julius schnorr von karolsfeld, 1860, abraham is shown not sacrificing isaac. judaism prohibits infanticide, and has for some time, dating back to at least early common era. roman historians wrote about the ideas and customs of other peoples, which often diverged from their own. tacitus recorded that the jews "take thought to increase their numbers, for they regard it as a crime to kill any late-born children". josephus, whose works give an important insight into 21st-century judaism, wrote that god "forbids women to cause abortion of what is begotten, or to destroy it afterward". pagan european tribes in his book germania, tacitus wrote in 98 ce that the ancient germanic tribes enforced a similar prohibition. he found such mores remarkable and commented: "to restrain generation and the increase of children, is esteemed an abominable sin, as also to kill infants newly born." it has become clear over the millennia, though, that tacitus' description was inaccurate; the consensus of modern scholarship significantly differs. john boswell believed that in ancient germanic tribes unwanted children were exposed, usually in the forest.: 218 "it was the custom of the pagans, that if they wanted to kill a son or daughter, they would be killed before they had been given any food.": 211 usually children born out of wedlock were disposed of that way. in his highly influential pre-historic times, john lubbock described burnt bones indicating the practice of child sacrifice in pagan britain. the last canto, marjatan poika (son of marjatta), of finnish national epic kalevala describes assumed infanticide. väinämöinen orders the infant bastard son of marjatta to be drowned in a marsh. the íslendingabók, the main source for the early history of iceland, recounts that on the conversion of iceland to christianity in 1000 it was provided – in order to make the transition more palatable to pagans – that "the old laws allowing exposure of newborn children will remain in force". however, this provision – among other concessions made at the time to the pagans – was abolished some years later. christianity christianity explicitly rejects infanticide. the teachings of the apostles or didache said "thou shalt not kill a child by abortion, neither shalt thou slay it when born". the epistle of barnabas stated an identical command, both thus conflating abortion and infanticide. apologists tertullian, athenagoras, minucius felix, justin martyr and lactantius also maintained that exposing a baby to death was a wicked act. in 318, constantine i considered infanticide a crime, and in 374, valentinian i mandated the rearing of all children (exposing babies, especially girls, was still common). the council of constantinople declared that infanticide was homicide, and in 589, the third council of toledo took measures against the custom of killing their own children. arabia some muslim sources allege that pre-islamic arabian society practiced infanticide as a form of "post-partum birth control". the word waʾd was used to describe the practice. these sources state that infanticide was practiced either out of destitution (thus practiced on males and females alike), or as "disappointment and fear of social disgrace felt by a father upon the birth of a daughter". some authors believe that there is little evidence that infanticide was prevalent in pre-islamic arabia or early muslim history, except for the case of the tamim tribe, who practiced it during severe famine according to islamic sources. others state that "female infanticide was common all over arabia during this period of time" (pre-islamic arabia), especially by burying alive a female newborn.: 59 a tablet discovered in yemen, forbidding the people of a certain town from engaging in the practice, is the only written reference to infanticide within the peninsula in pre-islamic times. islam infanticide is explicitly prohibited by the qur'an. "and do not kill your children for fear of poverty; we give them sustenance and yourselves too; surely to kill them is a great wrong." together with polytheism and homicide, infanticide is regarded as a grave sin (see 6:151 and 60:12). infanticide is also implicitly denounced in the story of pharaoh's slaughter of the male children of israelites (see 2:49; 7:127; 7:141; 14:6; 28:4; 40:25). ukraine and russia femme russe abandonnant ses enfants à des loups ("russian woman abandoning her children to the wolves"). charles-michel geoffroy, 1845 infanticide may have been practiced as human sacrifice, as part of the pagan cult of perun. ibn fadlan describes sacrificial practices at the time of his trip to kiev rus (present-day ukraine) in 921–922, and describes an incident of a woman voluntarily sacrificing her life as part of a funeral rite for a prominent leader, but makes no mention of infanticide. the primary chronicle, one of the most important literary sources before the 12th century, indicates that human sacrifice to idols may have been introduced by vladimir the great in 980. the same vladimir the great formally converted kiev rus into christianity just 8 years later, but pagan cults continued to be practiced clandestinely in remote areas as late as the 13th century. american explorer george kennan noted that among the koryaks, a people of north-eastern siberia, infanticide was still common in the nineteenth century. one of a pair of twins was always sacrificed. great britain infanticide (as a crime) gained both popular and bureaucratic significance in victorian britain. by the mid-19th century, in the context of criminal lunacy and the insanity defence, killing one's own child(ren) attracted ferocious debate, as the role of women in society was defined by motherhood, and it was thought that any woman who murdered her own child was by definition insane and could not be held responsible for her actions. several cases were subsequently highlighted during the royal commission on capital punishment 1864–66, as a particular felony where an effective avoidance of the death penalty had informally begun. baby killer amelia dyer (pictured upon entry to wells asylum in 1893). her trial led to stricter laws for adoption and raised the profile of the fledgling national society for the prevention of cruelty to children (nspcc) which formed in 1884. the new poor law act of 1834 ended parish relief for unmarried mothers and allowed fathers of illegitimate children to avoid paying for "child support". unmarried mothers then received little assistance and the poor were left with the option either entering the workhouse, prostitution, infanticide or abortion. by the middle of the century infanticide was common for social reasons, such as illegitimacy, and the introduction of child life insurance additionally encouraged some women to kill their children for gain. examples are mary ann cotton, who murdered many of her 15 children as well as three husbands, margaret waters, the 'brixton baby farmer', a professional baby-farmer who was found guilty of infanticide in 1870, jessie king hanged in 1889, amelia dyer, the 'angel maker', who murdered over 400 babies in her care, and ada chard-williams, a baby farmer who was later hanged at newgate prison. the times reported that 67 infants were murdered in london in 1861 and 150 more recorded as "found dead", many of which were found on the streets. another 250 were suffocated, half of them not recorded as accidental deaths. the report noted that "infancy in london has to creep into life in the midst of foes." recording a birth as a still-birth was also another way of concealing infanticide because still-births did not need to be registered until 1926 and they did not need to be buried in public cemeteries. in 1895 the sun (london) published an article "massacre of the innocents" highlighting the dangers of baby-farming, in the recording of stillbirths and quoting braxton-hicks, the london coroner, on lying-in houses: "i have not the slightest doubt that a large amount of crime is covered by the expression 'still-birth'. there are a large number of cases of what are called newly-born children, which are found all over england, more especially in london and large towns, abandoned in streets, rivers, on commons, and so on." he continued "a great deal of that crime is due to what are called lying-in houses, which are not registered, or under the supervision of that sort, where the people who act as midwives constantly, as soon as the child is born, either drop it into a pail of water or smother it with a damp cloth. it is a very common thing, also, to find that they bash their heads on the floor and break their skulls." the last british woman to be executed for infanticide of her own child was rebecca smith, who was hanged in wiltshire in 1849. the infant life protection act of 1897 required local authorities to be notified within 48 hours of changes in custody or the death of children under seven years. under the children's act of 1908 "no infant could be kept in a home that was so unfit and so overcrowded as to endanger its health, and no infant could be kept by an unfit nurse who threatened, by neglect or abuse, its proper care, and maintenance." china burying babies in china (p. 40, march 1865, xxii) as of the 3rd century bc, short of execution, the harshest penalties were imposed on practitioners of infanticide by the legal codes of the qin dynasty and han dynasty of ancient china. china's society practiced sex selective infanticide. philosopher han fei tzu, a member of the ruling aristocracy of the 3rd century bce, who developed a school of law, wrote: "as to children, a father and mother when they produce a boy congratulate one another, but when they produce a girl they put it to death." among the hakka people, and in yunnan, anhui, sichuan, jiangxi and fujian a method of killing the baby was to put her into a bucket of cold water, which was called "baby water". infanticide was reported as early as the 3rd century bce, and, by the time of the song dynasty (960–1279 ce), it was widespread in some provinces. belief in transmigration allowed poor residents of the country to kill their newborn children if they felt unable to care for them, hoping that they would be reborn in better circumstances. furthermore, some chinese did not consider newborn children fully "human" and saw "life" beginning at some point after the sixth month after birth. the venetian explorer marco polo claimed to have seen newborns exposed in manzi. contemporary writers from the song dynasty note that, in hubei and fujian provinces, residents would only keep three sons and two daughters (among poor farmers, two sons, and one daughter), and kill all babies beyond that number at birth. initially the sex of the child was only one factor to consider. by the time of the ming dynasty, however (1368–1644), male infanticide was becoming increasingly uncommon. the prevalence of female infanticide remained high much longer. the magnitude of this practice is subject to some dispute; however, one commonly quoted estimate is that, by late qing, between one fifth and one-quarter of all newborn girls, across the entire social spectrum, were victims of infanticide. if one includes excess mortality among female children under 10 (ascribed to gender-differential neglect), the share of victims rises to one third. scottish physician john dudgeon, who worked in peking, china, during the early 20th century said that, "infanticide does not prevail to the extent so generally believed among us, and in the north, it does not exist at all." sex ratio at birth in mainland china, males per 100 females, 1980–2010 gender-selected abortion or sex identification (without medical uses), abandonment, and infanticide are illegal in present-day mainland china. nevertheless, the us state department, and the human rights organization amnesty international have all declared that mainland china's family planning programs, called the one child policy (which has since changed to a two-child policy), contribute to infanticide. the sex gap between males and females aged 0–19 years old was estimated to be 25 million in 2010 by the united nations population fund. but in some cases, in order to avoid mainland china's family planning programs, parents will not report to government when a child is born (in most cases a girl), so she or he will not have an identity in the government and they can keep on giving birth until they are satisfied, without fines or punishment. in 2017, the government announced that all children without an identity can