2014-15: Celebrating 500 Years of Pregnancy and Birth

About

'Celebrating 500 Years of Pregnancy and Birth'

Knowledge Exchange Fellow:
Professor Valerie Worth | Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages | University of Oxford

Partner Organisation:
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists

Giving birth without some kind of pain relief is a rarity in the twenty-first century, but we perhaps have the combined efforts of obstetrician James Young Simpson and Queen Victoria to thank for this. It wasn’t until the late 1840s that any kind of anaesthetic was used for childbirth, when Simpson began giving small doses of chloroform to women in labour. Apart from the fear that surrounded this new (and now, we know, likely carcinogenic) chemical, Simpson’s technique was opposed on religious grounds. According to many contemporary clergy members, the biblical passage stating ‘in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children’ was to be taken literally. If God had meant childbirth to be painless he would have made it so — using an anaesthetic was to directly contradict God’s will. It wasn’t until Queen Victoria used chloroform for her eighth birth in 1853 that anaesthetic became widely accepted, and public enthusiasm overwhelmed religious objection to the practice.

Valerie Worth’s project explored stories like these, staging an exhibition celebrating 500 years of changing perceptions about pregnancy. In collaboration with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and the De Partu research group on the history of childbirth, the Fellowship resulted in a six-month exhibition at the Royal College’s Library. The exhibition featured materials from the College’s own archives, contextualising them and investigating the controversies that surrounded many of these writings and ideas. To complement the exhibition, a conference and study day were held in London and Oxford respectively, bringing together practitioners, archivists, and academics to discuss the exhibition’s themes.

alerie’s collaboration with the Royal College has continued beyond the end of the Fellowship, and she has since participated in the Royal College’s consensus group to develop methods for improving gynaecological care in the UK.

Past Events

Pregnancy and Birth (May 2016)

A study day Celebrating 500 Years of Pregnancy and Birth, from April 2015-December 2016, conducted by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, the De Partu History of Childbirth Group, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Programme:

Welcome: Valerie Worth-Stylianou and Janette Allotey
‘Revisiting The Midwife’s Tale: an oral history collection at the Royal College of Midwives’ by Carly Randall, (Archivist, RCOG)
Guest speaker: Dr Marie-France Morel (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris): ‘Gentle birth: Leboyer’s theories and subsequent changes to how babies were birthed in France in the 1970s’
Seminar A: Professor Mary Nolan (University of Worcester) ‘Birth and Parent Education post Dr Spock, 1970-2016: striving to build parents' confidence rather than destroy it’
Seminar B: Professor Debra Bick (King’s College London): ‘'Context, culture and contribution of postnatal care over the last century: a missed opportunity for women's health'
An update on De Partu (Janette Allotey)
Terri Coates (midwifery adviser for ‘Call the Midwife’): ‘Call the midwife: communicating the art of midwifery though a BBC period drama’

Celebrating 500 Years of Pregnancy and Birth (September 2015)

Symposium:

Welcome addresses by Officer of RCOG, and by Director of Midwifery, RCM
Historical debates over positions for delivery: Professor Valerie Worth Stylianou (University of Oxford) and Dr Janette Allotey (University of Manchester)
Keynote talk + discussion: Mr David Hutchon (FRCOG), ‘The history of the practice of early cord-clamping’
Workshop 1: Dr Julia Allison (University of Nottingham), ‘Material comforts of the birthing room in early modern England: archival records’
Workshop 2: Professor Billie Hunter (Professor of Midwifery, University of Cardiff), ‘ Material comforts of the birthing room in the 20thcentury: oral histories’
Concluding plenary: the role of knowledge exchange for the history of pregnancy and birth

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