Infant Sorrow Conference

Medical researchers from the University of Warwick presented cutting edge work on the traumatic issue of sudden infant death syndrome (S.I.D.S.), or cot death. Literary scholars, crime and art historians from Cambridge, Roehampton, London, Warwick and Aberdeen Universities discussed issues such as infanticide in Victorian London, funereal photography and elegies.

The event proved both a stimulating and highly unusual conference. Delegates heard deeply affecting papers from Dr. Sarah Gull, Fellow of Lucy Cavendish and a consultant obstetrician, as well as a unique paper by her colleague, midwife Lynda Brignall. Ms Brignall described in moving terms the experience of assisting parents through the trauma of an infant death.

Delegates and speakers on both sides of the traditional arts/science divide were impressed by how insightful they found the conference.

Dr. Collette Solebo, a medical researcher at the University of Warwick, remarked: “I haven't had such a broad view of the sorrow that follows so much of the work we do in Clinical Medicine, and so to see how it has shaped so many other ideas and concepts in arts and the humanities was quite an amazing experience.”

Natasha Solomons, who is conducting research at the University of Aberdeen, agreed saying: “Studying eighteenth and nineteenth-century experiences of infant death we can become quite distanced from the men and women we write about. Today’s event highlighted the immediacy of these traumatic issues – it was great to hear papers from a really different perspective."

The event was chaired by Lucy Cavendish’s President, Professor Janet Todd.