CW: rape

The shame often associated with domestic abuse has always posed a challenge to victims and the justice system. Today, most cases remain unreported, but this trend isn’t specific to the contemporary era. Women have long gone out of their way to hide the evidence of such traumatic events. 

In early-modern Britain, domestic violence cases involving rape were brushed under the rug for fear of the consequences wrought by a biased legal system and public scrutiny. Rape itself would leave a mark of moral corruption on its victim while male perpetrators suffered none of the same consequences. Maidservants who became pregnant with their abusive employer’s illegitimate children had the added fear of being cast out on their own in order to protect the reputations of their households. Some, however, sought creative ways to avoid such fates. According to one 16th-century tale, a woman named Agnes Bowker pretended to give birth to a cat. 

According to the court testimonials, Bowker gave birth to a skinned cat on the June 17, 1569 in the English town of Harborough. This was an unlikely setup even in accord with the tastes of the mid-Elizabethan era—the heyday of fables chronicling the misfortunes of women who brought to life “monstrous” children of all sorts. Soon, the people of Harborough launched their own, makeshift investigations to find out the truth hidden underneath the disguise. Bowker didn’t give birth to a cat; this much everybody knew. But what was the peculiar occurrence attempting to camouflage? 

As David Cressy, a British historian and the leading expert on Bowker’s case, tells it, the case bears interest because it sheds light on how historical texts preserve gendered oppression. Cressy has studied firsthand accounts of the case in the Landsowne Manuscripts, which includes the transcription of the verbal testimonials Bowker and witnesses told the court in the proceeding investigations. However, these testimonials provide no information about the difficulties Bowker faced as a lower-class, disabled woman pregnant with an illegitimate child. Instead the testimonials focus on the concrete, factual aspects of the cat-birthing. The story is just about as delicate as it gets; it includes extramarital sexual relationships, emotional manipulation, bribery, abuse, and the dubious circumstances of an unwanted pregnancy. In his 1993 book Agnes Bowker’s Cat, Cressy investigates how delicate issues such as Bowker’s can escape the attention of the authorities and, in turn, the historical archive. 

Citing a court testimony recorded by Harborough’s commissary, Anthony Anderson, on the 12th of February 1569, Cressy reveals that Bowker started showing the signs of the “falling illness,” or epilepsy, after taking up work as a maidservant at Hugh Brady’s household. Describing her master as a “very vicious, evil man,” Bowker told the court that she was forced to have sex with him on multiple occasions. She claimed that she escaped quickly after one such incident, finding shelter in the nearby village of Braybrooke. But this still wasn’t the end; Bowker met Brady on numerous occasions afterwards, and the sexual abuse continued. Eventually, Bowker described a pact the two made, stating that Brady tried to exploit her illness by promising to cure her symptoms if she gave him a child, and Bowker went along with it. That’s all the testimonies include.

The recounted court testimonies might be lacking, but it’s the maidservant who withheld the true account of events. Cressy emphasizes Bowker’s incredible creativity when it comes to telling far-fetched tales and her ability to impede the work of the judiciary by spinning an intricate web of lies. During the first hearing, Bowker named a completely different man as the father. In the same session, she also said she had sex with an enormous cat six or seven times during the autumn of 1568. By the next session, the cat had become a bear. Bowker constantly changed the details of her story, deliberately stirring up confusion. 

Bowker’s rhetorical mastery doesn’t stop here. The maidservant distributed a number of contradictory fibs among the locals of Harborough as well. She told one eventual witness, Lady Turpin, that she was already married and had a child, who was being looked after in a nearby town. Bowker told a similar story to a close friend of hers, but claimed her child had died. This is a peculiar strategy, but a transgressive one nonetheless. Bowker made up numerous, elaborately-crafted stories about what had taken place. She invalidated every accusation, evading the lasting societal stigma and potential repercussions for her perceived-to-be morally corrupt lifestyle. 

Some speculated that the cat story was a cover-up for infanticide. Cressy indicates that Bowker brought to life a child who then disappeared. According to his timeline, the maidservant went into labor either on the 6th or the 11th of January, in the presence of a midwife. Bowker claimed afterwards that the pains stopped for a week. She reached out to another midwife, Elizabeth Harrison, on the 16th or 17th, who supposedly helped her with the cat. As with the rest of this story, it’s only the crucial details that are missing. 

At least 3 percent of the children born in the mid-Elizabethan era were illegitimate, and a significant portion were born by maidservants. These women were at the highest risk of losing their scant social status and power and were disproportionately affected by domestic abuse and acts of violence. Those who became pregnant with unwanted children were sent away. Some found themselves unable to find new lodging or a means of making a living. No longer able to comply with the staunch religious views of the community, they were left to wander the countryside, some succumbing to prostitution. This might explain why Bowker pretended to give birth to a cat: The spectacle drew away the attention from her pregnancy, allowing her to escape further trouble. To avoid a dire fate, the maidservant opted for obscurantism. The case wound a path all the way up to the Bishop of London; despite officials’ doubts about the story, after extensive investigation they were unable to prove that what Bowker had birthed wasn’t a cat. 

“She invalidated every accusation, evading the lasting societal stigma and potential repercussions for her perceived-to-be morally corrupt lifestyle.”

According to the accepted understanding of biology in the early-modern era, procreation was thought to be possible only on the condition that both participants reached orgasm, believing that the heat of orgasm was necessary to produce new life. This understanding of conception could have serious implications in cases like Bowker’s. Frequently cited by the courts as the standard to examine cases involving violence and harassment, this theory provided a rational ground for the persecution and punishment of pregnant rape victims. The thinking went that if a woman who was raped became pregnant, then she must have taken pleasure in the assault as indicated by the orgasm and, therefore, she wasn’t really raped. Bowker might have spun the cat story to avoid the inconvenience and trauma of a court case and its inevitable end in punishment.

Other women in situations similar to Bowker’s sought out other alternative solutions to avoid such damning court cases. For example, herbal potions and medicines were common tools used to terminate pregnancies. Some women instead waited until after their children were born to hide their existence; by selling their children to wealthier, infertile women, they avoided dreaded complications and consequences of going to trial as a rape victim. Abortion and selling the child were considered to be the choices of the more privileged, as these required good connections and help provided by other women. The less fortunate faced lesser options, and those desperate to rid of the child would opt for infanticide. But records have never emerged of another plot quite as creative and unconventional as Agnes Bowker’s.

Further Reading 

Barbara J. Baines, “Effacing Rape in Early Modern Representation,” ELH, 65, no. 1 (Spring, 1998): 69-98. 

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