Abstract
The concluding chapter reflects upon the making of metropolitan bastardy throughout the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries. The poor law, sexuality and illegitimacy were ‘mutually constitutive’. There was a distinctly metropolitan flavour to both courtship and to welfare. The chapter reflects upon the varied experiences of unmarried mothers and of conflicting evidence. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 was a watershed in policy and practice. Finally, Williams argues that although unmarried mothers could express agency, their power over their situations was largely circumscribed and limited.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
J. Boulton, ‘London 1540–1700’, in P. Clark (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, II 1540–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 315–46, at pp. 315–16; L. Schwarz, ‘London 1700–1840’, in Clark, Cambridge urban history, II, pp. 641–672, at p. 643.
- 2.
J. Carabine, ‘Constituting sexuality through social policy: the case of lone motherhood 1834 and today’, Social and Legal Studies, 10:3 (2001), pp. 291–314, abstract.
- 3.
F. Dabhoiwala, The origins of sex: a history of the first sexual revolution (London: Penguin, 2012).
- 4.
P. Laslett, ‘Introduction; comparing illegitimacy over time and between cultures’, in P. Laslett, K. Oosterveen and R.M. Smith (eds), Bastardy and its comparative history: studies in the history of illegitimacy and marital nonconformism in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, North America, Jamaica and Japan (London: Edward Arnold, 1980), pp. 1–68, Tables 1.1(a) and 1.1(b), figure 1.2, pp. 14–18, pp. 20–24; Laslett, ‘Illegitimate fertility and the matrimonial market’, in J. Dupaquier, E. Helia, P. Laslett, M. Levi-Bacci (eds), Marriage and remarriage in populations in the past (London: Academic Press, 1981), pp. 461–71, at pp. 466–8; E.A. Wrigley, ‘Marriage, fertility and population growth in eighteenth-century England’, in R.B. Outhwaite (ed.), Marriage and society: studies in the social history of marriage (London: Europa Publications, 1981), pp. 137–85, at pp. 155–63.
- 5.
D. Levine and K. Wrightson, ‘The social context of illegitimacy in early modern England’, in Laslett et al, Bastardy, pp. 158–75, at p. 169.
- 6.
R. Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution: heterosexuality and the third gender in Enlightenment London, I (London, University of Chicago, 1998), Table 8.4, p. 244.
- 7.
A. Levene, ‘Institutional responses: the London Foundling Hospital’, in A. Levene (ed.), Narratives of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain, III (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006), petition 148, p. 179.
- 8.
Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, pp. 244, 259–60, Table 9.3, p. 279; T. Evans, ‘Unfortunate Objects’: lone mothers in eighteenth-century London (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 188; S. Williams, “That the Petitioner Shall have Borne a Good Character for Virtue, Sobriety, and Honesty Previous to her Misfortune”: unmarried mothers’ petitions to the Foundling Hospital and the rhetoric of need in the long eighteenth century, in A. Levene, T. Nutt and S. Williams (eds), Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700–1920 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 86–101, at p. 94.
- 9.
Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, p. 274.
- 10.
E. Griffin, ‘Sex, illegitimacy and social change in industrializing Britain’, Social History, 38:2 (2013), pp. 139–161.
- 11.
T. Hitchcock ‘“Unlawfully begotten on her body”: illegitimacy and the parish poor in St. Luke’s Chelsea’, in T. Hitchcock, P. King and P. Sharpe (eds), Chronicling poverty: the voices and strategies of the English poor, 1640–1840 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), pp. 70–86, at p. 19.
- 12.
T. Hitchcock and R. B. Shoemaker, London lives: poverty, crime and the making of a modern city, 1690–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 291–4.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 254.
- 14.
P. Crawford, Parents of poor children in England, 1580–1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
- 15.
Appendix to the First Report from the Commissioners of the Poor Laws, pp. 444, 449.
- 16.
T. Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, in A. Levene (ed.), Narratives of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain, I: Voices of the poor: poor law depositions and letters (Pickering and Chatto, 2006), pp. 127–203.
- 17.
S. Williams, ‘“I was Forced to Leave my Place to Hide my Shame”: the living arrangements of unmarried mothers in London in the early nineteenth century’, in J. McEwan and P. Sharpe (eds.), Accommodating Poverty: the housing and living arrangements of the English poor, c. 1600–1850 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 191–218.
- 18.
D. Nash and A.-M. Kilday, Cultures of shame: exploring crime and morality in Britain 1600–1900 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 110, 176; U.R.Q. Henriques, ‘Bastardy and the new poor law’, Past & Present, 37 (1967), pp. 103–29.
- 19.
P. Bartley, Prostitution: Prevention and Reform in England, 1860–1914 (London: Routledge, 2000).
- 20.
T. Nutt, ‘The paradox and problems of illegitimate paternity in old poor law Essex’, in Levene et al, Illegitimacy in Britain, pp. 102–21, at p. 109.
- 21.
Evans, Unfortunate objects, ch.5 passim, ch.7 passim, pp. 193–200.
- 22.
Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, pp. 299, 304.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 256.
- 24.
Ibid.
- 25.
Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, p. 232.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Williams, S. (2018). Conclusions. In: Unmarried Motherhood in the Metropolis, 1700–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73320-3_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73320-3_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73319-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73320-3
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)