Jane Sharp

Jane Sharp (c. 1641–1671) was an English midwife. Her work The Midwives Book: or the Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered, published in 1671, was the first on the subject to be produced by an Englishwoman. Life Little is known of Sharp's life beyond her publication. She is thought to have been born in 1641 in Shrewsbury, county town of Shropshire, England. The title page of her book claims that she had been a "practitioner in the art of midwifry [sic] above thirty years." She is believed to have practised in London, although Sharp's name does not appear in any Church of England registration books or in witness signatures on any of almost 500 London midwifery certificates surviving from 1661–1669. Nor does she appear on any registers of the Catholic Church at the time. Sharp may have been a Puritan, which would account for her literacy: Puritan women were more frequently literate than Catholics or Anglicans. Her ability to write and to travel to and from London suggests she may have been economically advantaged, but it is unclear whether she received a formal education. While no marriage records have been found, it appears that Jane Sharp had either a daughter or a daughter-in-law, for the midwife Anne Parrott of St. Clement Danes in London, bequeathed a small sum to "Sarah Sharp the daughter of Jane Sharp". With little known of the person's life and no record of her death, some have proposed that Jane Sharp is a pseudonym. Such were often attached to their work by women in the Early Modern period.