Posted on 03/14/2023 3:11:15 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1719, Mary (Marie) Hamilton, lady-in-waiting upon the tsaritsa Catherine I, was beheaded in St. Petersburg for infanticide.
Lady Hamilton — her Scottish family had emigrated generations earlier — did not like to wait on her libido.
She could tell you if Peter the Great deserved his nickname, and dish on any number of other courtiers, nobles, and hangers-on.
This pleasing sport, of course, assumes with it the risks imposed by an equally impatient biology. Hamilton’s gallantries two or three times quickened her womb.
Her decision to dispose of these unwanted descendants in the expedient way — once by abortion, and again by infanticide — was done on the sly (voluminous court gowns helped) but surely also with no expectation of such a severe sanction in the unlikely event of detection.
But according to Eve Levin,* Russia’s longtime slap-on-the-wrist policy for infanticide was changing, and beginning “to distinguish between a woman who killed her child to hide illicit sexual conduct, and a woman who killed her child because she was too poor to care for it. In the first instance, the killing of the child reflected selfish behavior and was considered to be murder.”....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Word is to the kitchen gone, and word is to the Hall
And word is up to Madam the Queen, and that's the worst of all
That Mary Hamilton has borne a babe To the highest Stuart of all
Oh rise, arise Mary Hamilton Arise and tell to me
What thou hast done with thy wee babe I saw and heard weep by thee
I put him in a tiny boat And cast him out to sea
That he might sink or he might swim But he'd never come back to me
Infanticide of convenience.
HORRIBLE. As long as foundling homes exist, I can’t accept any excuse for a woman to kill a child that could live, or does live. That we keep reading of women (or men!) who kill their children AND THEN GET OUT OF JAIL drives me mad. They can do it again and should never be allowed to be in a situation where they could. Sorry. That’s just me. One of my button issues.
And this is why we have “Baby Boxes” in fire stations.
Didn’t Admiral Nelson get involved with a slut named Hamilton?
Emma Hamilton, who worked her way up from the lower classes to artist’s muse and model and live-in, to courtesan and ambassador’s wife.
She and Nelson, who was married but couldn’t stand his wife, had a daughter together whom Emma “adopted” for propriety’s sake. Emma’s husband tolerated the affair; he and Nelson were friends. She also likely had a daughter in her teenage years.
Yes. Child Ballad 173.
They’re simply wonderful solutions to someone’s problem. And there’s always the hope that the infant will be cared for by someone who deeply wants one. People who adopt are the best of the best.
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