requiring a finding of malice aforethought in the modern technical sense — older sources used "murder" loosely to mean unlawful killing of a person.

Why It Matters in Research

The term operates at the intersection of criminal law, medical jurisprudence, and legal history, and its meaning shifts depending on jurisdiction, time period, and legal system.

First, the live birth requirement is a recurring evidentiary flashpoint in historical case law. Pre-20th-century sources — including the cases cited in Bouvier — grapple extensively with what constitutes sufficient proof that a child was born alive before death. Medical jurisprudence treatises, not just legal dictionaries, are essential sources for this line of research.

Second, researchers working in English or Commonwealth legal sources after the Infanticide Act 1922 (and its successor, the Infanticide Act 1938) will encounter infanticide as a defined statutory offense with specific elements. This statutory overlay is absent from American sources. Conflating the two traditions produces analytical errors in comparative research.

Third, in American historical sources, the absence of a separate infanticide offense means the relevant material is scattered across homicide law, medical jurisprudence, and occasionally coroner's inquest records. Searching for "infanticide" in American legal materials may surface fewer results than the historical incidence of the practice would suggest, because prosecutors charged these cases as murder.

Fourth, feminist legal history and criminology have generated substantial secondary literature on infanticide as a social and legal phenomenon, particularly regarding how courts treated mothers accused of newborn killing in the 18th and 19th centuries. Researchers should be aware that this secondary literature sometimes uses "infanticide" in its broader social-historical sense, encompassing cases that were not prosecuted as the legal offense.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical sources converge on the core definition — the killing of a newly born child — and all draw the same distinction between infanticide and destruction of a fetus in the womb. Bouvier provides the most developed treatment, citing English case authority for the requirement that the child be wholly born, and noting that destruction of a child en ventre sa mère constitutes a high misdemeanor rather than infanticide. Burrill places the term squarely in medical jurisprudence and points researchers toward Wharton and Stillé's Medical Jurisprudence, which remains a valuable primary source for the evidentiary dimensions of the offense. Black's (both editions) follows the same formulation: the fact of birth is the dividing line.

Anderson's Dictionary of Law redirects entirely to HOMICIDE, reflecting the American approach of treating infant killing as a species of homicide rather than a distinct offense — a choice that itself carries doctrinal information.

What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is the emergence of the statutory infanticide offense in English law, which postdates all of them. They also do not address the mental disturbance dimension that came to define the modern statutory offense in Commonwealth jurisdictions. Rapalje & Lawrence's entry is misaligned — the text reproduced addresses infant contracts and majority, not infanticide — and should not be relied upon for this term.

Jurisdictional Note

England, Canada, Australia, and many Commonwealth jurisdictions have enacted specific infanticide statutes that treat the offense as less than murder when the mother's mental state is disturbed by childbirth or lactation. The United States has no comparable federal or general state-level offense; American prosecutors charge newborn killings under general homicide statutes. This divide means that legal materials from Commonwealth jurisdictions and American jurisdictions are not directly comparable when researching this term.

INFANTICIDEmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

The murder or killing of an infant soon after its birth. The fact of the birth distinguishes this act from "fœti- cide" or "procuring abortion," which terms An inference is a deduction which the rea- son of the jury makes from the facts proved, without an express direction of law to that effect. Code Civil Proc. Cal. § 1958.

INFANTICIDEmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

The murder or killing of an infant soon after its birth. The fact of the birth distinguishes this act from “feticide” or “procuring abortion,” which terms denote the destruction of the fatus in the womb. INFANTS’ MARRIAGE ACT. The statute 18 & 19 Vict. ec. 43. By virtue of this act every infant, (if a male, of twenty, or, if a female, of seventeen, years,—section 4.) upon or in contemplation of marriage. may, with the sanction of the chancery division of the high court, make a valid settlement or contract for q settlement of property. Wharton.

INFANTICIDEmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

(651) as a rule, alien his lands, or make a deed or contract binding on him, and he cannot make a valid will under a certain age. He may, however, contract for necessaries (q. v.) In America, the contracts of an infant not binding on him are voidable only, and therefore, capable of being ratified by him after attaining majority; but this is not so in England, the Infant Relief Act, 1874, having made such contracts absolutely void.* So an infant under the age of seven years cannot be guilty of felony; and between the ages of seven and fourteen he is presumed to be doli incapax (incapable of discerning between good and evil) until the contrary is shown. (4 Steph. Com. 24.) An infant of fourteen years, if a male, and of twelve years, if a female, may give the consent required (among other things) to make a valid marriage; but a promise to marry at a future time is not binding on an infant under twentyone. 2 Id. 244. 2. By the English Conveyancing Act, 1881, 41, where an infant is entitled to land in his own right in fee-simple, or for any leasehold interest at a rent, the land is to be deemed to be a settled estate within the Settled Estates Act, 1877. (See SETTLED ESTATES.) By section 42 of the same act, where land is held in trust for an infant under an instrument coming into operation after the 31st December, 1881, the trustees may enter into possession of it, cut timber, erect, pull down, rebuild and repair houses, continue the working of mines and quarries, and generally deal with the land in a proper course of management, apply the income, or part of it, for the infant's maintenance, and invest the surplus for his benefit. See MAINTENANCE. 3. An infant may in some cases act in a representative capacity or in auter droit, in the same manner as a person sui juris. Thus, an infant may act as an agent or as an attorney under a power, and it seems that an infant may also exercise a power of appointment over personal estate, although not over real. In re D'Angibau, 15 Ch. D. at p. 246; Stokes on Powers of Attorney, 10. See EXECUTOR; GRANT, 8; GUARDIAN, 13; TRUSTEE. *1 Bl. Com. 463 et seq.; 2 Steph. Com. 303; Infants Relief Act, 1874. This act provides that all contracts after the 7th August, 1874, entered into by infants for the repayment of money lent or for goods supplied (other than contracts for necessaries), and all accounts stated by infants, shall be absolutely void; and (22) no action shall be brought to charge any person upon any promise made after full age to pay any debt contracted during infancy, or upon any 24. In English probate practice, an infant is a person under the age of seven years, as opposed to a minor, who is a person between the age of seven and twenty-one years. See GUARDIAN, 13. See, also, FEOFFMENT, & 1; GUARDIAN; HABEAS CORPUS; NECESSARIES; SETTLEMENT;

INFANTICIDEn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

The murder of an infant born alive; the murder or killing of a newly born or young child; child murder.

INFANTICIDEn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

One who commits the crime of infanticide; one who kills an infant.

infanticidenoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

The murder of an infant. | The murder of a child by a parent; filicide. | The criminal offence of killing of a newborn, committed by its mother while psychologically disturbed by the effects of childbirth or lactation, not regarded as murder. | The killing of a young, immature animal by a mature adult of the same species.

infanticidenoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

The murderer of a child: a person who has committed infanticide.

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