Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/345

 s. i. APRIL 9, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

281

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 190L

CONTENTS.-No. 15.

NOTES : Still-born Children, 281 Burton's 'Anatomy of

" Melancholy,' 282 Damage to Corn, 283-German Reprint of Leicarraga Capt. Wogan, 284 ' The Creevey Papers' Thomas Randolph Martello Towers, 285 Torpedoes- Burns Anticipated Pit of a Theatre, 286 Bishop Bucke- ridge's Birth place -Pit=a Grave" Muck-a-lucks," 287.

QUERIES : " Smallage "Lords Raymond, and Pengelly Immurement in Sea-Wails" Monkey on the chimney ' St. Mewbred Gerarde Jode Leslie Stephen on the- Eighteenth Century Shakespeare's Grave, 288 "Badger in the bag" Halley's Two Voyages Bartolozzi ' John Inglesant' River Divided Fair Maid of Kent, 289 Architecture in Old Times Fable from Ariosto Fish Days Barbers Heraldic Reference in Shakespeare Hieroglyphics and Deities, 290.

BEPLIES :N pronounced ng, 291 Marlborough and Shakespeare Tideswell and Tideslow, 292 St. Dunstan Speakers of the Irish House of Commons Leche Family Torch and Taper Jacobite Wineglasses Clavering Flesh and Shamble Meats, 293 - J. R. Green on Freeman- Col. MacElligott, 294 Periodicals for Women "Prior to" Bagshaw Topography of Ancient London, 295 Egerton-Warburton-Horn Dancing Leper Hymn-Writer " Fulture " " As the crow flies," 296 Latin Quotations "The Crown and Three Sugar Loaves " Northall, Shropshire Ainoo and Baskisb Rodney's Second Wife " Bridge " Authors of Quotations Temple College, Philadelphia, 297 Dickens Queries, 298.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Bateson's' Cambridge Gild Records' Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

STILL-BORN CHILDREN. CHILDREN apparently dead at the moment of birth have survived for hours, with an almost imperceptible beating of the heart as the sole evidence of temporarily latent life after birth. Many of these " still-born " children die, but so long as the heart is not dumb and at rest, arid until the final flutter of the pulse, they have not departed put of this life. Formerly these feebly enlivened babes were often laid aside as dead, as in 1702 was Philip Doddridge, who completed his mother's literal score of children (Orton's declarations of "still-birth" too hastily. Only after vigorous treatment and consider- able delay do some of these puny children cheat death by first inspiring the breath of life snatched from the grave, perhaps only to re-elicit from a modern parent, " I could not tell whether to rejoice to see mine aborted infant revived." These cases are comparable with those resuscitated after apparent suffo- cation. Samuel Johnson, who was christened on his birthday (1709, as were also Joseph Addison, 1672, and King George III., 1738),
 * Life '). Accoucheurs and others have signed

records in the autobiographical notes : " I was born almost dead, and could not cry for some time." Isaac Newton (1642, who was as well posthumous as premature), Fontenelle (1659), " the Old Pretender " (1688), Voltaire (1694), and the first Lord Lyttelton (1709) were also among the immortals who during a single century enjoyed but a precarious, if not also a precocious entry into life.

There is no direct definition of still-birth, Legally, a negative contextual description is alone obtainable that is, not born alive (cf. Law Quarterly Review, April, 1904). Johnson's view (1755) is of personal interest : " dead in the birth, born lifeless"; in 1775, however, the ' Annual Register ' (p. 99) records : ' The Recovery of Overlaid and even Still-born Children.' The still-born actually differs from the dead-born the former is alive, but its pre-natal apnoea persists the maintenance of the rectal temperature and the possibility of revival mark it as a survivor, and as not yet defunct. The assumed antithesis between quick-born and still-born, as indicating post- natally alive or dead respectively, has no strict historical validity. Originally a still- born child was one that could not cry. In the absence of even a still small voice it was numbered among the silent dead. Glanvil (1190) gives the common-law text of live- birth : damans et auditus infra quatuor parietes. In 1300 we find : "that quick-borne child I have fordon " (' Cursor M.'). In 1330 : " the child ded bornen was " (' King of Tar.'). In 1483 "dede-borne" corresponds with abor- tivus Cotgrave (1611) gives " abortive, untimely," as synonyms of " still-born." Bishop Hall (' Serm ,' 1613) says : " We begin our life with tears ; and therefore our lawyers define life, by weeping. If a child were heard to cry, it is a lawful proof of his living ; else, if he be dead, we say he is still-born" (cf. 8 th S. xii. 283 and 9 th S. i. 285). Middleton (' Chast Mayd,' 1620): " When the child cries, for if 't should be still-born, it doth no good, sir." It was 21 Jac. I. c. 27, which, copying a French edict, reversed for nearly two cen- turies the common-law presumption of the dead-birth of bastards, and in 1628 Coke assumed, with quaint pathology, that the new-born might not be able to cry, "for, peradventure, it may be born dumbe." Fuller (' Good Thoughts,' &c., 1647): "These still- born babes only breathe, without crying." Shakespeare (' 2 King Henry IV.,' 1598) opposes the term to " fair-birth." Hollyband (1593) for niort-ne gives " a still-borne." L'Estrange ('King Charles,' 1654): "These discontents of the subject were not still-born,