Eliska Bujokova
Eliska Bujokova is a historian of care in global context, working on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She has a particular interest in women’s roles as commercial care providers. Working with newspapers as a window into commercial practices of care and body work, she came across Mrs Helen Laidlaw, an Edinburgh midwife, whom she will introduce in this episode. What does her case tell us about Scottish midwifery in the early-nineteenth century, and what does she reveal about social norms regarding female sexuality and illegitimacy? Find out more in the episode!
Further Reading
Bujokova, Eliska. "‘None Regardless of Reputation Will Be Received’: Midwifery and Commercial Bodywork in Urban Scotland c. 1780–c. 1840." Social History of Medicine (2025), preprint at https://academic.oup.com/shm/advance-article/doi/10.1093/shm/hkaf002/8042388.
Badger, Frances J. "Illuminating nineteenth-century English urban midwifery: the register of a Coventry midwife." Women's History Review 23, no. 5 (2014): 683-705. Fox, Sarah, and Margaret Brazier. "The regulation of midwives in England, c. 1500–1902." Medical Law International 20, no. 4 (2020): 308-338.
Chamberlain, Geoffrey. "British maternal mortality in the 19th and early 20th centuries." Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 99, no. 11 (2006): 559-563.
Fissell, Mary, Abortion: A History (London: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 2025).
Ritchie, Elizabeth. "The Township, the Pregnant Girl and the Church: Community Dynamics, Gender and Social Control in Early Nineteenth-century Scotland." Northern Scotland 10, no. 1 (2019): 41-67.