Catharina Cramer

Who was Catharina Cramer?

Catharina Geertuida Cramer was a pioneering German/Dutch midwife.

Catharina Schrader was born in Bentheim, Germany, the eldest daughter of Friedrich Schrader, the court tailor to Earl Earnst Wihelm in Bentheim, Germany. She married the local surgeon Earnst Cramer in 1683 with whom she had 6 children. In 1686 they moved to Hallum in Friesland. When her husband died in 1692 she began to work as a midwife to support her family. She moved to the town of Dokkum where her practice grew and she attended over 100 births a year. She remarried in 1713 to Thomas Hight, a gold and silversmith and the mayor of Dokkum. For a time her practise reduced in size but on Hight's death in 1721 she returned to it full-time specialising in complicated births. She was critical of the low level of midwifery skills at the time and often cooperated with male doctors and surgeons.

When she retired at aged 88 in 1744 she had attended 3060 births of which 64 were twins and 3 were triplets. She died in Dokkum, the Netherlands.

She recorded detailed case histories of each delivery. Her notebook, which accounts for some fifty years of practice, stresses traditional manual techniques and the avoidance of instruments. It records some 4000 deliveries, 95% of which were spontaneous without intervention. Her corrected maternal mortality was 4.6 per 1000 and perinatal mortality 54 per 1000 births.