Life Cycles Seminar Series
Institute of Historical Research
Senate House, London WC1E
Tuesdays, 5.15 p.m, Pollard room
15 December 2009, Salim Al-Gailani (Cambridge)
Pregnancy, pathology, public morals: making antenatal care in early
20th-century Edinburgh
The history of antenatal care conventionally begins at the Edinburgh Royal
Maternity Hospital (ERMH). The opening of the Ballantyne Antenatal
Annex at the ERMH in 1931 commemorated the obstetrician John William
Ballantyne (1861-1923), who oversaw the establishment of a ward for the
reception of ill pregnant women there in 1901. Later histories revised
this official account by crediting James Haig Ferguson (1862-1934) with
the idea of outpatient antenatal clinics, initiated at the ERMH in 1915.
Rather than seeing Ballantyne and Ferguson as rival claimants to a
historical first, looking at a broader network of individuals and
institutions in Edinburgh can take us beyond an intellectual history of
antenatal care's origins. This paper compares three institutions integral
to the municipal apparatus for the provision of medical care to pregnant
women in the city after World War One: Ballantyne's pre-maternity ward
at the ERMH, the Lauriston Prematernity Home for unmarried mothers, and
the Edinburgh Hospital for Women and Children. I assess these
institutions' (often contrasting) public roles and practices, showing how
their patients, practitioners and benefactors variously constructed
expectant motherhood and medical authority at a crucial moment in the
histories of maternalist politics and fetal health and welfare.
We usually go for a drink and a meal afterwards.
ALL WELCOME
Convenors
Dr Ofra Kofman (Goldsmiths College) [log in to unmask]
Dr Mary Clare Martin (University of Greenwich)
[log in to unmask]
Dr Leonard Schwarz (University of Birmingham)
[log in to unmask]
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