Trial of Jeanne Catherine

"In 1686 in Geneva, a single mother named Jeanne Catherine Thomasset was charged with poisoning two young children: her own illegitimate daughter and the son of a rural wet nurse. This began a protracted criminal trial during which authorities interrogated Jeanne Catherine several times, sometimes with torture, in order to determine the truth. Throughout, Jeanne Catherine consistently maintained her innocence and expressed distress at her daughter's death. The Trial of Jeanne Catherine is a suspenseful historical mystery offering key information about early modern motherhood, child rearing, gender, religion, local politics, and the practice of criminal justice in the seventeenth century. The book provides the complete trial transcript as well as the deliberations of the Genevan authorities and relevant correspondence, allowing students to analyse and draw their own conclusions about the reasons for infanticide prosecutions as well as their impact on the experience of motherhood in early modern Europe."--