Using records of the Scottish criminal justice system, Parliamentary Papers and newspaper articles, Alison Brown explores the lives of men and women who killed their children in nineteenth-century Scotland.

This well researched account challenges the idea that parents who committed filicide were necessarily monstrous, and these moving stories demonstrate how social circumstances could lead to the death of a child.

The book also sheds light on the workings of the Scottish criminal justice system and will be of interest to students of the history of crime and Scottish social history, as well as the interested general reader.

Dr Alison L Brown is an independent researcher with a PhD in Scottish social history, and a postgraduate diploma in archives and records management.

Since retiring from her day job, she has dedicated her time to historical research.

Her interests lie in nineteenth-century Scottish social and criminal history, using the wealth of records created by the Scottish criminal justice system, largely untapped and voluminous Parliamentary Papers, and newspaper articles.