Thoughts on A Midwife's Tale

One of the books I am reading in the course of researching my fourth book is A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. While not completely analogous to a surgeon's daughter living in 1816 England, the work does help to provide some flavor to what life would be like for a female caregiver from the late 18th to nearly the mid 19th centuries.

Ulrich's work is fascinating. Martha Ballard attended 816 births in the 27 years of the diary. Her statistics are quite remarkable: out of these births, 46 or 5.6% were listed as "difficult" with 14 stillbirths with a ratio of 1.8 out of every 100. These are births for which Ballard did not rely on forceps or the "hook and the knife", but were natural. What is also interesting is that Ulrich writes that "In fact, many historians believe that the routine employment of physicians in the nineteenth century probably increased rather than decreased mortality."

Ballard's method of curing and midwifery were considered gentle, using herbs and influenced by humoral therapy. By contrast, the male physicians tended toward more dramatic therapies, including bloodletting, sedatives and calomel, a mercurial compound.

For Ballard, the birth was an event at which more than one women attended; for male physicians, women attendants at births were a distraction with their unwelcome chatter. For Ballard, women have a useful role as they help tend to mothers who are expecting or who have just given birth, giving care or helping with tasks that need to be done to keep the household running smoothly. For male physicians of the time, there seems to be a feeling of superiority and exclusion at the birth.

The number of babies born out of wedlock are also noted in the diary; as a midwife, Ballard had to determine the parentage of the child as "sexual intercourse between unmarried persons" was considered a crime. One of the births of these unmarried mothers Ballard attended was that of a woman who claimed Ballard's own son as the father--he married the woman just before he was charged with the crime.

Rape was also reported in the diary. The most dramatic was that of the wife of an evangelical minister who charged a number of men, among them one of the community's most influential residents, Judge North, was the perpetrator. Rebecca Foster, the victim, told Ballard that "was not the worst shee had met with since Mr Foster's absence, but shee hoped they would not quite kill her, that they Could do nothing worst than what they had unless they killed her." Ballard testified for Mrs Foster at court--a court that did not find in favor of the victim. The Fosters left the community where Ballard lived; Mrs Foster may may have suffered a mental breakdown while her husband turned to drink and never preached again. Ballard's protest was to stop attending the church to which Judge North was connected except on rare occasions.

Each chapter begins with pages from Ballard's diary, which allow the reader to see large swaths of this unpublished in toto diary. The full two volumes of Ballard's diary can be found at the Maine State Library, across from the state capital in Augusta, Maine.

I am only about halfway through this book which is a must-read for anyone who wishes to know more about women in medicine and history.

Addendum:

In just a few more pages, I found more about the importance of the women at the births. Martha Ballard called upon them at the moment of birth (or as near as she could judge) as they would literally support the mother while she labored. As Thatcher wryly noted, carrying about a birthing stool would be a little difficult as Ballard rode horses, walked through woods, walked over the frozen ice of Kennebec River, rode in canoes, etc to reach her patients. The women also served at witness for Ballard should there be a difficult birth--they can witness the fact that Ballard did her job properly, no matter the outcome. The women could also give support to the new mother, speaking with her about her new baby, or helping to lay out the funeral clothes should the baby be stillborn or die soon after the death. And, when the mother needed support after a difficult birth, the women could help to nurse her and the child when Ballard was called away.

Researching the Fourth Book

Part of the fun of writing historical novels is the research. There are so many books to read, so many things to learn...

For my present book, which is set in 1796 as well as 1816, I have been reading a wide range of books, and having a heck of a time. These are some of the books I've read so far:

Nightingales, The Extraordinary and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale, by Gillian Gill [very good]

Notes on Nursing, What It Is and What It Is Not, by Florence Nightingale [note the lack of contractions]

Life in Nelson's Navy, by Dudley Pope [fabulous, though a little misleading as to the title--the book is far more wide-reaching that just Nelson's navy]

Nelson's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization 1793-1815, by Brian Lavery [amazing]

Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty and the Battle of Trafalger, by Adam Nicolson [a page-turner--fabulous]

Naval Battles of the Napoleonic Wars: Cape St Vincent, the Nile, Cadiz, Copenhagen, Trafalgar and Others, by W H Fitchett [good]

Men of Steel: Surgery in the Napoleonic Wars, by Michael Crumplain FCRS [quite fascinating--a great read]

I am sure I will have to read far more as well as reread Amanda Vickery's fabulous books, A Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England and Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England.

Shucks, life is grand...

Signs of Spring

Finally, the signs of spring are here!

The Fence at the Edge of the Kitchen Garden

Duane's Cherub in the Center of the Kitchen Garden

Laundry

Flowers

Fedco Seeds


We will Ignore the fact that it snowed....

Loss

On Friday the girls and I received horrible news.

Two girls died in a house fire. What made it worse was that we knew these little girls: they were members of our 4-H club.

One of the last times we saw Natalie and Kelsey was on a hike in the woods across the street from their house. We spent a wonderful summer afternoon trying to identify trees by their leaves and splitting the air with shrill acorn whistles.

What I remember most is racing with Kelsey and my girls to the picnic table at the edge of the woods, well ahead of the others, laughing as we tried (unsuccessfully) to pretend we'd been there for hours.

That's how I'll remember Natalie and Kelsey: it'll always be a warm summer's day with the air filled with whistles and laughter.

Welcome Home..... (?)

For the last four months we have been living in upstate New York, on property that has been in my husband's family since the 1700s. My husband worked to restore three late 1800s buildings while the girls and I homeschooled and worked and acted as laborers, cleaning up the sites.

What a privilege. The property was beautiful, and it was a pleasure and an honor to be able to be a part of helping to ensure the buildings will stand for another 100 years. It is an adventure that we will never forget as well as the fulfillment of my husband's childhood dream: being able to work on buildings that have been a part of his life since he was eight months.

Returning home was--well--complicated.

We were able to get the wood stove going without a problem, but then, when we turned on the water, pipes burst, the hot water heater developed a leak, the snow blower stopped working, and the washer stopped working.

1 March brought hope in the form of the pig which we had purchased when we were up in New York, so our freezers are full to bursting.

With the bounty of last year's garden and the pig, we will be able to eat well...

A Bag of Books

Over the weekend, a favorite aunt gave me a bag of books that had been assembled by a librarian in her town. "I don't know what's in there," she told me, "but I hope you enjoy them."

Mind you, this is the same favorite aunt who trekked with me on the cobbled streets of Camden, despite a broken tibia, trying to tack down the fisherman who dove repeatedly from the upper top gallant mast during the filming of Captain's Courageous in 1977 (we were ultimately unsuccessful, but I did talk with the captain of the ship who assured me it was true).

And what did the bag contain? A veritable gold mine of Jane Austen books! Here they are:

Jane Austen, by Elizabeth Jenkins
Jane Austen’s Novels, the Art of Clarity, by Roger Gard
Jane Austen: Her Life, by Park Honan
The Watsons, by Jane Austen
Austen, Selected Letters, edited by R W Chapman
A Portrait of Jane Austen, by David Cecil
Persuasions 12-22
Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, by Fay Weldon

Only the Elizabeth Jenkins book, The Watsons, and selected letters are duplicates! And here I was, bemoaning the fact that I had just finished Jane Austen Among Women and was feeling at a loss!

I am reading Letters to Alice now and finding it compelling. Not only is it a thorough examination of Jane Austen and her works, but an examination of writing fiction as well. Add to that the fact that Fay Weldon wrote the screenplay of the very best adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in my opinion (the early 1980s BBC production starring Elizabeth Garvie and David Rintoul), and well, bliss...

I am lucky, indeed, to have such an aunt. Fortunate are those who have her in their lives!

Summer Reading

Ah, the lazy days of summer... No summer would be complete without a book--or many.

Here's what I've been indulging myself with this summer:

Jane Austen, a Life by David Nokes: This was a fascinating book, for it took advantage of some letters and papers more recently discovered. Though I knew how it ended, I still cried.

Jane Austen's Letters collected and edited by R W Chapman (second edition): These letters are amazing. They're biting, funny, sad, intelligent. It makes me long to read all the other letters that had been destroyed all the more.

Behind Closed Doors, At Home in Georgian England by Amanda Vickery: Vickery has done it again. Because I had enjoyed reading her earlier book, The Gentleman's Daughter, Woman's Lives in Georgian England, I was excited to read Behind Closed Doors when it was published. It's well worth every penny. This book gives a complete and often stark look at men and women's lives in Georgian England. For anyone who enjoys the period or likes to write about the period, it's a must-have.

Georgette Heyer's Regency World by Jennifer Kloester: This is an engaging book and very well-written. However, it's a bit light in details, such as management of an estate or servants. For more detailed information on some subjects, it's better to find those books that specialize in them, such as The Complete Servant by Samuel and Sarah Adams, Vickery's books, or period works.

Jane Austen in Context edited by Janet Todd: This book is fascinating. One of my favorite sections dealt with the use of language by Jane Austen's characters; how the language was as much a description of the character as a physical description. An example was how Marianne's language was very much like that of the Romantic authors Jane Austen and Cassandra Austen liked to satirize in their letters, and how Elinor's language was closer to that found in Samuel Johnson's dictionary. Another interesting section dealt with Jane Austen in translation and how, in some countries, her works were so outside the norm for that country's accepted literature, that her works were edited to fit taste of that country--to the point of even leaving off the ending of one of Jane Austen's books entirely.

Thank goodness summer's not over. There's so many more books to read!