A Seven-Year-Old Murderer and the Crimes of Gilded Age Childhood

Abstract This essay, based on the 2025 SHGAPE Presidential Address, considers the late nineteenth-century phenomenon of “baby murderers.” It examines the dilemmas that newspaper reporters, local authorities, medical experts, and ordinary citizens confronted as they wrestled with the problem of young children who killed. How could one distinguish an accident from an intentional act? At what ages did children understand the consequences of their actions? When were they old enough to grasp the finality of death? Could murderous tendencies be nipped in the bud? Were homicidal impulses inherited, the result of deficient parenting, or the fault of a corrupt environment? Were baby murderers mentally ill, morally deficient, or just plain evil? Did the law sufficiently deter perpetrators and protect potential victims? These questions acquired special resonance in the late nineteenth century, a time that preceded the establishment of separate juvenile justice systems but one in which the right to a protected childhood had gained increasing (but by no means universal) acceptance. The Gilded Age, then, offers a particularly rich vantage point from which to view how various popular definitions of childhood intersected and clashed with medical understandings and legal procedures.