Queen Victoria’s Use of Pain Relief—A First in Modern History

“Chloroform a la Reine” article for The Journal for the Study of British Cultures

https://jsbc.winter-verlag.de/article/JSBC/2024/2/5

A link and abstract of my recent article appearing in The Journal for the Study of British Cultures 31.2 (Winter 2024), 181-199.

Abstract

Though the importance of the mid-Victorian era to childbirth practices is well-established, this essay turns to the lasting effects on the perception of pain engendered by the advent of modern obstetrics that were, in turn, propelled by the discovery of anaesthesia, especially ether (1846) and chloroform (1847). Hastening this transformation were James Young Simpson’s bold advocacy for parturient pain relief and Queen Victoria’s use of the latter anodyne for her last two deliveries in 1853 and 1857. Because of anaesthesia, too, social and religious perceptions regarding the role of pain in human life were rapidly evolving. Additionally, middle- and upper-class Victorian women were characterised as having heightened ‘sensibility’, making them passive, feeble, and unable to tolerate pain, and allowing male practitioners to enter the birthing sphere more frequently to administer pain relief and ‘deliver’ women. For childbearing women, this created a paradoxical reality in which they could be liberated from pain but also required they give up much control over the birth process. The physiological relief of pain in childbirth also gave male doctors an advantage over traditional female midwives, driving many out of the profession, and encouraged the operative specialty of obstetrics to develop. Women were no longer in control of the birthing sphere, and this ushered in the beginning of the technocratic, modern, and male-driven model of childbearing.