Abstract
Lone mothers captivated the public imagination of the mid-eighteenth century as concern about population decline swept through the corridors of power across the Continent. Many of the great and the good, Jonas Hanway, William Hogarth, as well as many other merchants, noblemen, politicians, artists and writers, became convinced of the need to aid poor women and their children in the promotion of national prosperity, expansion, humanitarianism and self-interest. Despite the increasing ideological significance of motherhood, the experience of pauper motherhood remained much the same during this period. The eighteenth century was characterised by a variety of familial forms, experiences and relationships and many of society’s poorest were forced to follow rocky paths to marriage and motherhood.
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
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
E.A. Wrigley, ‘Marriage, Fertility and Population Growth in Eighteenth-Century England’, in B. Outhwaite (ed.), Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (London, 1981).
R. Finlay and B. Shearer, ‘Population Growth and Suburban Expansion’, in A.L. Beier and R. Finlay (eds), London 1500–1700: The Making of the Metropolis (Harlow, 1981), p. 46.
R. Adair, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1996), pp. 222–223.
See also J. Black, ‘Illegitimacy and the Urban Poor in London, 1740–1830’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1999), pp. 340–347
T. Hitchcock and J. Black (eds), Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations, 1733–1766 (London, 1999), pp. xvii-xx.
See Chapter 2, N. Rogers, ‘Carnal Knowledge: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Westminster’, Journal of Social History, 23, 1989, pp. 355–375
D. Kent, ‘Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid-Eighteenth Century London’, History Workshop Journal, 28, 1989, pp. 111–129.
J. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages from 1600 to the Present (Oxford, 1985), pp. 5, 110, 114, 163–169, 170, 173.
L. Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996), p. 17
R. Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London, volume one (London, 1998), p. 277
M.D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1965), p. 55
A. Gunn, ‘Maternity Hospitals’, in F.N.L. Poynter (ed.), The Evolution of Hospitals in Britain (London, 1964), p. 96.
L. Gowing, ‘Gender and the Language of Insult in Early Modern London’, History Workshop Journal, 35, 1993, pp. 1–21
L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800, 1990, p. 401.
M. Jackson, New-Born Child Murder: Women, Illegitimacy and the Courts in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester, 1996), pp. 51, 128
T. Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 (Harlow, 1999), p. 189.
L. Gowing, ‘Gender and the Language of Insult in Early Modern London’, History Workshop Journal, 35, 1993, pp. 1–21
P. Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988), p. 182.
L.H. Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 56–60
T. Hitchcock and J. Black (eds), Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations, 1733–1766 (London, 1999), p. xx.
D. Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Social and Administrative History (London, 1926), p. 11.
R. Paley, Justice in Eighteenth-Century Hackney: The Justicing Notebook of Henry Norris and the Hackney Petty Sessions (London, 1991), p. xvi.
J. Boulton, ‘Going on the Parish: The Parish Pension and its Meaning in the London Suburbs, 1640–1724’, in T. Hitchcock, P. Sharpe and P. King (eds), Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 22
D. Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 10, 27.
J. Fielding, A Brief Description of the Cities of London and Westminster (London, 1776), p. xxiii.
G. Rude, Hanoverian London 1714–1808 (London, 1971), p. 116.
V. Neuburg, Popular Education in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1971), pp. 53–55, 95–107, 121.
A. Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (London, 1995), p. 67
N. Wurzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballads, 1550–1650 (Cambridge, 1990), p. xi.
J. Brownlow, The History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1865), p. 1.
R. McClure, Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1981), p. 141.
Copyright information
© 2005 Tanya Evans
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Evans, T. (2005). Introduction. In: ‘Unfortunate Objects’. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230509856_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230509856_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-51968-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-50985-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)