A peasant, a priest and the mayor's servant: a trial for infanticide in the mid-Nineteenth century Venice

This paper focuses on a case of infanticide, which took place in the Venetian mainland in 1872. This story has three main characters: a woman who worked as domestic servant, a parish priest, and a peasant employed by the mayor of the town. The whole story develops in a few months from the discovery of the body of a baby near a bank of reeds, until the final judgment at the Court of Assize of Venice. As we will see, this micro-history sheds light on different perspectives, from social considerations to legal culture, from medical expertise to judicial practice. The case study examined in these pages is the emblematic example of a general trend: as often happened in infanticide trials, the gravity of the charge did not prevent both jurors and judges from feeling a certain amount of benevolence and compassion for a woman who had deliberately killed her infant a few moments after his birth.