Unnamed Infant Dyer (1637 - 1637)

Born 17 Oct 1637 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts

Ancestors

Died 17 Oct 1637 at age 0 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts

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Biography

Unnamed Infant Dyer was stillborn.

William and Mary were open supporters of Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson and the Rev. John Wheelwright during the Antinomian Controversy. Mary and Anne were friends, and when Mary went into premature labor on October 17, 1637, Anne, an experienced midwife, was called to her side. After hours of agonizing labor, Mary's body gave forth a stillborn daughter. The child was badly deformed. Also present at the stillbirth were the midwife Jane Hawkins, and at least one other unnamed woman, who was reputed to be the source of the information later spread about the monstrous birth that, one observer later wrote, was "whispered by s[ome] women in private to some others (as many of that sex as[semble] in such a strang business)." William Dyer and Anne agreed that the birth must remain a secret, knowing that the unfortunate birth could play into the hands of the Boston magistrates. Mary herself could be personally blamed for the malformed baby.

While English law permitted a midwife to bury a child in private, a midwife could not lawfully deliver or bury a child in secret. Anne Hutchinson immediately sought the counsel of Rev. John Cotton about whether the stillbirth should be publicly recorded. Although he had betrayed her politically, Anne felt she could count on him in this crisis. Cotton, with a flash of nonconformity, dismissed the ancient folk wisdom that held that infant death was conspicuous punishment for the parents' sins and advised her to ignore the law and to bury the deformed fetus in secret.

Acting on this special dispensation, Jane Hawkins and Anne buried the stillborn child - exactly as they had always done in old England where custom-imbedded law dictated to the midwife: "If any child be dead born, you yourself shall see it buried in such secret place as neither hog nor dog, nor any other beast may come unto it, and in such sort done, as it may not be found or perceived, as much as you may." The birth and burial remained a secret for five months.

In November, 1637, William was disenfranchised and disarmed along with dozens of other followers of Anne Hutchinson. On March 22, 1638, when Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated from the church and withdrew from the assemblage, Mary Dyer rose and accompanied her out of the church. As the two women left, there were several women hanging around outside the church and one was heard to ask, "Who is that woman accompanying Anne Hutchinson?" Another voice answered loud enough to be heard inside the church, "She is the mother of a monster!" Governor Winthrop heard this and was excitedly questioned Cotton, who broke down and confessed that "God, Cotton and Anne Hutchinson" had buried a deformed child five months ago. Although the child had been buried "too deep for dog or hog," it was not too deep for Winthrop who ordered it exhumed. Winthrop and the clergymen who examined it showed an inordinate interest in the physical characteristics of the "monster." According to John Winthrop's Journal, Mary Dyer, who was "notoriously infected with Mrs Hutchinson's errors," was divinely punished for this sinful heresy by being delivered of a stillborn "monster." Winthrop included gruesome, detailed descriptions in his journal and in letters sent to correspondents in England and New England:

It was a woman child, stillborn, about two months before the just time, having life a few hours before; it came hiplings [breach birth] till she turned it; it was of ordinary bigness; it had a face, but no head, and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape's; it had no forehead, but over the eyes four horns, hard and sharp, two of them were above one inch long, the other two shorter; the eyes standing out, and the mouth also; the nose hooked upward all over the breast and back, full of sharp pricks and scales, like a thornback; the navel and all the belly, with the distinction of the sex, were where the back should be; and the back and hips before, where the belly should have been; behind, between the shoulders, it had two mouths, and in each of them a piece of red flesh sticking out; it had arms and legs as other children; but, instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl, with sharp talons.^[1]

Some gossip sprang up that the child was the result of an affair between the mother and Henry Vane, the Younger. Anne Hutchinson's final pregnancy was also supposed to be the result of such an affair.^[2]

Unnamed Infant was born on 17 October 1637 in Boston, Suffolk, Mass. She was the daughter of William Dyer II and Marie (Barrett) Dyer.

Unnamed Infant died at the age of less than one day on 17 October 1637 in Boston, Suffolk, Mass.

Sources

1. ↑ Mary Barrett Dyer
2. ↑ Christy K. Robinson , Mary Dyer’s “monster” September 5, 2011

• Mary Barrett Dyer
• Schutte, Anne Jacobson. “‘Such Monstrous Births’: A Neglected Aspect of the Antinomian Controversy.” Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 1, 1985, pp. 85–106. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2861332