Hester Shaw (c. 1580 – 1660) was an English midwife and pamphlet writer who opposed Peter Chamberlen III.
[1] In 1634, along with a fellow midwife, Elizabeth Whipp, she presented a petition of sixty midwives to King Charles I, the bishop of London, and the College of Physicians opposing Peter Chamberlen’s proposal to bring the licensing of London midwives under his own control, rather than that of the Church of England.
[3] The College and the Bishop of London, William Juxon, decided in favour of the midwives and rejected Chamberlen’s plan.
[1] Clendon wrote Justifications Justified against her, and she responded with A Plaine Relation of my Sufferings[5] and Mrs Shaw’s Innocence Restored.
[6] George Thomason also attributes to her an anonymous 1649 pamphlet about the explosion, Death’s Master-Peece.