Baudelocque, the son of a Picardy surgeon, replaced custom with a methodical obstetrics and left his name to the instrument that measures the pelvis. He delivered the children of several European sovereigns, then of the ladies of the court, under the Empire. An opponent of the Caesarean accused him of infanticide and lost his case in 1804. Napoleon chose him for the heir to the throne.
The story
Jean Louis Baudelocque was born on 30 November 1745 at Heilly in the Somme, the son of a surgeon. Professor of obstetrics and author of “L'Art des accouchements”, the art of childbirth, he built his name on measuring the pelvis and on method where custom had ruled.
He became the man who delivered the queens of Spain, Holland and Naples, and every lady of the imperial court. The pelvimeter that carries his name and the manoeuvres he set down made him, as the records put it, the most famous accoucheur of his day.
A resounding lawsuit set him against Jean François Sacombe, an opponent of the caesarean, who accused him of infanticide. Sacombe lost his case in 1804; the affair carried the argument into the public square for good.
Napoleon and Marie-Louise chose him to bring the heir to the throne into the world. He died of a stroke on 2 May 1810, at 16 rue Jacob, ten months before the birth of the Aiglon, the Emperor's son.
Buried in the western cemetery at Vaugirard, he was taken up again in 1937 when the cutting of the boulevard Pasteur took part of the ground. His remains went to his descendants' plot, in Division 45, where no inscription names him. The maternity hospital at Port-Royal carries his name.
The grave
There is, strictly speaking, no grave of Baudelocque: his remains joined in 1937 the plot of his descendants, and no inscription names him. On the stone one reads the names of a Jean Joseph Baudelocque who died in 1893 at forty, and of an Alice Estelle Céline Taillandier, widow of Edmond Baudelocque — whose age as recorded by the inventories, “556 years”, is a transcription error. The most famous obstetrician of the Empire is thus in Père-Lachaise without having an epitaph there.
On site, do not miss
A family plot on which the obstetrician's name does not appear: his remains arrived there a hundred and twenty-seven years after his death.
Visitors' questions
Where is Jean-Louis Baudelocque's grave?
In Division 45, Avenue Transversale No. 1, second row. It is his descendants' plot, to which his remains were moved in 1937: none of the visible inscriptions refers to the obstetrician himself.
François AragoDid he deliver Marie-Louise's child?
No. Napoleon and the Empress had chosen him for the birth of the heir to the throne, but he died of a stroke on 2 May 1810, ten months before the King of Rome was born.
Georges CuvierWhy did his grave change cemeteries?
He was buried in the Cimetière de l'Ouest, at Vaugirard. When the cutting of Boulevard Pasteur took part of that cemetery, his remains were transferred in 1937 to his descendants' plot at Père-Lachaise.
Claude BernardWhat did he bring to obstetrics?
Method, where custom had ruled: measurement of the pelvis, a pelvimeter that bears his name, and a treatise, “L'Art des accouchements” — the art of childbirth — that trained practitioners across Europe. The Port-Royal maternity hospital is named after him.
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