Civil Registration of Stillbirths in France

Discover the second session of the 2026–2027 seminar series "Crossed Perspectives on Early Childhood" – "Civil Registration of Stillbirths in France from the Revolution to the Mid-19th Century."

The seminar approaches early childhood as a social, historical, and cultural construct. Knowledge and theories relating to conception, birth, and child development are analysed in terms of the child’s interactions with their surroundings and according to gender norms. The seminar also explores the boundaries of this age category and its temporality, as defined by medical, international, anthropological, and historical standards.

The law of 20-25 September 1792, which established a secular system of civil registration, profoundly transformed the legal and administrative recognition of stillborn children. Under the Ancien Régime, stillbirths were understood through religious categories, predominantly Catholic ones in the French context, based on a conflation of stillborn infants with live-born children who died before receiving baptism.

The secularization of birth and death registration led to the abandonment of these religious classifications in favour of civil and biological categories.This paper examines the registration of stillborn children from the French Revolution to the 1850s, during a period marked by the introduction of new registration procedures, notably the acte d'enfant présenté sans vie (certificate of a child presented without life) in 1806. The study draws on archival research conducted in several French departments, namely the Ardennes, Charente-Maritime, and Corrèze.

• Vincent Gourdon: historian, research director at the CNRS (Roland Mousnier Center)
• Nathalie Sage Pranchère: historian, research fellow at the CNRS (SPHERE Laboratory)
• Discussant: Emmanuelle Berthiaud : historian at UPJV, on secondment to the CNRS