An enslaved midwife reportedly killed newborns as an act of liberation

Evidence

In the late 1790s legends circulated about a midwife named Samedi who during the time of slavery took advantage of her profession to kill the children she delivered. She wore a belt with seventy knots, each a reminder of one of her victims, for whom, she proclaimed, she had been a “liberator.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 172

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: The figure of Samedi the midwife-liberator is a ready-made narrative engine: a healer whose healing is infanticide, carrying a tally-belt of seventy kills. Could seed a short story or a character in a larger historical fiction.
• XREF: Connects to the infanticide-under-slavery debates in works like Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which is the classic literary treatment of maternal killing as liberation.
• ADDENDUM: This directly extends the sacrifice/grief framing of the article on ritual sacrifice as love and liberation in an enslaved context.