| Margaret Bethune | |
| Birth Date: | 2 October 1820 |
| Birth Place: | Peebles, Scotland |
| Death Place: | Largo, Fife, Scotland |
| Occupation: | Midwife |
| Nationality: | Scottish |
Margaret Bethune (2 October 1820 – 20 April 1887), born Margaret Peebles, was a Scottish midwife who kept a detailed register of almost 1300 births she attended in Largo parish in Fife. Her register survives as a rich record for the history of midwifery in Scotland.
Bethune was born in Peebles, the daughter of Margaret Walker, a linen worker, and Andrew Peebles, a weaver of Lundin Mill.[1]
In order to provide for her young children and elderly mother, the widowed Bethune moved from Largo to Edinburgh in 1852, to seek midwifery training.[2] [3] She purchased a copy of Alexander Hamilton's Concise Rules for the Conduct of Midwives in the Exercise of their Profession, published in 1793, and gained a ticket to work on the wards at a maternity hospital in Edinburgh.[4]
Bethune returned to her family in 1853, and began working as a midwife or "howdie" in her community.[5] [6] Bethune kept a casebook, recording 1,296 labours she attended, all within the parish of Largo, with only two maternal deaths registered.[7] She was a respected and able midwife, and she attended to the vast majority of births in her parish for several decades.[8]
In 1844, she married William Bethune, a coal miner. They had two children, Margaret (born 1845) and William (born 1847). She was widowed at age 32, when her husband died in a mining accident. Margaret Bethune died from heart disease in Largo in 1887, aged 66 years. Her casebook is preserved in the National Records of Scotland. Bethune's register was featured in a 2015 exhibit in Edinburgh, marking the centenary of the Midwives Act of 1915.[9] [10]