Baby watch: how royal births have changed
As the cordon goes up at the Lindo Wing, Matthew Dennison looks at how royal labour has traditionally been a public affair
The crowd barriers have gone up, parking on South Wharf Road has been suspended and the bookies’ official odds on potential names are out: so begins royal baby watch outside the private Lindo wing of St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington.
It seems unlikely that the Duchess of Cambridge will spend her forthcoming labour contemplating royal precedent. Were she to do so, she would find plenty of reasons to be very pleased indeed that she is a 21st century royal mother, who can anticipate a childbirth as safe as any, in the presence of skilled medical practitioners and her husband. How things have changed.
Her husband, Prince William, became the first future king to have been born in a hospital, when Diana, Princess of Wales opted to give birth in the same wing in 1982. Her fatherin-law, meanwhile, was the first to be born since the 18th century without the presence of a senior government minister – Princess Elizabeth had four doctors though no husband (Prince Philip was playing squash) in attendance when Prince Charles arrived in 1948 in Buckingham Palace’s Belgian Suite, which had been specially converted into a temporary maternity unit for the purpose.
When, 300 years ago, Caroline of Ansbach, the future Queen of England went into labour at St James’s Palace, her husband, later George II, was at her side. So, too, was the Archbishop of Canterbury. For good measure, the toiling princess was also attended by four duchesses, an old friend from Germany, the Countess of Bückeburg, Lady Dorset, Lady Grantham, Lady Hinchinbrooke and the wife of the Lord Chancellor, Mary, Countess Cowper. Lesser courtiers and a handful of government ministers crowded the passages and stairs outside. As soon as Caroline’s ordeal was over, celebratory canon fire ricocheted through neighbouring St James’s Park, preventing any possibility of rest.
Caroline’s own feelings on that occasion were happy. Three years earlier, she had almost died in childbirth when her labour sparked a furious row between her Hanoverian midwife and the British doctor Sir David Hamilton. For five days the rival parties bickered and squabbled. Only a threat by the Prince of Wales to hurl everyone out of the window brought them to their senses. Too late for the baby, which was delivered stillborn with a damaged skull. Caroline herself almost died. It was months before she recovered fully.
Among the steps she took so that this fiasco never be repeated was a question to the Lord Chancellor about her requirement to give birth in a room as crowded as any doctor’s waiting room. “I spoke to Lord Cowper last night, according to the Princess’s command, about the people proper to be present at the labour,” her lady-inwaiting wrote. “He bids me say that the Princess is at her perfect liberty in that point to do as she pleases, neither the law, nor any custom, having fixed upon anybody to be present.” In April 1721, Caroline gave birth to another son without a single duchess or government minister in sight.
But Caroline’s snooper-free delivery was virtually a one-off. For the next 200 years, royal mothersto-be gave birth with an audience – a custom that owes its origin to the birth of James II’S son, James Francis Edward Stuart, in 1688. The birth of a healthy Catholic heir to the throne horrified 17th century England. Rumours of malpractice – a baby boy smuggled into the bedchamber in a warming pan – outweighed the testimony of the 42 eminent public figures who had witnessed Mary of Modena give birth, ultimately leading to his father’s deposition in the Glorious Revolution. Inadvertently, a new tradition had been established. And royal traditions die hard.
Queen Victoria considered she had got off lightly in 1841, at the birth of her eldest son, Bertie, the future Edward VII. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord President of the Council Lord Wharncliffe and Lord Stanley, Secretary of State for the Colonies, all arrived too late for the big moment. Victoria owed her escape to her doting husband Albert, who was invariably at her side throughout labour, and deliberately dispatched messengers too late. She was not always so fortunate. For the birth of her ninth and last child, Beatrice, in 1857, the crowd had reassembled. At Victoria’s bedside were her husband, her midwife Mrs Lilly, Dr Charles Locock and anaesthetist Dr John Snow. In a room nearby the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, the Lord Chancellor and the Bishop of London joined leading courtiers. Prayers were read in English and German. And for special measure, Dr Wegner, physician to the Crown Prince of Prussia, was standing by, taking mental notes. The following year he would assist at the birth of the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, Victoria’s eldest grandchild. Given the bungled outcome of that delivery, Wegner evidently did not pay close enough attention.
Queen Victoria, whose use of “that blessed chloroform” during the birth of her penultimate child, Prince Leopold, popularised the breakthrough anaesthetic, made further improvements in 1894, announcing a slimming-downexercise ahead of the birth of her first great-grandson, the future Edward VIII, that meant the presence of the home secretary alone would be enough.
And so it remained. On April 21 1926, at a key moment in the dispute between miners’ leaders and mine owners, home secretary Sir William Joynsonhicks got up early to be present at the birth of Princess Elizabeth of York, our Queen, at her grandparents’ house at 17 Bruton Street in Mayfair. On Nov 5 1948, royal officials presented George VI’S decision to dispense with the presence of the home secretary at Buckingham Palace for Princess Elizabeth’s imminent labour as a modernising move, ending “an archaic custom”. In truth, the King had been horrified at the suggestion that the home secretary be joined by his Commonwealth equivalents, the high commissioners of Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The Queen made use of the converted Belgian Suite for the last time in 1964, for the birth of Prince Edward; this time with the Duke of Edinburgh by her side. But it was not until Princess Anne gave birth to Peter Phillips – not only the first legitimate grandchild of a monarch to be born without a title in 500 years, but the first one born in a public hospital – in November 1977, that royal tradition changed decisively.
It continues to evolve. Where once members of the public had to guess at the imminence of a royal birth, today there are clearer signs. When the press pack outside St Mary’s starts to swell…