Susanna Cox convicted Infanticide investigated

A 19th Century folklore true crime tale investigated astrologically

I only learned of this story from, friend of The Astrologer, Timothy Renner’s Strange Familiars podcast. Give it a listen if you want all the details, because this is a short post. I’m only looking at the astrology and explaining my methods.

Short of it: Woman gives birth to an illegitamate child who dies shortly after birth. Infanticide or stillborn or cold exposure? There was a trial and she was found guilty of infanticide and sentenced to death by hanging.

In the podcast, Timothy Renner gives the baby’s date and time of birth. That was when I decided to check this out myself. But, we now have the problem of a birth chart being identical to the death chart. What do? You can’t look at that chart and say you know much about the death when you could also read it for personality. You also have the same old astrological problem of calling the same positions in the sky as some evil death transits when all manners of life in those hundreds of miles were likely born in that moment and lived their lifespans.

Birth/Death chart:

How do you solve this? Prenatal charts.

You then create a simple biwheel:

This is how you see an infant death and its cause.

The baby died from cold exposure. Not murder. Cold (Saturn) Air (Neptune) oppose Life (Sun). Or “Cold (Saturn) “Exposure” (Neptune). Winter (Saturn) square Mother (Moon) and Life (Sun). Squares are of Neptune and Saturn so you still get that Winter Air energy in the aspect itself. The baby was born in the winter cold in a stone building. That killed it.

This Saturn is in middle Scorpio is governed by the rulerships of Uranus, with Pluto as subruler, and Neptune and Saturn as deeper levels of subrulers (think of them as tighter levels of decanates). This part of Scorpio is catastrophic weather, weak or ill, crazy or foolish. It does also cover crimes of passion and jealousy.

The Marses are interesting. Transit Mars opposes Saturn and squares the natal/death Sun/Moon conjunction. However, look at the rulership: Mars in late Taurus is ruled by Venus with Jupiter as a subruler. We see “baby” (Venus) and affection and other beautiful things. Venus is in the same sign in mid-Taurus at 19 degrees in its own rulership. Here, it opposes Saturn in its own conception chart: Cold (Saturn) Baby (Venus). Or Dead Baby. It then squares Natal Moon on the birth chart: Mother’s (Moon) Baby (Venus). Mars is squaring Sun. I could read it as all manner of murder (Mars) against Life (Sun). But, with Mars in such a benefic rulership I read it as showing the death and nothing more.