Unfortunate Objects: Lone Mothers in the Eighteenth Century

‘Unfortunate Objects’ Lone Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London

Tanya Evans

‘Unfortunate Objects’

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‘Unfortunate Objects’ Lone Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London Tanya Evans

© Tanya Evans 2005 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–3923–4 hardback ISBN-10: 1–4039–3923–3 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Evans, Tanya, 1972– “Unfortunate objects” : lone mothers in eighteenth-century London / Tanya Evans. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–3923–3 (cloth) 1. Unmarried mothers—England—London—History—18th century. 2. Poor women—England—London—Social conditions. 3. Unmarried mothers—Services for—England—London—History— 18th century. 4. Charities—England—London—History— 18th century. I. Title. HQ759.45.E93 2005 306.874′32′09421209033—dc22 2005043364 10 14

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents

List of Figures

vii

List of Tables

viii

Acknowledgements

ix

1 Introduction Sources and structure

1 6

2 ‘The Insecurities of Life and Trade’: Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London Migration and households East and West London The parish Work The lone mothers of Aldgate, Islington and Lambeth The fathers of bastard children in Aldgate, Islington and Lambeth Conclusion

17 18 19 24 28 32 35 45

3 Courtship, Sex and Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Popular Literature Popular literature Courtship Vengeful ghosts Conclusion

47 48 51 59 65

4 ‘Craving Charity’: Poor Mothers and the Public Philanthropic Imagination Establishment and management Fashion and the Foundling Hospital The ballot General Reception, 1756–1760 Who were ‘proper objects of charity’? Conclusion

67 71 75 85 89 94 96

v

vi Contents

5 ‘Unfortunate Objects’: Petitioners to the Foundling Hospital Rejected petitions Accepted petitions Misfortune Fathers The language of sex Conclusion

98 103 107 109 117 122 125

6 The Duty of Poor Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London Abandonment Fatherhood The tokens Conclusion

127 129 137 139 143

7 Childbirth Admission The General Lying-in Hospital, the Store Street Lying-in Hospital and the Westminster Lying-in Hospital The mothers Master/servant relationships The life cycle and poverty Conclusion

145 150 154 156 160 164 169

8 ‘Be so Good as to Remember Where This Child Goes to’: Poor but not Hopeless Abandoned and alone? Employers Family Friends, neighbours and acquaintances Reclamation Conclusion

173 175 177 188 190 193 200

Conclusion

203

Notes

210

Bibliography

260

Index

277

List of Figures 4.1 The Finding of the Infant Moses in the Bullrushes, 1749, Francis Hayman 4.2 Moses Brought before Pharoah’s Daughter, 1746, William Hogarth 4.3 A Perspective view of the Foundling Hospital with Emblematic Figures, Samuel Wade 4.4 The March of the Guards to Finchley, 1750, William Hogarth 4.5 The Admission of Children by Ballot, 1749, Samuel Wade

vii

78 79 80 83 86

List of Tables 2.1 Father’s occupations in Aldgate’s Bastardy Examinations, 1744–1798 2.2 Father’s occupations in Islington’s Bastardy Examinations, 1758–1801 7.1 Occupational and marital status of the women delivered in the Quebec Street Lying-in Hospital, 1752–1768 7.2 Father’s occupations of women delivered in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 1767–1773 7.3 Ages of women admitted into the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 1767–1773 7.4 Ages of women admitted into the General Lying-in Hospital, 1791–1797

viii

36 40 157 158 164 165

Acknowledgements Sally Alexander supervised the PhD on which this book is based and remained inspirational throughout the project, forcing me to battle with questions and issues I would rather ignore. I can only aspire to read as closely and write as carefully as she does. Anna Davin provided important initial support and Tim Hitchcock gave me much needed encouragement and information in the early stages of my project. For helping the thesis take shape at the start I need to thank Louise Falcini especially amongst the other wonderful staff at the London Metropolitan Archives as well as Guildhall Library and Westminster City Archives. My father, Patrick Evans, provided the financial support that enabled me to undertake the thesis. The Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College provided me with donations from the Financial Committee and gave me much appreciated remuneration through teaching. The Institute of Historical Research was vital in providing a forum for exchanging ideas and learning from others as well as funding. I must thank them and the Economic History Society for the Postan Fellowship that I held from 1999 to 2000 and the IHR for my Scouloudi Fellowship from 2000 to 2001 as well as the Past and Present Society for my Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2001 to 2002. I must also thank the British Academy for funding a research trip on popular literature to the US. For reading early drafts of chapters I thank John Shaw, Jane Desmarais, Lyndal Roper and Karen Harvey. For their suggestions and criticism I thank my PhD examiners Laura Gowing and Julian Hoppit. For conversation and advice on all sorts of issues I thank Seth Denbo, Karen Harvey, Hannah Greig, Cathy McClive and Jonathan White as well as my other fellow convenors of the Postgraduate and Gender Seminars at the IHR. Thanks also to Palgrave’s anonymous readers for their suggestions. For everything else and much, much more I thank my sisters Cara and Tara, and most of all my husband Michael. The book is dedicated to the memory of my mother and was finished in the early months of my son William’s life. It is now that I can truly appreciate the difficulties lone mothers must face when combining work and childcare and also the sheer joy and exhilaration that motherhood can bring. ix

x Acknowledgements

The publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce material: Blackwells for ‘Unfortunate Objects: London’s Unmarried Mothers in the Eighteenth Century’, Gender and History, 17, 1, 2005 and the second section of Chapter 3 will also appear in A. Levene, T. Nutt and S. Williams (eds), Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700–1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), also to the Coram Family for permission to reproduce the images from the Foundling Museum.

1 Introduction

your petitioner was a girl brought up in this Hospital named Thomasin Whily who was put apprentice in the year 1760 to Dr Cadogan of Soho Square, is since married to a soldier of the 39th Regiment by whom she has a Child, he being now abroad she is unable to maintain her said Child . . . She now Receives Wages being £7 a year, £6.10 of which she is Obliged to pay for Nursing her Child. So she has but 10 shillings a year for herself which Unless her Mistress was exceeding kind to her, would be Utterly unable to maintain herself.1 Mr Bendy says the Petitioner [Martha Freeman] lived in his service about a year until this affair happened, and behaved herself well in all other respects, he always understood the Young Man who debauched her (and who is a journeyman weaver) intended her marriage on wch accot he suffered his visiting her, but he really believes the man is run away now, and that the poor Girl cannot possibly Maintain it.2 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 1

2 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

and relationships and many of society’s poorest were forced to follow rocky paths to marriage and motherhood. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the mean age at marriage was 27.5 years for men and 26.2 for women, by the mid-century it was 26.4 for men and 23.4 for women. The decline in the age of marriage suggests that marriage became easier for men and women and contributed to the rising numbers of prenuptial and illegitimate pregnancies.3 Enclosure and industrialisation shifted the unit of production from the household to the individual and led to increased migration, because for many movement was necessary for survival. Mobility became a common experience for people at a particular point of their life cycle – usually in their teens to mid- to late twenties and before marriage.4 Migrants who moved away from home in search of work left parental and familial constraints behind. It is now agreed that the women who conceived and gave birth to illegitimate children during the eighteenth century were continuing to practise the pre-marital sexual customs common amongst the labouring populations of urban and rural communities. The absence of traditional community constraints led to frustrated marital expectations.5 Informal marriage amongst London’s plebeian population remained widespread until the nineteenth century. Private contracts or betrothals had worked well for years within family economies in smaller communities where parental and communal supervision ensured that contracts could not be broken and the responsibilities of putative fathers guaranteed. But in the mid- to late eighteenth-century metropolis, individuals were not subject to the same level of familial and community control. Many women, used to the significance of betrothal, continued to believe that men would support their illegitimate children. We are not certain whether a rise in illegitimacy did occur in the capital over the course of the eighteenth century because illegitimacy cannot be quantified from London records because of the lack of a single institutional source from which we can calculate a rise.6 However, it is clear that illegitimacy was perceived to be widespread and rising during this period, although no single reason explains why. Bastardy, as we shall see, was the result of a combination of complex factors including fluctuating economic fortunes, the breakdown of traditional courtship relations, marital hopes and sexual desire. The mothers and fathers of illegitimate children were not distinct from the men and women who gave birth to legitimate children within the wider plebeian community. 7 The majority of women who gave birth to bastard children were single women, in their mid- to late twenties who worked as servants and who had migrated to London in search of work.

Introduction 3

The fathers of their children were of similar social status but came from more diverse occupations.8 It seems likely that marriage became harder to achieve for poor men and women, so many of whom worked as servants and apprentices, in the eighteenth-century metropolis, like Martha Freeman and her lover described above, because the nature of their work delayed their quest for economic independence.9 The insecurity associated with migration resulted in the need to forge alternative social relationships and so to an increase in illegitimacy.10 The evidence suggests that marital and sexual relationships were necessarily fluid, reflecting the vagaries and insecurities of the marriage market and economy. This book is about the varied circumstances, meanings and experiences of lone motherhood in eighteenth-century London. It explores the material lives of around 2000 women who produced legitimate and illegitimate offspring, the consequences of bearing an illegitimate child, and poor women’s survival networks through these women’s encounters with metropolitan poor law and philanthropic institutions. The lives of unmarried mothers have to be placed within a shared economic, social and cultural plebeian context. Unmarried mothers did not constitute a deviant minority within London’s plebeian community. The transformations underpinning London life during the eighteenth century and the uncertainties of life and trade framed the experiences of unmarried mothers as well as other plebeian Londoners. The lone mothers discussed here include the unmarried as well as married women who were deserted and widowed because the circumstances of their lives, the difficulties they had combining work with childcare, were shared. A young, unmarried domestic servant operated within a different familial context from that of a mature mother of several children but both were susceptible to the possibility of single motherhood and the poverty that resulted, like Thomasin Whily described above. Meanings of household, family, marriage and sexual morality were shifting throughout this period as different social, economic and cultural groups struggled for selfidentification. The mid-eighteenth century witnessed the establishment of several institutions founded with the lone mother in mind. This book captures the experiences of lone mothers when they approached the parish for poor relief, the lying-in hospitals for admission and the Foundling Hospital to admit their children. The material studied predominately covers the period from the middle to the end of the eighteenth century. The circumstances of eighteenth-century London required that people form new types of social relationships to guarantee their survival in a transforming world. Often far from home and from familial and

4 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

communal relationships women used contacts made in the city to ensure their existence. In fact, many young women who had migrated from the provinces to the city in search of work settled in the metropolis with the help of kin and friends familiar to them from their home.11 Most unmarried mothers, like most poor, young London women, were migrant domestic servants, living in households that were not familial, their first port of call in a time of crisis was their employer. Others depended upon kin, family, friends and neighbours to provide a web of support. This book was written out of a frustration with the limitations of the existing historical literature on illegitimacy, predominately that produced by quantitative historians, to tell us what it meant to be a lone mother at this time. It hopes to show that the conception of bastard children was a complex and varied phenomenon that can not be explained by single causes and was not responded to by institutional authorities or communities in one particular way. The methodological and conceptual problems of the ‘bastardy prone sub-society’ are now widely acknowledged by historians.12 A number of historians have recognised that the history of illegitimacy had been compounded by a lack of value-free research and challenged the assumption that illegitimacy was a deviant activity by highlighting the significance of regional difference.13 This work is, above all, an attempt to challenge the representation of unmarried mothers as deviants. I foreground the culture of the poor in order to establish some of the motivations for sexual and marital relationships from the words of women themselves as well as their employers, neighbours, friends and acquaintances. I explore how and why different generations and social groups in different parts of the country defined marriage and illegitimacy in alternative ways. I hope to show that the sources discussed below allow us to explore what it meant for migrant women to give birth to a bastard child: their circumstances, motivations and strategies of survival. Many previous histories of the unmarried mother have highlighted her victimhood and the social censure which she faced as a result of her sexual transgression. Pre-marital conception has been presented as inevitably resulting in a loss of reputation, ostracism from community support networks and a lonely spiralling descent into destitution. The unmarried mother has been described as ‘hopeless’ and ‘infanticidal’ by George and Trumbach, as ‘undeserving’ of institutional and noninstitutional support elsewhere.14 Morally responsible for their poverty, their children potentially chargeable to the community, unmarried mothers could only expect shame and punishment in the face of sexual

Introduction 5

transgression.15 At worst, bastards lost their lives at the hands of their desperate, infanticidal mothers. ‘Because of the tremendous incentive to the mother to conceal the birth, the child was likely to be murdered in the first few hours, or abandoned in the street, either to die there or to be dumped in a workhouse, where the prospects of survival were not much better.’16 The history of abandonment and infanticide has often gone hand-in-hand with that of the unmarried mother.17 In fact, according to the law passed in 1624, only unmarried mothers could be brought to trial for infanticide. Throughout the eighteenth century the majority of women accused of the crime were unmarried. The shame associated with the bearing of an illegitimate child was deemed sufficient cause by many accusers. At the same time, very few women were actually convicted of the crime during this period. Historians have argued that during the eighteenth century, judges and juries became more sympathetic to the circumstances of unmarried mothers and more likely to define such women as ‘victims of circumstance’.18 The numbers of women brought to trial for the suspected murder of an infant do not represent the experience of the unmarried as a whole. Most of the published work on infanticide during this period has been based on the records of the Northern Court Assizes relating particularly to rural rather than urban parishes. In contrast, unmarried motherhood in eighteenthcentury London had a very public face. This publicity and the growing awareness of the problems such mothers faced meant that their circumstances were represented and treated in various and sometimes conflicting ways. This may have been true of all women who participated in illicit sexual activity during this period. Tony Henderson has argued that prostitutes in eighteenth-century London were also represented in opposing ways. As the century drew to a close, instead of being accused of being ‘vicious street-walking whores’ many prostitutes were depicted as ‘unfortunate’ women.19 It is no coincidence, as will be discussed in later chapters, that women who worked as prostitutes could be found among the ranks of lone mothers and were able to benefit from the sympathy of institutional authorities as well as their communities. Other sorts of evidence particularly that of the church courts, which were diminishing in importance over the course of the eighteenth century, has highlighted the significance of a good sexual reputation for poor women in the eighteenth-century city.20 While this book does not deny that unmarried mothers often tried to keep their pregnancies secret, that many feared the implications of a lost ‘character’, and often experienced shame and ill treatment as a result of their predicament, it argues that this is not the only story of lone motherhood that needs to be told

6 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

during this period. Indeed, it will become clear that the stories of fathers, families, employers and parish officers treating unmarried mothers harshly were far outnumbered by those of compassion.

Sources and structure The sources described below have been used largely qualitatively and partly quantitatively. The following chapter focuses on the relationship between lone mothers and London’s parish system and uses contemporary accounts of the city to describe London’s economic and moral topography. The bastardy exams of Aldgate given between 1744 and 1798, Islington from 1758 to 1801 and Lambeth from 1791 to 1800, are used to explore the working and personal lives of the men and women of eighteenth-century London in very different parts of the city. The East End had a much more fluid sexual culture than the more affluent north-London suburb of Islington and the less poor but expanding area of Lambeth. The parish was one safety net among many others for London’s indigenous poor, but the granting of relief was dependent upon settlement. The numbers requesting poor relief had been growing since the early seventeenth century.21 When men and women were out of work the parish was often their first port of call. Poor women, in particular, found themselves dependent upon relief for long periods of time.22 This was not only because their economic opportunities were always more limited than men’s but also because women with children found it even harder to find work. Poor single women and their offspring constituted most of those on parish relief across London; this was because the parish was responsible for any child born within its boundaries.23 The Act of Settlement of 1662 established that churchwardens and overseers of the poor could bring any new-comers to a parish, if he or she required relief or not, to state where their settlement was.24 Immigrants into a parish, believed to be ‘likely to be chargeable’, could be removed to their parish of settlement after being examined by two Justices of the Peace within 40 days of their arrival. Since every parish was responsible for its own poor, the concern of each was to keep their parish rates as low as possible.25 The parish would legally aid only those who had claims to their locality through settlements, those ‘likely to be chargeable’ were those people without settlements.26 Settlement could be obtained by marrying someone with a settlement within the parish or by renting a house of over £10 a year. If an individual arrived in the parish with a certificate from their parish of settlement claiming

Introduction 7

responsibility for their maintenance then they would be permitted to stay. The later Act of 1692 entitled those who had paid local taxes or rates and apprentices or servants who had been bound and hired for a year to obtain a new settlement. To summarise, a settlement could be earned through work, by being hired as an apprentice or servant for a year, by marriage or via birth through a parent or grandparent provided the claimant was not illegitimate.27 Most London settlements of people who came before parish officers were earned by being hired as a servant or apprentice for one year. Each successive settlement earned would cancel out any claims to the previous one. The settlement laws were notoriously complicated and obscure – for contemporaries as well as historians. Nevertheless, settlement exams provide us with valuable details of encounters between parish officers and the poor. Persons who required relief were obliged to present themselves to the overseers of the poor and the Justice of the Peace ( JP) who would then seek to discover whether they were eligible for relief by examining them to discover their parish of settlement. Unmarried mothers were required to give bastardy examinations in order to obtain relief. They were sworn before a Justice of the Peace seeking to discover the identity of the putative father responsible for his bastard child so that he could provide maintenance for its support rather than the parish. This would prevent ratepayers having to carry the burdens of the cost of an illegitimate child. If a putative father was identified, he was made to enter into a maintenance agreement with the parish. Fathers were responsible for the maintenance of their children up until the child reached seven years of age. If he refused, he could be committed to jail. Either the parish would provide for the mother and child, or she would be removed to her parish of settlement with her infant, or the parish would try to obtain a fee from the father to cover the maintenance of the child. The circumstances of examinations could vary and sometimes only one Justice rather than the required two would be present for the exam. Most exams took place at petty sessions and were held each month but occasionally they took place elsewhere and meetings would occur more frequently if the number of migrants into a parish increased.28 Examinations and the details recorded varied widely across parishes and according to the practices of particular magistrates.29 Moreover, the Poor Laws were administered differently in the separate jurisdictional areas of the City, Westminster and Middlesex.30 It is not always clear from the material available who initiated these exams. Most often an unmarried mother initiated her exam in order to ensure that she would obtain relief either from the parish or from the father responsible for maintaining

8 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

his child. Nevertheless, it is clear that some parish officers examined women in order to decrease the costs of providing for mothers and children who were not entitled to relief from their parish. It seems that exams were a combination of a mother’s decision to pursue relief and the parish’s concerns to cut costs by trying to monitor paupers.31 It is impossible to determine which factor was more important in individual examinations. The exam represented an act of negotiation between the pauper who required relief and the parish authorities who determined their eligibility. They enable us to examine the relationship between the parish and unmarried mothers as well as the material lives of poor unmarried, married and widowed women.32 They unravel the range of knowledge that individuals possessed of their own family histories as well as the administration of the poor law. The exams were conducted with specific concerns and questions about settlement details in mind. They were sworn before a parish officer and taken down by a clerk. The examinant would answer specific questions regarding her settlement, including her identity, sometimes her occupation, whether she was pregnant or the date and location of the birth of her illegitimate child, as well as the name, occupation and location of the father of her child, put to her by the parish officer. The examinant then checked and either signed or marked the exam to confirm that their statement was a true legal record. As legal documents concerned with eliciting specific information and mediated by the clerk transcribing them, bastardy exams can only provide us with a limited account of the life-stories of the poor.33 They are, nonetheless, extremely valuable documents for the social historian hoping to learn something about the socio-economic circumstances of London’s poorest. The examination of Sarah Twyman should serve as an example of their pattern. Sarah Twyman the wife of Joseph Twyman (who is now on voyage to the East Indies as she believes) maketh oath That on or about the twenty eight day of February one thousand seven hundred and sixty one she was married to her said husband at St Andrews Church in Plymouth in the County of Devon That she and her husband resided together for a month at Plymouth and then he left her and went on Board his Majesties Ship Shrewsbury . . . her said Husband Continued from her and had no access to her person for the Space of Twenty Six Months – or thereabouts During which Time one John Wisedell than mariner belonging to his Majesties Ship the Intrepid (and now a waterman resident in the parish of St Mary Lambeth in the County of Surry) had Carnal knowledge of this Deponts Body whereby she

Introduction 9

Conceived with Child of a Male Child of which she was Delivered in or about the Month of December one thousand seven hundred and Sixty one in the parish of Cornwell in the Town of Millbrook in the said County of Devon which hath since been baptised by the name of John Wisedell likely to become chargeable to the parish of St Botolph’s . . . And this Deponent farther saith that the said John Wisedell now resident at Lambeth aforesaid did get her with Child of the said male Child during the absence and non access of her said husband as aforesaid.34 In her exam, Sarah had to provide a legal statement that could be used to prove her and her child’s settlement. She had to state that she was married and give the details of her husband’s settlement because this information provided the officers with evidence of her settlement. Her son was born in the parish of Cornwell, which is where his settlement would lie if she did not name and reveal the certain whereabouts of the father of her bastard child before the child turned seven. This prevented her having to move from her new home in London in order to obtain relief for her child. Parish officers would usually check the details of exams against available parish records to establish that the statement was legal and correct.35 Despite the requirements of the exams, individuals could, within certain parameters, choose which parts of their life history to tell. Exams detail their family histories, employment record, movement across the country and abroad, friendships, knowledge of the law and of entitlement of relief, as well as the consequences of the breakdown of their relationships. They demonstrate how unmarried mothers used the parish to obtain money, provide a lying-in service and childcare. They also tell us something about how men and women were putting their newly acquired literacy skills to use. The literacy skills of London’s plebeians varied according to requirements and circumstances. Economic growth and increased migration in the last part of the seventeenth century heightened the necessity for Britain’s population to acquire the ability to read and write and contributed to the generation of a culture of literacy. The literacy skills of London’s poorest are explored in bastardy and settlement examinations, as well as the Foundling petitions, and the notes and poems written and pinned to children accepted into the Foundling Hospital discussed later in the book. Migrants certainly recognised the benefits of being able to read and write.36 In 1776 Fielding observed that Londoners ‘are the most learned

10 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

people in the world; for the town abounds with fresh publications every day, many of which are in the highest estimation both with natives and foreigners. Even the very children, and the servants of both sexes, can read and write well in general.’37 Literacy rates were always higher in urban rather than rural areas. If literacy rates remained low in London’s poorest districts throughout this period, it was because many families simply could not afford to send their children to school. Nevertheless, London presented opportunities for schooling quite unlike those elsewhere. Christ’s Hospital, in Newgate Street, provided education for orphan boys as well as girls, and several of the freelance-writing teachers in London and Middlesex taught both sexes.38 The parish workhouse taught children the catechism, reading and sometimes some writing. Charity schools, the first founded in Soho in 1699, set up during the eighteenth century were free and open to the children of the poor. Anglicans and Dissenters together carried on the tradition begun in the previous century by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. By 1800, in London alone, over 6000 children between the ages of seven and twelve attended these schools.39 Others were educated in Dame schools for which their parents paid small fees. Literacy was a skill usually acquired during childhood, provided parents were willing for their children to learn. Even the very poorest of children had some chance at learning how to read and sometimes to write although many found their schooling interrupted by the needs of the family economy. We have no way, however, of knowing how many of the boys and girls who received some education within these schools left able to read and write.40 Nevertheless, Victor Neuburg suggests that the ready availability of chapbooks priced at around a penny each and their increasing production during the eighteenth century suggests that many of the poor could read. Unauthorised and massively abridged versions of popular literary texts, including Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders, made their way into the hands of the poor. Although one cannot generalise about the literacy skills of tradesmen and artisans because they incorporated such a wide range of people, historians have assumed that the tradesmen of London were much more literate than their contemporaries elsewhere.41 After 1762, the signs above tradesmen’s shops were abolished and shopkeepers were obliged to print written notices rather than merely show images or symbols above their doors or windows to advertise their wares.42 Therefore, the ability to read and write became a necessary part of the fabric of everyday life during the eighteenth century. Cressy has argued that, ‘Most women did not need to be able to write. The domestic routine of cooking and sewing and child-rearing had little

Introduction 11

need for reading, and it scarcely afforded the time.’43 However, London women have also been described as notably literate. Deborah Simonton using research on Essex and Staffordshire has challenged the assumption that poor women were largely illiterate in the eighteenth century. In workhouses, charity schools and Sunday schools they learnt the skills required to obtain places.44 Cressy and Earle have examined the literacy of London women in their research on church court depositions. Both discovered a huge improvement in women’s literacy skills over the course of the seventeenth century.45 Poor literate women were most likely to be found amongst servants and apprentices. Bridget Hill has suggested that the widespread popularity of Richardson’s Pamela can be attributed to the readership of servant girls.46 Three-quarters of the women who gave bastardy examinations in the East End parish of St Botolph’s and of St Mary’s, Islington, did not sign their exams. In St Mary’s, Lambeth, for the much smaller sample, only 60 per cent did not sign their exams. Many fewer women signed than did not sign their bastardy exams. Men and women giving settlement exams were much lower down the social scale than Cressy and Earle’s church court witnesses. But the ability to sign one’s name was not necessarily reliable evidence of the ability to read and write. Many could read rather than write and those narrating their life-stories to parish clerks did not require literacy skills to do so. London’s plebeians experienced literacy in different ways and levels. The bastardy examinations include examples of letters exchanged between husbands and wives when separated. Seven years prior to coming before the parish officers of St Botolph’s, Aldgate, Isabella Cousins’ husband had boarded the Barrington East India Man bound for Bengal, ‘on or about the Sixteenth day of February 1789 she received a letter from her said husband from on Board the Ship . . . and she has not seen him, or heard from him since.’47 In the 1770s, Thomas Storey, a gunsmith, left his wife Alice to go and live in Jamaica, ‘the last time she this Examinant heard from him was by a letter received from him and dates at Kingston in Jamaica’. 48 Several people contributed to the creation of any written documents produced by the poor during this period.49 Paupers shared their lifestories with friends, family and employers prior to presenting themselves before parish officers or philanthropic institutions for relief. Some used petition writers to construct their appeals for aid which were then printed in contemporary newspapers. However, many of the declarations of poverty in exams, petitions, poems and notes explored here were closely related to the spoken word. It is for this reason that they allow us extraordinary access to the culture of the poor during this period.

12 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

Within the bounds of their bastardy exams and petitions, unmarried mothers told their life histories of migration, service, their intimate acquaintances, men’s carnal knowledge of their bodies, conception, deliveries and desertions. Chapter 3 describes courtship and marriage among Britain’s poor using over 6000 ballads and chapbooks collected from the early eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Popular literature was necessarily rooted in the social, economic and cultural context of eighteenth-century Britain and reflected the realities of the lives of English men and women. In order to sell as many songs and books as possible, publishers had to represent everyday life as well as their audience’s hopes and dreams.50 Popular literature addressed, reported and played with the politics of state as well as that of personal relationships.51 It had particular resonance for the migrants passing through the transforming world of the eighteenth century. Stories imparted information, were didactic as well as entertaining and appealed to members of all social classes. They also allowed individuals to make sense of their life-stories and thoughts. This chapter will use these stories to explore the dynamics of courtship, the obstacles that stood in the path of the formation and stability of marriage, and the desertion of women during a time of imperial expansion and constant war. The material will be used to reveal the effects of migration and male mobility on courtship and marriage, the representation of female sexual desire and motherhood and how unmarried mothers took revenge on their seducers. Chapter 4 describes how the Foundling Hospital was set up to prevent the abandonment of children and to save infant lives. The depiction of the hospital as the haven of seduced unmarried women driven by their shame to abandon their children is a false one. Throughout the eighteenth century the charity’s stated aim was to relieve legitimate as well as illegitimate children. The minutes show that ‘objects of the charity’ included both legitimate as well as illegitimate children until 1801. Research on the hospital has covered the years 1739–1801. The establishment of the Foundling Hospital is attributed to the concentrated and systematic campaigning of Thomas Coram who settled in Rotherhithe in the 1720s, surrounded, it is claimed, by exposed and deserted infants.52 The charity captured the imaginations of many of the great and the good in the mid-eighteenth century. The popularity of the art gallery and the sermons at the chapel drew thousands of people, rich and poor, to the hospital. The public rooms and displays of the Foundling Hospital reveal the ethos of its founders and managers as well as its uses. Paintings conveyed the concerns of metropolitan benefactors and their reaction

Introduction 13

to the problems of the poor of eighteenth-century London. Scenes depicting the Christian compassion demonstrated towards unmarried mothers by the hospital authorities, the conditions of poverty for mothers, and of child abandonment adorned the walls. The building was constructed on the northern outskirts of London between the fashionable West End and the City. The chapel where concerts were held for the fashionable, the extensive grounds and the gallery embraced individuals of all classes in eighteenth-century London. The hospital was a site of fashion as well as an institution for the alleviation of poverty. The charity allowed for the constant interaction between the elite and the poor in the grounds of the hospital and through the process of the passage of petitions, at the ballot and within the homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods of plebeian applicants. There is little evidence to suggest that women used the Foundling Hospital to carelessly abandon their infants. From its start, the hospital facilitated the reclamation of children. Parents often tried to stay in contact with their offspring – coming to the hospital to catch glimpses of them or attempting to contact the nurses or employers to whom the children had been sent. After 1801, only illegitimate children were eligible for admission, and the unmarried mother and her virtue became the sole focus of the charity. Towards the end of the eighteenth century there was a marked shift in the popularity and status of the hospital. The movement against institutional care, the concern about the rise in population and the drive to end the ‘dependency’ of the poor meant that the Foundling Hospital, especially after the disasters of the General Reception period, was one of the metropolis’ charities hit the hardest by dwindling support, popularity and funds. Lack of money meant that only a limited number of children could be admitted. Historians have tended to assume that all foundlings were bastards. Ruth McClure, the Foundling Hospital’s most renowned historian, discovered that not all children admitted after 1763 were bastards; but her suggestion that most applications came from ‘destitute, unmarried women seduced by lovers under a promise of marriage and then deserted when they became pregnant’ has been enormously influential.53 Most of these women, she claimed, were anxious to avoid disgrace and to continue in their employment as domestic servants. However, McClure only looked at a handful of petitions for admission before coming to her conclusions. Her excellent and authoritative account of the hospital is largely dependent on the minutes of the General Court, General Committee and Sub-Committee and tells the story of its origins, establishment, governance and management.

14 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

Chapter 5 analyses the petitions for the admission of children into the Foundling Hospital. From 1763 onwards, people hoping to gain admission for their child had to submit a petition detailing their circumstances and establishing their need.54 The petitions vary enormously but many tell us where mothers of legitimate and illegitimate babies lived and worked, how they became pregnant, where they gave birth as well as their economic circumstances. They also tell us something about their relationships with the father of their child, with employers, friends and family. These documents are very different from the statements written by a clerk using the legal formulae of bastardy examinations. The language of the petitions was often closer to the spoken word than that of bastardy and settlement exams and the rhetoric of charitable authorities. It is for this reason, therefore, that they allow us unusual access to the culture of poor women. Women with many different stories of hope, seduction, love, maternal affection, poverty and need had their children admitted into the hospital. Descriptions of need were common to all of the petitions. Until the turn of the century, women did not have to conform to a definition of ‘respectable illegitimacy’ in order to have their child considered for admission.55 This did not mean, however, that petitioners were unaware of how best to make their case to the governors. Towards the end of the century, with fewer funds and places at their disposal, the hospital’s ethos transformed and the Committee became much stricter when considering cases for admission. Eighteenth-century foundlings, although mostly, were not necessarily bastards. Desertion, death and widowhood had similar effects in different familial contexts. Women, whatever their marital status, rarely earned enough to support a family on their own. Chapter 6 also uses the Foundling Hospital petitions for the admission of children together with the tokens that mothers submitted with their children when they were admitted into the hospital to examine the meanings of motherhood in eighteenth-century London. It reveals the experiences and emotions of London’s mothers and explores the evidence of maternal affection amongst the poor. Chapter 7 examines the process of childbirth. The City of London Lying-in Hospital, the British Lying-in Hospital, the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, the Store Street Lying-in Hospital, the General Lying-in Hospital, the Middlesex Lying-in Wards and the Royal Maternity Charity were established in London between 1747 and 1767 providing a location for thousands of unmarried women to give birth to their children. The accounts, admission registers, minutes and settlement examinations from

Introduction 15

the City, British, Westminster, Store Street and General lying-in hospitals between 1747 and 1800 reveal their establishment and working practices as well as the circumstances of the women who were admitted and gave birth within them. Histories of these hospitals have usually concentrated on the foundation and management of the institutions rather than the individuals who utilised them. But this chapter uses these sources to foreground the subjects who were granted admission into the lying-in hospitals. The Act of 1773 ‘ . . . for the better regulation of Lying-in Hospitals and the settlement of bastard children born there’ has ensured the survival of the settlement details of the mothers of illegitimate children.56 Parish fears over the chargeability of bastards born in lying-in hospitals led to the passage of the Act to ensure that any illegitimate child born in a lying-in hospital took the last legal settlement of their mother rather than gaining a settlement from the parish within which the hospital was situated and the child born. The settlement exams that were taken by the hospital governors were used to extract the same information as for the bastardy exams discussed above. These documents provide us with accounts of the mothers who were pregnant with legitimate as well as illegitimate children. All mothers, regardless of marital status, told similar stories of the causes of their poverty and their reasons for requiring admission. Chapter 8 using the sources already discussed, as well as the petitions for reclaiming children from the Foundling Hospital, examines the friendship networks amongst poor mothers. It demonstrates that unmarried mothers had a substantial support network among employers, family, friends and acquaintances to call upon outside of institutional welfare provision. Employers, of all social classes, were among the first ports of call for young, unmarried domestic servants far from home. Over 90 per cent of the Foundling petitions were supported by character references. Employers were usually called upon as referees for their servants. It is clear that many hoped to prevent losing loyal and useful servants. Indeed, the Foundling Hospital ensured that their servants’ illegitimate births caused as little disruption to their households as possible by taking their children off of their hands. Moreover, from 1801 the admission of an infant was dependent upon an employer promising to continue to employ their servant despite their transgression. The evidence suggests that employers went to remarkable lengths to help their employees through their difficulties. Only a small proportion of unmarried mothers could hope to obtain the admission of their child into the Foundling Hospital; but this archival material sheds light on how mothers survived with and without parish and charitable relief.

16 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

Ruth McClure and Adrian Wilson have argued that the reclamation of children from the Foundling Hospital was insignificant because less than 1 per cent of parents reclaimed their children during the eighteenth century.57 Both make the mistake of emphasising the number of children reclaimed as opposed to the attempts at reclaiming made. Only a fraction of parents who had their children admitted endeavoured to reclaim them, and few children could be returned because they had died in the Foundling’s care. Once their children had been admitted, many parents hoped to have their offspring back when times improved and their financial strength had been restored. A range of neighbours, family, kin and acquaintances helped mothers and fathers to reclaim their children – providing help with the deposit, the charges for maintaining children within the hospital and with character references assuring the hospital that the parent was now capable of supporting the child. People went out of their way to provide financial help, character references, work opportunities and moral support to help the unmarried mothers in their midst. The petitions, bastardy exams and lying-in hospital material reveal the obligations and compassion of employers, friends, neighbours and family. Neighbours would watch out for one another – take unmarried mothers under their roofs and provide them with food and sustenance. Local midwives sometimes provided their services to local women for free. Plebeian men and women shared strategies of survival. Evidence of the kindness of employers, ‘friends’, family and neighbours towards the unmarried mother remained strong throughout this period. Documents rarely capture these informal networks of support – but here we have evidence of one social group, often viewed as unworthy and undeserving of charity, obtaining help from many different sources. Compassion and kindness towards lone mothers could be expected from all social classes. All of this evidence allows me to challenge the perception of unmarried mothers as the passive, seduced victims of predatory men with no option but infanticide. Many thousands of lone mothers had access to an extensive network of institutional and non-institutional support that reached across class boundaries. Though lone mothers were povertystricken, desperate and almost always poor, they were not victims or powerless nor without strategies of survival.

2 ‘The Insecurities of Life and Trade’: Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London

soon after she left her service she became intimately acquainted with one Richard Cater (a Soldier in the second battalion of the first Regiment of Foot Guards, and is now gone to America) and that they lodged and cohabited together until the time of his being draughted off to go to America . . .1 The east end, especially along the shore of the Thames, consists of old houses, the streets there are narrow, dark and ill-paved; inhabited by sailors and other workmen who are employed in the construction of ships and by a great part of the Jews. The contrast between this and the west end is astonishing: the houses here are mostly new and elegant; the squares are superb, the streets straight and open . . . If all London were as well built, there would be nothing in the world to compare with it.2 During the eighteenth century, the rise in population across the country, the increase in migration, together with occupational, familial and sexual insecurity affected all plebeian Londoners. But poor women, in particular, were susceptible to the transformations underpinning London at this time. Most unmarried mothers were working as domestic servants when they conceived their bastard children and their partners worked in a diverse range of trades dependent on the capital’s economic topography. The majority of women who gave birth to illegitimate children met the fathers of their babies, conceived their children, gave birth, and afterwards continued to live in the same parish. The economics of that parish shaped the work these men and women did, the social relationships that were formed there, where women gave birth, and how they managed to support their 17

18 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

children.3 This chapter establishes the economic and sexual vulnerability of poor London women.

Migration and households At the beginning of the eighteenth century 490,000 people lived in London. In 1750 the population had risen to 675,000 and by 1800 to 950,000.4 London’s rapid growth was due to its unique demographic regime in which migrants made up the loss caused by a clear excess of deaths over births.5 The growth escalated after 1750 when the death rate started to fall and continued to do so more dramatically after 1780.6 During the midto late eighteenth century, London grew much more rapidly than the rest of the country.7 Already between 1500 and 1700 the city was responsible for half the total increase in England’s urban population.8 The attractions of the capital were unique. As one contemporary ballad put it: Since life in London’s all the rage A country life deserted And all the lads and lasses come. To Town to be diverted.9 Throughout the eighteenth century the city was a magnet for a continual stream of young migrants looking for work in the growing service sector and in the huge variety of relatively well-paid trades on offer.10 In the early modern period, 70 per cent of London’s inhabitants were born outside the city.11 One in six of the population of England and Wales had lived in the metropolis, most remained, marrying and settling in the city.12 London life therefore reached far beyond its boundaries.13 Before 1700, migrants to London settled in the suburbs and contributed significantly to the growth of East London. Later they were attracted to all parts and the city spread with each successive year.14 The poorest settled in the north and east of the city as well as Southwark.15 Migrants hailed from all across the nation but most came from the Home Counties, the Midlands and western counties with increasing numbers originating from Scotland and Ireland as the century progressed.16 They settled where their skills and work experience were most likely to find them employment. The city had for a long time been the destination of men and women searching for work, higher wages and opportunities they knew could be found in the metropolis. Young women, facing declining economic opportunities in the countryside, as the family economy became increasingly impossible to maintain in the face of industrialisation, were encouraged

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 19

to turn to the capital for work.17 If their families could no longer support them, many girls sought employment in the capital. There was a demand for country servants in London households owned by the new wealthy reaping the benefits of industrialisation. Later in the eighteenth century, young men entered the city in droves as enclosure threw families off the land, and jobs and wages to be found elsewhere declined. 18 Mobility was a common experience for people at a particular point in their life-cycle – usually during their late teens to mid- to late twenties and before marriage. Some migrants came to London in search of seasonal labour to return to their hometowns when work had run dry. Others planned to settle permanently.19 Economic security altered with the life-cycle and as families restructured. In the eighteenth century, the family and household were not easily differentiated. Johnson’s 1755 dictionary defined the family as, ‘those who live in the same house’.20 Family could refer to the household as well as to kinship. Family ties were particularly flexible for young migrant servants and poor households were more readily defined as economic rather than emotional units. Marriage formalised the relationships within the household. If a marriage broke down as a result of death or desertion then remarriage was often a necessary requirement for economic survival. Remarriage intervals were often short for eighteenth-century Londoners and the city’s demographic regime characterised by high migration, mobility and mortality meant that personal relationships were often unstable.21 Individuals, therefore, had to rely upon ties of support, outside the familial realm, to survive.

East and West London Contemporaries and historians have emphasised the growing distinction between East and West London during the eighteenth century. The East End grew up haphazardly in contrast to the orderly expansion of most of the West End.22 It was home to London’s manufacturing industries and consequently the majority of London’s poor. But developments were also taking place in the north, east and southern borders of the city.23 The area within the walls could no longer accommodate all of the migrants from across the country and abroad, and their numbers spilled beyond the ancient boundaries. Many contributed to the development of London’s suburbs.24 Throughout the eighteenth century, London was bubbling over with people and buildings. With ‘new squares, and new streets rising up every day’,25 the metropolis expanded to accommodate them. People moved westwards from the City drawn to the West End’s

20 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

proximity to Whitehall, parliament and St James’.26 Luxury traders, such as jewellers, goldsmiths, silversmiths, coach-makers, printers and furniture makers, followed fast behind.27 After the Fire of London, new residences had been constructed near the court in Covent Garden. The West End’s luxury shopping district developed along the Strand, and Drury Lane and Charing Cross provided entertainment for their new residents with disposable incomes. In 1780, a German traveller, Archenholz observed that For these twenty years past, an actual migration has taken place from the eastern parts of London towards the western; thousands have left the former, where they do not erect new buildings, for the latter, where the most fertile fields and most agreable gardens are daily metamorphosed into houses and streets.28 Gentry who had moved to the popular piazzas of Covent Garden in the early eighteenth century instead of staying put continued to move westwards to be nearer the seats of political and monarchical power. The area declined rapidly and by the late 1770s John Fielding imagined that all the prostitutes in the Kingdom had pitched upon this blessed neighbourhood for a place of general rendezvous. For here are lewd women in sufficient numbers to people a migrant colony.29 The beau monde had moved on to the popular residential squares modelled on St James’.30 The Grosvenor and Berkeley Square projects commenced in the 1720s and 1730s and many others, including the Cadogan estate in Chelsea, the Portland estate in Marylebone and the Bedford estate developed in Bloomsbury, were constructed in the ensuing years. Much expense was lavished on these building projects by their aristocratic patrons. London’s rich employed architects to build their houses in accordance with the fashions. Amongst them, Hawksmoor, Gibbs, Holland, Dance, Ware, Chambers and Kent, and the Adams brothers were the most famous. According to John Summerson, these grand houses were built not ‘for domestic but for public life’. People used their metropolitan homes to display their wealth and status. These squares were home not only to the great and the good but also to the people they required to serve them; shops, markets, inns, small houses and mews ran parallel with the main streets of the squares.31 The West End was not, however, without its pockets of poverty especially in its older parts.32 The West End’s famous, spacious grand houses were in stark contrast to the cramped, overcrowded dwellings to be found in the East End.33

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 21

Rents were lower outside the walls of the city and so London’s poor began to flock to areas such as Southwark and St Katherine’s by the Tower from other parts of East London. 34 In the City, a third of the population lived in street-side dwellings, another third lived along lanes and another in yards, courts or alleys. Street dwellings, where the rich not the poor lived were much larger, airier and lighter than those off the street.35 While London’s town houses were usually five-storey buildings, with two rooms and a closet on each floor, most of London’s poor lived in one room.36 Servants with places in middling people’s houses would be crowded below stairs or in garrets. The number of people who could live in such houses numbered between eight and twelve – with the family making up about two or three people and servants the rest.37 The haphazard development of the City and the East End led to the growth of labyrinthine courts and alleys in which the poor would congregate. Many of these became slums.38 The poor lived in overwhelmingly crowded living conditions. Most of the poor and servants not in place would live as weekly tenants in rooms furnished with possessions not owned by them.39 Archenholz observed that plebeian Londoners aspired to possess their own homes but admitted that, ‘it often happens that in such a house the whole furniture consists of a bed, a table, and a few chairs’.40 Common lodging houses increased in number as the eighteenth century progressed. As the fashionable elite moved out of the City to the West End, the houses they left behind were converted into tenements to provide multiple accommodation for the poor. London was broadly divided between East and West, Westminster and the Port, but within those areas smaller districts were characterised by the types of workers who settled there. Although many Londoners were migrants, they created a strong sense of neighbourhood in each area.41 Once young, unmarried migrants settled they tended to stay in the same area throughout much of their lives as they married and reared children. London’s poorest were housed predominately in what Peter Earle has described as the ‘great horseshoe’ that bordered St Giles’, Holborn, and Smithfield, up to Clerkenwell, Cripplegate and Shoreditch, and along Deptford, Rotherhithe and through Southwark to Lambeth.42 Manufacturing employed up to a third of London’s workers and was the city’s largest and most diverse male occupational category. St Giles’ provided homes for a high proportion of shoemakers. Smithfield housed butchers and leatherworkers, and metal workers could be found in Sepulchre, and watchmakers in Clerkenwell. Weavers lived in Spitalfields, Stepney, Shoreditch and Bishopsgate. Southwark contained many brewers.43 Distilling, sugar refining and brewing traders could also be found in the

22 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

East End. Shipbuilders and mariners were predominately located in Deptford, Rotherhithe and Bermondsey.44 The majority of people in all of these areas worked in some form of mostly small-scale manufacturing, a sector that fell into decline in the late eighteenth century.45 The East End of London in contrast to the West End had for centuries ‘been poor and distinctive’.46 Contemporaries described the sailors who lived and worked on the banks of the Thames at Rotherhithe and Wapping as men living a world apart from other Londoners. Most of the men who resided on the waterside were employed in associated trades. For Fielding, ‘The seamen here are a generation differing from all the world. When one goes into Rotherhithe and Wapping, which places are chiefly inhabited by sailors, but that somewhat of the same language is spoken, a man would be apt to suspect himself in another country.’ Here men and women spoke, dressed, lived and behaved differently.47 In the bastardy exams of Aldgate, 9 per cent of the fathers of illegitimate children were mariners. They crowded into backstreets, courts and alleys.48 In 1750, Whitechapel, Clerkenwell and the area surrounding Smithfield was already teeming with working men and women giving rise to elite fears of disorder. However, labour and life operated differently across the city. Contemporaries often declared that the City and Westminster were worlds apart.49 In 1789, Archenholz described the difference between the two areas shops are open by eight o’clock every morning in the city; all is then in motion, everybody at work, while on the other hand, at the west end of town, the streets are empty . . . and even the very domestics asleep.50 Defoe described the City as, ‘the centre of London’s commerce and wealth. The Court of its gallantry and splendour.’51 The expansion of English trade during the eighteenth century facilitated the development of the City and the Port, and many merchants continued to live in this part of London.52 ‘The role of Westminster as the centre of government, professional services, and conspicuous consumption was clearly differentiated from that of the City of London, as the financial and commercial headquarters of Britain’s expanding trading empire.’53 By 1800, Westminster was populated by 150,000 men, women and children making up about 15 per cent of greater London’s total population.54 Thousands of migrants flocked to the West End parishes surrounding Westminster that housed a huge service sector focussed on the aristocracy who lived in its environs for the duration of the London Season.55 The Season lasted from September

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 23

until July, ending when parliament was in recess and the whole of the West End shut down – theatres closed and trade slackened. As transport networks and communications improved towards the end of the century, the Season began a little later in December or January.56 Those who served the gentry and aristocracy were forced to be a flexible workforce – Westminster experienced huge fluctuations in its population57 and many people who remained in London during the summer months moved in and out of different jobs with the changing seasons.58 Francis Place observed, ‘In every London trade there is at least one period of the year when it is brisk, and another when it is slack; fluctuations at these times in the demand for labour are very great.’59 Servants might have been unemployed for six months of the year while their masters and mistresses retired to their country houses. Westminster’s luxury traders also suffered during the same period. The Season was experienced differently in the City.60 Dominated by trade and shipping, the area would find itself busiest during the summer months. Thousands of workers were required during the summer when trade was at a peak and ships entered the Port from the West and East Indies as well as the Americas. In contrast, the winter months were times of dearth for those who worked on the river and associated trades. Moreover, most of these men were only ever employed on a casual basis and while many enjoyed constant work throughout the summer months, they were often underemployed or unemployed out of that season.61 Casual work in the riverside and building trades was often outdoor and therefore determined by the weather. Rain prevented builders and labourers from earning their bread. The weather dominated the seasonal cycle of production and had enormous ramifications for the trades that were practised out of doors on East End streets.62 Aldgate, between the City and the East End, was home to many poor, dirty, and dangerous neighbourhoods, such as East Smithfield, Whitechapel and Rosemary Lane. The area had a long held reputation of poverty. Stow, in his survey of 1598, described the ‘filthy cottages, and . . . other purpressors, inclosures and laystalls’.63 An open sewer ran down the centre of Nightingale Lane, off which lived many of the residents of St Botolph’s who came before its parish officers. The area was also home to a number of slaughterhouses and hog-yards – it was stiflingly smelly, dirty and dishevelled.64 Certainly, the signs of poverty in the areas of East Smithfield, Whitechapel and Aldgate were everywhere and all of these districts were perceived as vice-ridden and often dangerous areas by contemporaries throughout much of the eighteenth century.65 Regular work eluded most of the men and women of this area. They lived from week to week, moving from one job to the next and one

24 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

address to another. In 1772, the parish claimed that 555 of the houses in the parish were let for under £10 a year – all bar five of which were let as tenements that were ready-furnished.66 Many of St Botolph’s residents lived in single rooms shared with entire families that they paid for on a weekly basis. The average rent for these properties was between 2 shillings and 3 shillings 6 pence. For labouring men this was approximately 13 per cent of their weekly wages; for women the percentage would be much higher.67 Shopkeepers and widows were often also housekeepers. But rooms could also be taken in taverns and alehouses. The poorest would find homes in garrets or cellars, which would cost on average about a shilling or 18 pence a week.68 Here there was little certainty of regular work or of a roof over one’s head. Islington was the City’s first suburb. As the century moved on, those men and women who could afford to retired to London’s outskirts. Islington, Hampstead, Highgate, Clapham and Streatham became the homes of those retreating from inner-city life.69 Wealthier residents and employers may have been attracted by the proximity of Islington to the countryside. Many people flocked to take the waters here renowned for their health benefits.70 One historian has stated that the air at Islington was considered so good that it was popularly known as the ‘London Hospital’.71 The construction of the New Road running from Paddington north of Marylebone and St Pancras through to the Angel at Islington added to the area’s attraction providing quicker communication between the City and its outskirts.72 With trumpets, drums and guns, the opening of Westminster Bridge was overlooked by many hundreds of spectators at midnight on 17 November 1760.73 The city’s population consequently spilled into Lambeth. Nonetheless the area remained poor and was home to trades that had been expelled from the City such as the timber yards, tanneries and largerscale factory production that could be more cheaply located across the river.74 Inner-city paupers, displaced by building schemes that replaced old rookeries with new brick structures, settled in areas such as Lambeth.75 Many earned their living on the river.76

The parish London’s poorest, when out of work or incapable of work due to infirmity, illness, pregnancy and old age, were often required to call upon the parish for relief. Poor relief was dependent upon the acquisition of settlement. Since every parish was responsible for its own poor, the concern of each was to keep their parish rates as low as possible by refusing relief to those

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 25

whose settlements were outside that parish.77 A personal relationship and ‘face-to-face’ contact between parishioners and parish officers may have been easy to maintain in the early years of the old Poor Law but these kinds of relationship became much rarer with industrialisation, the growth of towns and as migration increased.78 Parish officers in London parishes were responsible for hundreds of men and women who might become chargeable. Poorer parishes, such as those to be found in the East End, had far too many paupers to be able to maintain on the existing parish rates and it was hard to keep track of migrants. Despite Dorothy Marshall’s claim that parish officers who implemented the bastardy laws were ‘bereft of both humanity and decency, and nothing in the old Poor Law presents a more disgusting spectacle of callous inhumanity’, the evidence of the three London parishes discussed here shows that officers often provided for unmarried mothers in spite of their concern to discourage such women from claiming relief in order to keep the parish rates low.79 Most of us are familiar with the horrific stories of unmarried mothers, often heavily pregnant, being hounded from one parish to the next as officers fought to avoid having to take responsibility for the relief of these women and their children.80 However, unmarried mothers were not always treated so harshly. While men were generally obliged to pay their share of a bastard child’s maintenance, a woman was rarely compelled to do the same. Women were not necessarily punished because they had given birth to an illegitimate child.81 Parish officers might have acted charitably towards lone mothers.82 For many years, there existed a huge and discernible gap between the letter of the Poor Law and the practice of relief. Justices often interpreted the operation of the law generously. Sometimes they had little choice considering the scale of the problem that they were presented with in the late eighteenth-century metropolis. George argued, and others have confirmed this, that as the parish population increased, London officers became more generous in the provision of out-relief rather than obtaining removal orders for the individuals under their charge.83 Elizabeth Purford, for example, was born at Wincanton in Somerset and worked as an apprentice weaver before coming to London where she was admitted into the workhouse of St Mary’s, Lambeth, in December 1795. The workhouse officers made sure not to remove her back to Wincanton in her advanced state of pregnancy. Instead, she was allowed to remain in the workhouse where she gave birth to her daughter on Christmas day. In January, her removal order was suspended again and she continued in the workhouse. The minutes record her up until the 25 February but we lose her then. She may have left the workhouse on account of

26 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

the death of her daughter on the 22 but we cannot be sure what became of her.84 Nevertheless, some women were treated with less humanity when the law of settlement did not favour them. Sarah Worsfold was admitted into St Mary’s workhouse in February 1796 at the age of 26. Sarah and her six-year-old son William received help from St Mary’s only for a brief period. After the officers discovered that she had earned her settlement working as a servant for Richard Bosher at Ockley in Surrey they were both removed immediately.85 While the threat of removal for unmarried mothers with settlements outside the parish within which they lived was real, removal itself was not a common experience.86 Other women, such as Elizabeth Whitehouse, could depend upon parish support for many years despite not earning their settlement within that parish. She required relief when the father of her two illegitimate children died in 1796. While she waited for her settlement exam to be taken, she was given 3 shillings to help her support her children. Although a removal order was made out in February, she was allowed 2 shillings a week until the following December when the records lose sight of her.87 Other women’s settlement rights entitled them to long-term relief. Mary Evans gave birth to her child at the Westminster Lying-in Hospital in November 1791. Examined by the hospital, she told them that she had gained her settlement working as a servant for Susanna Hepworth in Lambeth earning £5 a year.88 After her lying-in, she turned to the parish officers for help. She received 2 shillings a week from 8 December 1791 to 22 November 1792.89 Similarly, Sarah Ransom first appears on the workhouse books in November 1795, and received intermittent payments up until 1801. The bastardy exam that she gave in October 1795 stated that she had given birth to her three-year-old daughter at the room where she lodged at No. 7 Union Court in Holborn. She discovered from a servant in Lambeth that the man who she thought to be her lawful husband, Alexander Ransom, in fact had a wife and family back home at Hinden in Wiltshire.90 Three-year-old Sarah was removed to St Andrews’, Holborn, the parish in which she had been born, in 1795, but her mother continued to receive support from St Mary’s for several years. Unmarried mothers knew how to manipulate the parish system for their own ends. Eleanor McLane, aged 23, was removed with her child from the parish of St George’s, the Martyr, to St Mary’s in 1795. While she was staying in the workhouse, she was allowed out with her child between June and August to seek a place and we can assume that she did find a job because she was discharged from the workhouse in September.91 After that she received regular payments of 1 shilling and 6 pence a week

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 27

until at least December the following year.92 While this money went to support her eldest child, her youngest remained under the auspices of the workhouse until November 1800, when Eleanor McLane aged four years and eleven months, was returned to her mother.93 Even after obtaining work, Eleanor needed the parish to contribute towards the maintenance of her family. The parish cared for her youngest child within the workhouse until she was almost five years old. Most men and women knew the implications of working a full year in order to earn a settlement and entitlement to poor relief. Most poor women earned their settlements as servants hired by the year. Mary Suckely was ‘certain as to her service being more than a year because she went to it before Bartholomew Fair and continued in it ‘til two Bartholomew Fairs had passed.’94 Five years before she was examined by the parish officers of St Mary’s, Lambeth, Ann Page had earned her settlement while working as a servant in Lingfield, ‘the whole of her time except the last three Days when she was taken ill with a Cold and putrid fever and thereby made incapable of serving longer’, but luckily for her, her mistress nevertheless, ‘paid her whole years wages’.95 Some women earned their settlements in the country before coming to London. Servants unable to cancel out earlier settlements farther afield with new settlements earned in London were particularly vulnerable because their parish was so far away. Margaret Jones had earned her settlement in service with a farmer in Llanarth, Cardigan, before coming to London but in two years she had not gained a settlement in the city itself.96 Elizabeth Davies had also earned her settlement in Wales before travelling to London but after a couple of years spent in the city had failed to obtain a new one.97 We can see, therefore, how vulnerable migrant women could be in the mid- to late eighteenth-century metropolis. An inclusive definition of need and a flexible interpretation of the settlement laws led to many people with ambiguous claims to settlement within a parish gaining relief.98 Providers and the provided shaped the passage and the experience of the Poor Laws. From 1662, many plebeians had come to interpret their settlement as a right.99 They knew when they were entitled to relief and how to obtain it when needs required it.100 To some extent poor people negotiated the content of the stories that were recorded in their examinations whether they were literate or not.101 Oral exchanges between individuals were used to establish family history, migration, and kin-connectedness and were often used as evidence in settlement exams. Bastardy examinations demonstrate the knowledge that poor people had of the workings of the settlement laws and their right to relief.102 Elizabeth Brandon’s uncle, Henry, a market green grocer

28 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

in Oxford Street, testified to his dead niece’s settlement as a servant in St Mary’s, Le Bon.103 Ann Moore stated that she had never gained a settlement in her own right, ‘but that she was born in the Parish of Greenwich ... and her father Robert Moore rented and lived in and upon a House and other Premises of the yearly rent of Ten Pounds in the said Parish of Greenwich as her father who is now deceased has informed her’.104 Elizabeth Bent ‘has heard her mother who is now living at Stansted . . . say that her settlement was there’.105 Josiah Liddle was informed ‘by his Mother Alice Liddall (who is deceased) . . . that he was born a Bastard in the parish of Torkettle in the County of Cheshire’.106 Families shared the details of settlement amongst them knowing that it might be useful in times of future hardship, but it was also used as a valuable means of identification rooting an individual in kinship networks, their home and neighbourhood. Settlement was also discussed with friends. Elizabeth Sargeant told Lambeth parish that her friend Ann Lilly had given birth to her son John in St Giles’, Camberwell. She knew this having ‘visited the said Ann immediately after his birth at the Workhouse’.107 When she was sick and dying Ann Standart told her friend of six years Amelia Smith that she had given birth to her daughter in the public house, ‘known by the sign of King George the Thirds Head Alehouse near the Blue Boar Inn in Holborn . . . where the said Ann Standart then lived as a Lodger’.108 Ann’s daughter was entitled to a settlement in the Liberty of Holborn and her mother wanted to make sure that she obtained it. Other friends knew of the children’s settlements because they had witnessed their births. Sarah Ray was aware of eleven-year-old George Powell’s settlement details because she had been present when he was born at Nightingale Lane in St John’s, Wapping.109 Bastardy exams provide us with detailed information about the material conditions of poor men and women’s lives and the multitude of circumstances that led to pregnancy and birth. They can tell us, to some extent, about migratory patterns, the occupations and sometimes the wages of men and women, the personal relationships between couples, the varieties of family forms, the place of birth, name, and age of legitimate and illegitimate children. They delineate the uncertainty of the lives of the poor but also how they survived. London’s lone mothers were often poor and desperate but they negotiated their lives with resourcefulness.

Work Poor women’s lives were dominated by economic insecurity and low wages. Earle in his research on church court depositions between 1695

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 29

and 1725 discovered that most London women were dependent upon their own earnings for survival and that 25 per cent were employed in domestic service, 20 per cent in making or mending clothes, 11 per cent in laundry and char work, 9 per cent in nursing and medicine, 7 per cent in hawking and carrying and 8 per cent in shop-keeping with the remainder in a variety of other occupations.110 Women’s work might have varied according to geographical location, time, skill, training, education and age but ultimately women’s work, especially that of poor women, has always been characterised as low-status, low-paid and intermittent. Lack of work and low wages were the major causes of the poverty and exploitation suffered by women during this period.111 The vast majority of London’s working women found employment in domestic service.112 But service for women was an occupation associated with a particular stage in a young woman’s life-cycle when young and unmarried. 113 Women’s marital status and the life cycle profoundly affected women’s role in the workplace. Most servants would leave in their late twenties to early thirties to set up a marital home after serving several positions and accumulating wages to contribute to their new household. As the century continued, young women were increasingly excluded from most ‘skilled trades’ but could sometimes take up apprenticeships in traditional ‘women’s trades’, predominately in needlework – as milliners, mantua-makers, seamstresses and stay-makers. The most prestigious of these was millinery.114 Most women who worked ‘at their needle’ were involved in many different types of work but mainly they produced clothing and upholstery out of linen. Skilled mantua-makers were heavily in demand with the rise of the mantua in the eighteenth century but their work was largely driven by the West End’s season; out of season work remained limited.115 As women aged, their economic opportunities could diminish especially if they had children to support. Such women found it hard to find work as domestic servants unless they were able to live apart from their masters and mistresses. Older women could expect to find casual work with their needle or in washing and charring. Needlework could be done at any point in a woman’s lifetime but laundry work was commonest amongst older women particularly when over fifty years of age.116 However, they struggled to survive if their husbands absconded, became ill, unemployed or died – all frequent occurrences in eighteenth-century London.117 Women fared much more badly than men in London’s labour force in this period. 118 Few women were engaged in the same occupation throughout their lives, jobs were unstable and employment interrupted. There has been some dispute about the changing status of woman’s work

30 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

as a result of industrialisation and the division between the home and the workplace. Some historians argued that women’s status declined as the sexual division of labour became more strictly demarcated with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. But women’s working lives varied enormously especially in the diverse metropolitan economy. As a result, historians cannot be certain that women experienced a decline in their economic opportunities during this period. After protracted debate beginning with Ivy Pinchbeck and Alice Clark in the 1920s and continuing again in the 1970s, most historians now agree that for working women, ‘opportunities for employment were limited at the beginning of this period, and they were limited at the end’.119 Olwen Hufton has argued in her broad survey of women in Western Europe from 1500 to 1800 that women’s experiences of work were largely unchanging and Earle also discovered that his sample of working women bore a striking resemblance to the findings of the 1851 census.120 This was especially the case for poor London women. Poverty caused by the gaps between work, as a result of the effects of the seasons on employment, low wages, and the changes a woman had to make to her working life if she had a family to support, was the core condition of these women’s lives. Most women earned less than five pounds a year in the mid-eighteenth century while men earned at least a third if not more than them. This differential is, of course, still true of men and women’s wages in the twenty-first century. Even if women enjoyed regular wages, they were often not sufficient to guarantee survival. Many women were forced to use an ‘economy of makeshifts’.121 They worked in a variety of jobs, they sold their clothes, asked family, friends and neighbours for help when they needed it. They applied to charities and to the parish for relief. Others were forced to turn to crime to survive by stealing or prostitution. The distinction between illegal activity and plebeian survival strategies is hard to draw because the poor often broke the law in order to survive. Crime was frequently the last resort of women struggling to eat.122 Some historians have argued that prostitution was one survival strategy used by poor women. Prostitutes lived and worked in the same houses or areas as plebeian women across the capital. As Tony Henderson has shown, ‘prostitution drew the great majority of its recruits from amongst the daughters of the poor and that the non-prostitute occupations entered by these women were little different from those of their sisters – domestic service, the clothing trade and the like’.123 Prostitutes were obviously vulnerable to the risk of illegitimate conceptions and the ‘misfortune’ of bastard births and some were found in the ranks of unmarried mothers who presented themselves for relief.124 Young servants, far from home,

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 31

who could not obtain places immediately upon entering the city, were particularly vulnerable to exploitation and poverty. Migrants made up the majority of offenders brought before the Old Bailey between 1791 and 1793. The years from their late teens to early twenties were particularly insecure just after they arrived in the city.125 Moreover, the characteristic insecurity of service matched the resort to prostitution during this period.126 As we saw above, the growing fashionability of London led to a rising demand for domestic servants and their increasing migration into the city.127 In 1767, Jonas Hanway suggested that 1 in 13 of London’s population, about 50,000 people, was a domestic servant. By 1775, this number had risen to 1 in 8 of the population, representing 80,000 individuals. In 1806, Colquhoun put his estimate at 910,000 servants out of which 800,000 were women.128 Domestic service was an obviously gendered occupation. The term ‘servant’ captured a wide variety of different types and hierarchies of occupation – including maids-of-all-work, wet-nurses, and lady’s maids in the same category. Apprentices and day labourers were also described as servants.129 Girls in their late teens arriving in London were recruited from the inns where coaches from the country terminated as they reached the city. Others were picked up at trading fairs and registry offices. Some girls were recommended by friends and acquaintances. They were usually hired by the year although either party might have terminated contracts before the year was up.130 In the depositions that Earle analysed, most women stayed in one place for about one year although the length of their service could vary from a few days to decades.131 Some servants spent years in one post, others changed employers often. The frequent turnover of London’s female domestic servants was a subject much commented upon by contemporaries complaining about the destabilising effects it had on their households.132 Unlike women, male servants could expect to remain employed for much longer periods of time and often after marriage.133 Widows were often forced back into service in order to survive. Eleanor Bowler had worked as a servant for a victualler in St Botolph’s, Aldgate, before her marriage. After her husband’s death she returned and it was here that she became pregnant with an illegitimate child.134 All over London, most women worked as domestic servants before marriage but the types of households that they worked within varied greatly. Most male servants served in grand houses where they often worked with horses: as coachmen, grooms and stable hands, others worked as butlers, valets and footmen.135 Most women, especially in the East End, were employed in small, poor households

32 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

often as a maid-of-all-work either on their own or with one other servant.136 In the West End and in some of the grander houses in Islington, servants of both sexes and greater numbers were required. When a servant was not in place she could either leave London for a brief time or for good, she could take up lodgings while looking for work or she might have turned to prostitution to survive.137 Servants out of place had to compete for the handful of part-time menial jobs available to plebeian women, predominately needlework or laundry work or rely upon the aid of friends, family, former employers and the parish. Nursing, char work, washing and hawking might provide intermittent employment. Domestic service might have provided a modicum of security for some women but its characteristics also added to the economic and personal constraints on their lives.138

The lone mothers of Aldgate, Islington and Lambeth Most women in the bastardy exams discussed here did not state their occupation; but domestic servants made up the majority of women who did give their employment details. Of the 366 women, 19 per cent who gave exams to the parish officers in Aldgate between 1742 and 1799, 47 per cent of the 247 women examined in Islington from 1758 to 1802 and 37 per cent in Lambeth examined between 1792 and 1800 were domestic servants.139 The handful of other women who gave their employment worked in the few available occupations open to women – as nurses, housekeepers and weavers. In their appeals to the parish, most unmarried mothers described how they met the fathers of their babies in the course of their work, in public houses or in their neighbourhoods. Relationships between men and women that resulted in illegitimate pregnancies were rarely casual and they occurred most often between men and women of the same class. As we have seen, women tended to consent to sexual relations in exchange for a promise of marriage but of course marriage had to be delayed until men and women could afford to set up households on their own. Young domestic servants and men working out their apprenticeships were prevented from marrying at will.140 Traditional courtship relations, therefore, resulted in the births of bastard children. In Islington where affluent householders employed more than one servant, 11 out of 117 women who worked as servants had met the fathers of their babies while working in the same household. Mary Lord and Thomas White were fellow servants in the employ of Nathaniel Brown in Hornsey Lane, Islington. Mary became pregnant under their employer’s roof.141 Ann Whitehead

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 33

and William Young served Mrs Elizabeth Sandys in Lower Street. Ann worked there for two years at the yearly wages of £5 before leaving. Only then, in 1765, did Ann and William become, ‘intimately acquainted’. Two years later when pregnant, Ann presented herself before the parish.142 Mary Cawdle and John Wickham met while working for Thomas Luffingham at Canonbury House, the famous ancient manor house in Islington.143 She gave birth to their son in the workhouse where it remained chargeable to the parish until he died.144 Hannah Codd worked for Mrs Settle at No. 14 Paradise Row in Islington. The father of her child was an Indian known as Thomas or Pompey who served a woman lodging with her employer.145 Elizabeth Beacham delivered her daughter in St Botolph’s workhouse after a relationship with a black man named John who worked for Colonel Revoux in Cavendish Street.146 The relationships that resulted in illegitimate births in Islington shared similar characteristics with those births elsewhere in London. However, there were significant differences. Female servants still made up the majority of bastard bearers in Islington, 47 per cent; but compared with Aldgate a far greater number were fathered by servants, 26.3 per cent, than in Aldgate (Tables 2.1 and 2.2). Work and the search to find it dominated most people’s lives but respite could be found in the pub or in parks. Men, women and children of all classes enjoyed the open air at St James’, Kensington Gardens, Dulwich and Greenwich. They were also prime locations for sexual relations when privacy was hard to find for young men and women employed as servants or apprentices in the houses of their masters. Colquhoun estimated that there were 5620 public houses with licences within the Bills of Mortality in 1794. Strong beer could be bought in taverns for 3d a quart and the alehouse was a frequent port of call for London’s journeymen and apprentices.147 Pubs were also often the locations for licit and illicit sex. Prostitutes were well known to operate in such establishments.148 Taverns and inns also offered cheap rooms to rent – if not for sex then as living quarters. In the 1790s, Colquhoun bemoaned the fact that women were becoming increasingly shameless about entering taverns.149 Most women worked as servants in non-gentry households and might be employed in taverns as well as private houses. Sexual partners commonly met under such circumstances.150 Sarah Rickets had worked for six years at the Py’d Bull in Islington before moving to the Jack of Newbury in Chiswell Street ‘where she worked for five months during which time she met John Orpwood a watchmaker with whom she cohabited and was delivered of two children’.151 Sarah Shambrooke was also working at the Py’d Bull when she became pregnant by a fellow servant.152 Poor and without support she gave birth in St Mary’s workhouse where

34 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

her child remained chargeable to the parish for the seven months before it died.153 Sarah Jackson met the father of her child, a waiter, while working as a servant at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town.154 Ann Mansfield met her partner while working at the Kings Head in Lower Street, Islington.155 The consumption and serving of alcohol often preceded sexual encounters. Mary Pink met Thomas Russell while serving at the Kings Head in Upper Street, Islington.156 Many of the inns along this thoroughfare served the coach trade.157 Catherine Webb had been living with her father, a maltster who kept a public house in Stutely near Winslow in Berkshire, there ‘she became familiarly acquainted with one Thomas Hodges a Farmer of Cublington . . . who frequented her said Father’s house where he had carnal knowledge of her Body Several Times.’158 Some of those unmarried mothers went on to give birth in the rooms that they rented in public houses. Poorer employers sometimes became intimate with their employees. Here the social distinction between master and servant was less marked than in larger households. Mary Phillips worked as a servant for over two years for John Davis a cow-keeper and farmer who lived in Lower Street, Islington. ‘Cow-keeping’ was centred on Islington.159 The increasing demand for milk in the city had precipitated an increase in the numbers of small-scale cow-keepers on the outskirts of the city who required the hay to feed their herds. Over the course of their relationship, Mary and John became the parents of John aged two and Samuel aged eight months before coming to the attention of the parish authorities.160 Everyday life provided numerous opportunities for sexual encounters. Martha Cook was working as a servant for Mr Lyons a broker in Drury Lane when ‘she became intimately acquainted with one Joseph Kirby Apprentice to his Uncle Mr Kirby a Cabinet Maker next door to the said Mr Lyons’. They had sexual relations in the house of her employer and as a result she became pregnant.161 Mary Walker was living with her father when she became involved with one of his servants. Their two-year courtship continued when he left her father’s service to start another in Drury Lane. Their relationship eventually resulted in Mary’s pregnancy.162 Courtship often resulted in pre-marital sexual relationships and births but sometimes those mothers and fathers later married. Catherine Bleasdale told St Botolph’s that ‘about seven years ago She . . . was lawfully married to her said late husband by whom she hath two children and lawful issue . . . That about eight years ago and previous to her marriage with her said husband she this Depont was delivered of a Child . . . which is illegitimate and a bastard by reason that she was not then married to her sd husband who was the father of her child.’163 Sexual relationships

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 35

were often conducted with marriage in mind but legal unions were not always an option. When a domestic servant found herself pregnant she could try to work for as long as possible up to the birth. However, she was often likely to have to leave her place in order to prepare for the birth of her child either to prevent her employers from learning about her pregnancy or because she was no longer capable of carrying out her chores. Even the very poorest of women would take a month to lie-in after giving birth to their infant. Out of work, such women used wages saved in service, financial and other aid from family, friends, neighbours and acquaintances, or they sold their clothes to buy food to eat and for a roof over their head. Without such support or sometimes in spite of it, some women were obliged to present themselves before the parish. Many of the women who came before the parish authorities had no resort but the workhouse in which to give birth. They had no lodgings of their own, few resources with which to support themselves without work, they could not obtain admission into a lying-in hospital and family, friends or neighbours were unable or refused to help them. After birth, women with infants to care for found it hard, if not impossible, to obtain work. If work could be found after delivery and the child sent to a nurse, a woman’s wages were scarcely sufficient to support herself let alone the cost of the nursing of her child.164

The fathers of bastard children in Aldgate, Islington and Lambeth Economic and social insecurity was experienced differently by poor London men. Like women, men contributed to the large resource of casual labour in eighteenth-century London; but they had a much wider range of occupations to choose from and were often paid twice as much. Nevertheless, secure work remained hard to come by for most poor men.165 Aldgate was predominately populated by workers associated with the sea or the river, but leatherworkers, tailors, weavers, smiths and cutlers had also settled in the area for some time.166 These were the men so distinguishable from other Londoners. The river was a major source of casual work. In the early eighteenth century, around 5000 men were employed full-time on the river while many thousands of others worked on a casual basis predominately in manual labour.167 In Aldgate’s bastardy exams 19 per cent of the fathers were engaged in a vast variety of manufacturing trades, as tailors, shoemakers, coopers, bakers, weavers, etc. Eleven per cent worked in dealing – predominately as butchers, victuallers, merchants

36 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

and other shopkeepers. But the single most important occupation in which these men worked was as mariners. In the bastardy exams, 9 per cent of all the fathers of bastards worked in this trade (Table 2.1). Many of these fathers were sent to war. In the Seven Years’ War from 1756 to 1763, 170,000 men were required to fight and 190,000 during the American War of Independence between 1775 and 1783.168 Britain’s eighteenth-century economy encouraged male mobility. Girlfriends, wives and mothers left at home would remain bereft of their support.169 Some women, like Sarah Twyman turned to another man, in place of her absent husband, for emotional and economic strength. Sarah married her husband Joseph in Plymouth in 1761 and they lived together for a month until he was sent on board the Shrewsbury bound for the East Indies from where he did not return for another two years. During this period, she met John Wisedell, also a mariner, and gave birth to his child in December of 1761 at Millbrook in Devon. Her bastardy examination only details the events relevant to her settlement and the settlement of her children. Nevertheless it tells us that in the ensuing years, her husband returned from his service abroad to resume their relationship. She gave

Table 2.1 Father’s occupations in Aldgate’s Bastardy Examinations, 1744–1798 (N = 366)

Agriculture Building Manufacturing Transport Mariner Dealing Industrial service Public service and professionals Armed service Domestic service Public service Undefined Not given Dead

N

%

6 20 70 19 32 40 16 14 7 21 3 16 81 21

1.6 5.5 19 5.2 8.7 10.9 4.4 3.8 1.9 5.7 0.8 4.4 22.1 5.7

Note: The occupational categories are the same as those used by the Cambridge Group and by Leonard Schwarz in his London in the Age of Industrialisation: Entrepreneurs, Labour Force and Living Conditions (Cambridge, 1992), Appendices 2 and 3. Source: St Botolph’s Aldgate’s Bastardy Examinations 1744–1798, GL/MS2676/1–22.

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 37

birth to their sons Joseph in 1764 and William in 1765. They moved from Devon to Aldgate where she remained in touch with John Wisedell who had since moved to Lambeth and was now working as a waterman.170 We do not know the circumstances under which Sarah gave her examination. It is not clear whether she initiated the exam herself through a request for relief or whether the parish was eager to confirm the paternity of the bastard child in the event that it would become chargeable. However, we can assume that Joseph tolerated his wife’s extra-marital relationship while he was away at sea. It would also seem that he continued to support the child from that relationship for some time after his return or it is possible that John contributed to the maintenance of his son. John Wisedell did not desert Sarah – she continued to know his whereabouts, aware of his move from Devon to London, six years after the birth of their child. Eleanor Miller was examined at the end of 1765. In many ways her story is typical of women who were obliged to come before the parish for support in this area. She had earned her settlement through service in St Botolph’s in the early 1750s. After leaving her service she was married at the Fleet to James Millar in 1753. They lived together for several years in the parish until he was sent to fight in the Seven Years’ War. He was killed at the siege of Havanna in 1762. After which she took lodgings in a house belonging to a labourer John Gunn in Spitalfields. Their relationship resulted in the births of two bastard children – Richard at the end of 1762 and Elizabeth in 1765, both of whom became chargeable to the parish by the end of that year.171 The East End of London fostered a culture of cohabitation populated by families with long histories of informal marital relationships.172 Renee Tring was born at Butcher Row in St Botolph’s and was aware that she was illegitimate because her father had been married to another woman while supposedly married to her mother. She later gave birth to two children in the same parish, ‘which said Children are illegitimate Bastards by reason that this Depont was never married’, to William Harvey, their father.173 Thomas Leech and Elizabeth Woodard had ‘lived together as Man and Wife for divers years in the precinct of St Catherines . . . although in Truth they were never married’. Elizabeth gave birth to her child nine weeks before being examined who ‘is as this Depont is advised and apprehends an illegitimate child as having been born out of wedlock’.174 My research on the bastardy examinations of St Botolph’s confirms Trumbach’s finding of the widespread practice of cohabitation in the East End. The practice was particularly prevalent here because the area was characterised by its transient workforce.175 The taverns and alehouses

38 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

were filled with men who came and went as their work dictated. Husbands, lovers and fathers might remain in town for only part of the year in between jobs at sea. Those who did not work on the sea could find work only when the ships were in port. All of which had important implications for the women with whom they had formed relationships. Of the people examined by the parish officers of St Botolph’s, 17 per cent lived in long-term relationships and produced many bastard children within them.176 Sarah Blake had three children with Thomas Bower who worked as a waterman and lived in St Mary’s, Whitechapel. When examined, her eldest child, named Thomas, was seven-and-a-half-years old and had been born at Farthing Alley in St Olave’s, Southwark, her second son William, aged four and a half years, was born at Hatchett Alley in St Botolph’s and she gave birth to her youngest son, Joseph, aged one year and three-quarters, in Nightingale Lane, Wapping. She had gained her settlement by working as a servant for Mrs Barns in St John’s, Southwark, for three years. As a result of her examination she was removed to her parish of settlement. She remained in the workhouse belonging to St John’s, Southwark, for two weeks but was then returned to St Botolph’s because that was the last legal settlement of her youngest son Joseph.177 Robert Weatherspoon ‘cohabited for several years with one Margaret Weatherspoon deced as if they had been Man and Wife although in truth they were never married to each other’. They produced four bastard children ranging in age from six to thirteen by the time Robert was examined. The eldest was born and baptised in Whitechapel and the youngest children were all born in Queen Street and baptised in St Botolph’s. Robert was compelled to turn to the parish for support after Margaret’s death.178 The particular insecurities of life to be found in this part of London contributed to the flexibility of these relationships and they were subject to many tensions.179 Men and women in this area could either not afford to spend money on a legal marriage or chose not to commit themselves to legal matrimony. Nevertheless, some spent many years together in long-term relationships and produced several children. Informal marriage left women vulnerable to abandonment and without the support and security that they expected. Ann Carmichael had two children with the man whom she assumed to be her husband, Thomas Cusser. Unfortunately, she soon discovered that her children were bastards because Thomas was a bigamist.180 Sarah Wickam was deceived by a ‘pretended ceremony of marriage’ organised by the father of her child. He left her when she was five months pregnant and she was obliged to present herself to the parish for aid.181

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 39

After mariners, servants were the highest occupational group, at almost 6 per cent, that fathered bastard children in St Botolph’s (Table 2.1).182 The father of Ann Reader’s child was John Bailey a fellow servant with whom she had worked at the house of a gentleman named Mr Carr in Argyle Street, St James’. They had met while living and working under the same roof. She had stayed in his service for a year and a half before leaving, when seven months pregnant, to give birth to her child in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital. After her discharge from the hospital another gentleman Mr Fearson of Lower Eastsmithfield hired her as his servant. Presumably, she placed her child with a nurse while she worked as his servant for over a year. Other women left their children in the care of friends while they worked.183 Ann’s wages may have been sufficient to pay for a nurse for her child – at her previous employment she had earned 9 guineas a year, a higher than average wage. Nevertheless, she became more desperate as time passed and her savings dwindled. After supporting her child for almost two years, she abandoned him to the care of the parish officers of St Botolph’s on 25 June 1798.184 Uncertainty was a part of every aspect of these people’s lives. We have already seen how after four years of marriage Isabella Cousins’ husband Stephen left to work on board the Barrington East India Man that sailed to Bengal. She last heard from him after receiving a letter in February 1789. She continued to try to contact him but after many years had passed and no reply received she could only presume that he was dead. In 1795, she began a sexual relationship with John Byron a gentleman and a frequent employer of hers who then lived in Hackney Road but had since moved to Black Friars Road. Lacking any support from her husband or her lover she gave birth to her child in the workhouse of St Botolph’s, Aldgate, in April 1796.185 Women who heard nothing from their husbands after many years terminated their marriage contracts and like Moll Flanders married again. Moll declared herself as a single Person again, as I may call my self, I was loos’d from all the Obligations either of Wedlock or Mistresship in the World; except my Husband the Linen Draper, who I having not heard from in almost Fifteen Year, nobody could blame me for thinking my self entirely freed from; seeing also he had at his going away told me, that if I did not hear frequently from him, I should conclude he was dead, and I might freely marry again to whom I was pleas’d. 186 Professional and personal insecurities dominated the lives of mothers throughout London.

40 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

Islington was also home to a transient workforce. When spring turned into summer, Irish seasonal immigrants would come across the sea with their families to reap the benefits of the hay harvest. In the autumn, Irish families would return home with money in their pockets.187 The development of the Islington Road and the New Road, from 1756–1757, encouraged a mobile male workforce into the area. Some of the navvies who built the roads formed relationships with the women they met in Islington. Labourers, at 9 per cent (Table 2.2), were the second largest category of fathers of bastard children in Islington. Mary Bingham met Thomas Hubbard while he was working as a labourer on the Islington Turnpike Road. They had sexual relations at her mother’s home, she became pregnant and gave birth in a lodging house at the Back Road in Islington. We must assume that Thomas left to work elsewhere because a year after they had met she began a relationship with another labourer, Hugh Clark, who worked with Christopher Bartholomew at the Angel Inn in Clerkenwell. They cohabited for three and a half years in lodgings in Islington before she gave birth to her daughter.188 In Islington, like Aldgate, the fathers of illegitimate children worked in the range of manufacturing trades, as cabinetmakers, tailors, weavers, shoemakers and blacksmiths. Anne Mansfield worked as a servant for Table 2.2 Father’s occupations in Islington’s Bastardy Examinations, 1758–1801 (N = 247)

Agriculture Building Manufacturing Transport Dealing Industrial service Public service and professions Armed service Domestic service Public service Undefined Pauper Not given Dead

N

%

8 21 36 9 10 21 13 4 65 8 10 1 38 3

3.2 8.5 14.6 3.6 4 8.5 5.3 1.6 26.3 3.2 4 0.4 15.4 1.2

Source: St Mary’s Islington’s Bastardy Examinations, 1758–1801, LMA/ P83/MRY1/867–870.

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 41

Mr John Green at the sign of the King’s Head in Lower Street for seven months before meeting William Williams. William was a tailor who worked nearby at Mr Eaton’s. Their relationship resulted in her pregnancy and examination by the parish.189 Carpenters also seemed to have contributed significantly to the bastardy rate in Islington. Ann Jacob was working as a servant in Upper Street when she met John Williams a journeyman carpenter also working in the same area. She quit her service when seven months pregnant and was admitted into the Store Street Lying-in Hospital to give birth. After her delivery, the parish officers of St Andrew’s above Barrs removed her to St Mary’s to claim her right to relief after gaining her settlement in the parish.190 Susannah Smith gained her settlement working at the Academy in Islington but she left to work as a servant at an eating house near St Giles’ where she met William Lanagan a carpenter and joiner who lodged at a house near Holywell Mount. She gave birth to their child in the workhouse.191 Work could be both casual and seasonal. Few plebeian London men or women worked in the same occupation throughout their working lives. Many needed more than one job in order to find the resources to survive.192 Economic insecurity resulted in insecure sexual relations. Thomas Tacer was a gardener by profession but when work was short he had to find a source of income elsewhere. When he met and moved in with Mary Sanders into Rose and Crown Court he was working at the Brewhouse in Islington. With little means of support she was obliged to give birth to their child at the workhouse.193 Cohabitation was also common in Islington because work for men and women was insecure and poorly paid. A quarter of the fathers who worked as labourers cohabited but did not marry the mothers of their children. Sarah George was born at Burton on Trent in Staffordshire. She moved to London and cohabited with Francis George a bricklayer’s labourer for sixteen years. They had two children still living when she was examined in 1766 – Francis aged four and Joseph aged eleven months.194 They had lived together for many years and had several children. Amy Goldhawk was a servant for an apothecary and the father of her child was her employer’s apprentice.195 Ann Carden had her son ‘while a Single Woman but cohabiting in manner as a Wife with Charles Stewart’.196 Marriage was not an option for men still working out apprenticeships and women dependent on their own wages for survival, so some compromised by cohabiting. Mary Lucas was working as a servant at Mr Gibson’s in Islington Road when she started courting one of his apprentices William Jennings. They commenced their sexual relationship while still under Gibson’s roof. She left her service to give birth to their child in

42 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

Clerkenwell. Five years later they were still living together in lodgings in Islington where she was delivered of another child, again out of wedlock.197 The exams show, therefore, that illegitimate children were often born in long-term and relatively stable relationships. As we have seen, war disrupted relationships all across London. References to the Seven Years’ War, the American War of Independence, the Revolutionary War from 1793 and the Napoleonic Wars from 1803, crop up in numerous bastardy exams, in the popular literature discussed in the following chapter and in the petitions to the Foundling Hospital. The British nation’s quest for imperial and military glory disrupted plebeian Londoners’ personal relations. Mary Vokes, whose exam opened this chapter, gained her settlement working as a servant for Mr Pyke, a butcher in Brook’s Market in Holborn. Soon after she quit her service, she met Richard Cater a soldier in the second battalion of the first regiment of foot guards, they lived together for two years before he was drafted off to America to fight in the War of Independence.198 Others lost their partners to the press gang which remained an important source for recruitment into the navy throughout our period. Sarah Oldis’ husband Thomas was pressed on board a ship bound for battle where he ‘since continued at Sea to the time of his Death’ after which she was forced to give birth to their child in the workhouse at St George’s, Hanover Square.199 The war resulted both in insecure as well as disrupted relationships and might also have encouraged people to take risks with sexual relationships outside marriage. Women remained vulnerable to the conception of bastard children throughout their lives. Women became poorer as they got older, especially if they had children to support.200 Their situations were exacerbated if they were left with large families to provide for either through widowhood or desertion. Most of the women examined by the parish were single but 15 per cent of the women in St Botolph’s had come through marriage and widowhood living lives riddled with poverty and crises. Catherine Pickles the widow of Dan Pickles, a wine cooper, met Dan when widowed by her first husband John Read while renting a house in St Mary’s, Aldermanbury, for £18 a year. After Dan had lived with Catherine for three months he sold all of her possessions and before deserting her, sold his wife for 1 shilling to John Smith.201 Catherine moved in with John and lived with him in Watling Street before moving to Islington where they lived together for four years. Shortly after Dan Pickles died, her new partner John Smith was impressed into the army. She was left to cope on her own with two children – one aged five and the other

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 43

aged two.202 Two years after her first examination, Catherine came before the authorities again. This time she was pregnant with the child of a gentleman named James Sturges Adams who had visited her frequently at her home in Islington.203 Two years later a servant called George Clark fathered her fourth child.204 The details of the relationships that Catherine had with these men can not be found in the sources. Nor can we know Catherine’s motivations for these relationships or how she felt about them. We must assume that at many times Catherine’s situation was desperate and the effects of her relationships and the external factors that shaped them must have had some impact on the reasons why she had several children by three different men. It is also possible that her children were the products of prostitution. Many mothers of illegitimate children came before St Botolph’s parish because the father of their child had died. Twenty-one years before coming before the officers of St Botolph’s, Aldgate, Sarah Wickham was ‘lawfully married to her said late husband at St Johns Church Exeter’. Fourteen years later she married Thomas Conner, ‘since deced by a Romish priest in a Dwelling House in Holloway Lane Shoreditch . . . which Marriage as she this Depont has been advised and believes was wholly void in Law’. Five years later she gave birth to the bastard child of Thomas Bencraft who had lived in the same parish as she did until he died.205 Six per cent of the fathers of illegitimate children were dead when the parish examined the mother (Table 2.1). After the death of her husband, Elizabeth Quinn ‘cohabited near Eleven years past with one William Davenport’.206 Elizabeth Profitt told the parish officers of St Botolph’s that she was ‘lawfully married’ to her husband and that she had two legitimate children by him. Since his death, however, she had given birth to two other children, ‘both of whom are illegitimate and Bastards’.207 Widowhood often exacerbated women’s economic and sexual vulnerability. St Botolph’s parish officers examined a widow named Peggy Smith in 1794. Two examinations detail the story of her life over fourteen years. She had married John Smith at the parish church of St Mary’s, Rotherhithe, on 22 September 1780. She soon discovered, however, that John appeared to have a wife in every port – the first he married in Cork, the second in Barbados, the third in Plymouth and the fourth in Dartmouth before he settled with Mary in the East End.208 Men with the opportunity to work across the empire could exploit women with impunity. After her marriage broke down, Peggy went to work as a servant for John Brown in Wapping with whom she had a sexual relationship and cohabited for several years before he was sent to Clerkenwell Bridewell where he died. Following his death she cohabited with another man William Harrison who was

44 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

later impressed. Her first exam tells us that William had worked as a carpenter and had lived in Red Cross Street in St Botolph’s where Peggy had given birth to their child three weeks prior to her exam.209 While Peggy’s story may not have been typical of a St Botolph’s resident, it does help to demonstrate the insecurity of life for the women of the parish. She moved residence frequently but she never moved very far away from her previous homes. She had formed partnerships with three men, all of whom worked in different trades – her husband was a sailor, John Brown her master and William worked as a carpenter before being sent to fight in the Revolutionary War; none of these relationships were casual affairs. Peggy moved from a failed relationship with an unfaithful and bigamous husband to a successful (for a time at least) economic and then a sexual partnership with her master, lover, and father of her two children. John Brown made sure to provide for Peggy before his imprisonment in the Fleet and continued to support her after his release until his death in 1793. Peggy recalled information regarding her settlement, in immense detail, covering the past fourteen years. Her resourcefulness ensured that she knew what options she possessed and what rights she had in times of need. As we have seen, bigamy was fairly common among men and women of the labouring classes.210 Alexander Ransom left his wife and family at Hinden in Wiltshire and married Sarah Dell in Lambeth. Sarah discovered this from a servant working in her neighbourhood.211 Hannah Hardwick’s parents had ‘cohabited together as Husband and Wife’ and three weeks after her mother’s death, her father ‘brought another Woman to whom he acknowledged he was lawfully married before he married the Mother of the said Child’.212 Mary Day found out that her husband was previously married to someone else by somebody who handed her a copy of his marriage certificate taken from the marriage register at St Paul’s, Shadwell. She had since been advised that ‘the marriage celebrated between this Depont and the sd Thomas Gobby as aforesaid is a mere nullity and of no force of effect in law’. As a result her sixteen-month-old daughter was defined as a bastard.213 Desertion also sometimes led to a woman participating in sexual relationships outside marriage. After eight years of marriage and in the ten years that followed her husband’s death, Esther Hancell gave birth to two children fathered by another man.214 Mary Price had not seen her husband for seven years before she began a sexual relationship with another man that resulted in the birth of a bastard child.215 Other women knew nothing about what had become of their spouses. Elizabeth Bennett’s husband went on board a Man of War and she had ‘never

Work, Community and Personal Life in Eighteenth-Century London 45

seen him since Nor does she know whether he is now ded or living’.216 Lucy Harrison’s husband had left her and their two children ‘for places unknown and hath left her destitute of support and maintenance’.217 Mary Fellows and her four bastard children were deserted by John Ireland ‘in places to her altogether unknown’.218 Women were sometimes serially unlucky with their choice of men. Mary Peter married John English at the parish church of Westham in Essex in 1785 only to be informed afterwards that he had previously married another woman in St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, and because she was still alive his later marriage was illegal. By the time she discovered this she had given birth to his son. Five years later she married Richard Peters in Westham, had two children with him, only to be deserted by him.219 It was always women who had to deal with the consequences of such informal, insecure and transient relationships.

Conclusion Eighteenth-century London owed much of its growth to the continuous migration of people from the provinces and farther afield. London’s unmarried mothers and the fathers of their children made up a substantial proportion of these migrants. The focus of this book is on this mobile, migrant community, particularly poor women who lived in desperate economic circumstances. Individuals met their sexual and marriage partners in the course of work or neighbourhood associations. Illegitimate children were usually the result of women’s unsuccessful attempts to achieve economic and emotional security within marriage. The fathers of their children worked in the range of manufacturing as well as other jobs on offer throughout London. Many were domestic servants, mariners on board ships of war and commerce, carpenters and other tradesmen. Economic transformation, the growth of London and the British Empire encouraged and facilitated the increasing mobility of men and contributed to the disruption of relationships that resulted in the births of bastard children. Economic insecurity and lack of communal and familial supervision within London’s communities was the context of the conception and birth of a bastard child. Poverty was an experience shared by married and unmarried alike. Relationships of all types suffered from the strains and stresses of metropolitan life. Pre-marital sexual relationships begun with marriage in mind were subject to many disruptive factors. As a result, plebeian men and women participated in more fluid relationships than that dictated to them by law. Men and women experienced economic insecurity differently. Women, like men, were often casual labourers in eighteenth-century London but

46 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

men had a much wider range of occupations to chose from and they were paid at least double the wages of women.220 Female economic opportunities remained limited throughout the period.221 The out of work servant competed for the handful of part-time menial jobs available to plebeian women, predominately needlework or laundry work or she relied upon the aid of friends, family, former employers and the parish. As women grew older and had children, their working opportunities diminished. The care of young children was incompatible with most work, but nursing, charring, washing and hawking could provide intermittent employment that could be negotiated with childcare. Few mothers, because they were not paid enough, could support a child on their own. Paid work was always uncertain and prospects deteriorated during war, bad harvests, out of the London Season, and when trade slackened. Economic dislocation was frequent and regular throughout the eighteenth century and impacted on people’s personal lives. Many remained dependent upon economies of makeshift for survival. Insecurity dominated the experiences of poor men and women in work, their homes, the pursuit of leisure as well as sexual relationships during the eighteenth century. But it was the poor unmarried, married and widowed women who bore the brunt of the risks associated with reproductive sex outside marriage. All of these life-stories demonstrate how most women found it impossible to combine work and motherhood especially if they were supporting families on their own. Eighteenthcentury London provided many men with the means and opportunity to disappear, across the country as well as abroad, and they took them. But women were not powerless; they used their knowledge of the settlement laws and charities as well as their status within a community to obtain relief. The rest of the book explores the combination of formal and informal structures of support that lone mothers called upon. Welfare institutions, family, friends and neighbours were utilised by all of London’s potential poor during the eighteenth century and individuals of all classes involved themselves in the plight of the lone mother during this period.

3 Courtship, Sex and Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Popular Literature

During the eighteenth century, people were marrying earlier and having more children than at any time before, both inside and outside marriage. Until the twentieth century, however, there was no consensus between the state, church, and popular opinion as to how marriage should be defined; thus, meanings of marriage remained unstable until the end of our period. During the early modern period, London developed the widest range of opportunities for clandestine marriages as they came to replace marriages formalised through private contract or betrothal.1 In 1695, a tax of 5 shillings was levied on marriage licences and certificates in an attempt to raise state money and to bring a halt to informal marriage practices.2 In 1712, another Act targeted the keepers of prisons who oversaw clandestine marriages. The marriage shops in the Liberty of the Fleet remained exempt and the popularity of these forms of marriage persisted. A parliamentary committee investigating a string of complaints against the Fleet estimated in 1706 that, from 19 October 1704 to 12 February 1706, 2954 marriages were captured in the Fleet registers.3 R.L. Brown has put the figure at 6609 by the 1740s.4 Between 200,000 and 300,000 marriages were recorded in the Fleet from 1694 to 1754.5 The Fleet was widely used, therefore, by London’s working classes to marry in the early eighteenth century.6 It was particularly popular among artisans and sailors on leave.7 The Fleet’s popularity and other informal marriage arrangements rested on the basis that they ‘saved time, hindrance of business and knowledge of friends’.8 But people resorted to private marriages for a multiplicity of reasons. Marriage ceremonies were expensive. Celebrations shared among friends and family involved spending on food, drink and presents for those participating in the ceremony, as well as on the wedding licence or parish fees.9 The cost of a Fleet marriage averaged about 7s 6d, comparable 47

48 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

with most church weddings, but those marrying at the Fleet could avoid the expense of a large celebration, the stamp duty for the marriage certificate and the cost of calling the banns.10 Many found that if unions were kept private from family and parish authorities, it allowed them some flexibility in future relationships.11 In addition, there were always some people, such as Catholics and Dissenters, whose marriages were not recognised because they practised their own religious ceremonies. Concern over the transfer of property and the fear that their children would run off and secretly marry unapproved lovers encouraged elite men to lobby parliament in the middle of the eighteenth century. The furore that came to focus on the Fleet and other informal marital practices in the early eighteenth century was the catalyst for legal reform in 1753.12 Hardwicke’s Marriage Act prohibited Fleet chapels and marriage shops and ensured that the registration of marriages became a much more public affair.13 Parental consent became necessary for any individual hoping to marry aged under 21 and all marriages had to take place in an Anglican Church after either banns had been called or a licence had been purchased. The law exempted Quakers, Jews and royalty, but not Catholics.14 Consequently, London’s Irish communities continued to practise marriage customs common to their religion, although their unions were officially categorised as illegal and children born within them were defined as illegitimate. Martha Cropper was advised that her nine-year marriage to Patrick Burn presided over by a Catholic priest in a chapel at Virginia Street in St George’s was a ‘pretended Solemnisation of a Marriage’ and that she and her husband were actually cohabiting together and were not deemed to be married.15 The Irish were long established in the East End but their marriages were not recognised as legal by English authorities until Catholic Emancipation in 1829. Despite the fact that anybody caught not adhering to the law might be liable to transportation for fourteen years, and even though legal marriage in a church became increasingly widespread among the population as a whole, the tradition of informal marriage continued well into the nineteenth century.16 These practices and the uncertainty that surrounded marriage during this period provided a fertile subject for eighteenth-century ballads and chapbooks, and more often than not described how it was women rather than men who bore the consequences of these fluid relationships.

Popular literature The story of Polly and the cruel ship carpenter was repeated in a variety of versions in numerous ballads and chapbooks over the course of

Courtship, Sex and Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Popular Literature 49

the eighteenth century. The young courting couple lived and worked in Worcester but unbeknownst to Polly, all was not well with their relationship. Billy had promised Polly marriage while continuing to dream of escaping Worcestershire for a life of opportunity and adventure on the seas. War provided him with his means of flight but Polly’s pregnancy stood in his way. Prior to leaving Britain’s shores, Billy told Polly that before they could be married he needed to introduce her to his friends. Whilst on their journey, deep in the countryside, he savagely murdered then buried her, in a grave that he had prepared earlier, before leaving for the main. Although he sailed ‘the world round’ he could not avoid Polly’s ghost who returned to haunt him and to avenge her untimely death. As he was turning from the captain with speed, He met with his Polly, which made his heart bleed, She ripped and tore him, she tore him in three, Because that he murdered her baby and she.17 A constant theme reiterated in hundreds of eighteenth-century British ballads and chapbooks with love and courtship as their subject was the inconstancy of men, the desire for their escape from their commitments as lovers and as fathers-to-be and the realisation of masculine flight via rivers and the ocean.18 Fewer ballads told stories of the murder of pregnant women by their lovers but many more described the ghosts of betrayed women seeking revenge on their faithless lovers. These ballads and chapbooks will be used to explore female sexuality and work, courtship patterns and the effects of migration and male mobility on courtship and marriage. This chapter will also point to the significance of this literature for its eighteenth-century audience.19 It suggests that the variety of stories of illegitimacy reflects the diversity and ambiguity of real-life courtship. The ballads reveal multiple and conflicting representations of women and illegitimacy. In an article based in part on James Boswell’s and his sons’ collection of chapbooks on a huge variety of subjects collected between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Susan Pederson has argued that British popular literature was about fantasy rather than survival. The content of stories was not related to everyday life and the genre as a whole was meant to amuse rather than to reflect reality. Robert Darnton, on the other hand, in his research on French popular culture has suggested that popular literature represented something rather different. Peasant tales informed the poor and starving of old regime

50 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

France, how their world worked and how to stay alive in it.20 I want to suggest that popular stories of courtship and love in eighteenth-century Britain were sources of both fantasy and survival in the love lives of poor eighteenth-century British men and women.21 For many of the poor at this time, the road to literacy was paved with chapbooks and ballad sheets as well as the Bible. The wide availability of items of popular literature priced at around a penny and their increasing production during the eighteenth century suggests that many of the poor could read and that they increasingly learned to do so by reading secular rather than religious literature.22 Unauthorised and massively abridged versions of popular literary texts made their way into the hands of the poor. All classes consumed popular literature and enjoyed its vast subject matter – Biblical tales, Greek myths, folklore, histories, poetry and plays. It encompassed literary greats as well as lows and embodied folklore as well as high culture.23 Ballad singers lived their lives on the margins of society, travelling from settlement to settlement, reporting news, advertising, telling fortunes, singing and selling their wares. In Mary Saxby’s autobiography, one of the few that we have of a poor eighteenth-century woman, she tells us how she earned her bread by working as an itinerant ballad singer making shift across the English countryside.24 Ballad singers were common sights at fairs, festivals and markets, and were part of the British landscape.25 Singers revelled in their peripatetic life and loved to draw a crowd. There’s Dolly and I, as ballads we cry, On a couple of stools see us stand: The people flock round, as she bawls aloud, And I takes my fiddle in my hand.26 By the end of this period, although most ballad singers were women their audience remained composed of both sexes.27 Anybody could listen to ballads sung to crowds at markets and fairs even if they could not afford to buy them. They were also enjoyed within households especially amongst servants, in the course of work and at leisure.28 For those with little time on their hands to read, listening to the recitation of a ballad, repeating its lines and mulling over its subject matter time and time again, allowed an individual to transport themselves to another world while remaining at work. The poor listened to these singers and they bought copies of the affordable songs that they sang. A ballad on one sheet of paper cost a penny while a chapbook varied in price according to length. They

Courtship, Sex and Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Popular Literature 51

were usually 8- or 24-pages long and ranged from 1 to 3 pence.29 A loaf of bread would set you back about 4 pence and a pot of ale around 1 pence at this time.30 The authors of these books and sheets remained largely anonymous to their readers and publications were rarely given a publication date in order to prolong their shelf lives. They were printed predominately in London but other provincial cities such as York, Newcastle and Durham were homes to a thriving market in this literature.31 Urban life frequently provided the context for the production as well as the consumption of popular literature. Tales were set in locations across Britain. Printed versions travelled the country on the backs and in the pockets of the thousands of wandering sellers and songs were passed between one community and another and repeated in homes and workplaces. We will probably always know very little about the individuals who wrote this literature and the specifics of its production. Historians are also obliged to assume a great deal about how ballads and chapbooks were interpreted.32 Of course the material explored here might tell us more about the men who arranged their collections than about their potential audiences but it seems fair to assume that the range of literature studied comes close to a representative sample of eighteenth-century popular literature that was enjoyed by poorer sort men and women. Particular stories, formulations, scenes, structures and imagery recur in all the collections and are highlighted here.

Courtship Courtship and love had long been a preoccupation of popular literature.33 Falling in love and sexual desire were also the subjects of the everyday fantasies of eighteenth-century men and women. In chapbooks and ballads, if not in letter-writing manuals, pre-marital sex was represented as commonplace and female sexual desire as given.34 Many ballad heroines feared a life of spinsterhood, not only because marriage offered a woman the potential for economic security but also because within marriage her sexual desires might be realised. One maid complained: For my maidenhead I swear, does fill my heart with Care, The Burden, Burden, O the Burden! Is more than I can bear.35 And another claimed after having sexual relations that she would ‘part with life for joys like this’.36 Courtship and letter-writing manuals were

52 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

addressed to both sexes and to workers of all types and appeared in numerous collections of chapbooks.37 But as we know, courtships and marriages were notoriously unstable during this period, particularly for the poor. Urban life was noisy, stunning and filled with promises of adventure.38 In the city, couples were free to pursue the objects of their affection and desire with little interference from family and kin. The characteristics of men’s and women’s work, however, frequently disrupted personal relationships. The ties of service and apprenticeship limited the relationships between couples and prevented early marriages. The woman who became pregnant in The Banks of the Band discovered that her lover could not marry her because he was under the obligations of his master.39 The inability to achieve economic independence prevented young men and women from marrying in eighteenth-century Britain.40 The desire to find a marriage partner was often the reason a woman participated in pre-marital sexual relations that put her at risk of conceiving an illegitimate child. Yet, even marriage could not guarantee stability and security. Married mothers, like the unmarried, were also prone to the disappearances, deaths and desertions of their husbands. As we have seen, the effects of the expansion of trade and empire in eighteenth-century Britain provided many men with the means and opportunity to flee from their commitments as lovers and fathers. Others had no choice but to abandon their families to work and to fight for their country. The consequences of migration, war and industrial change made their force felt everywhere but their effects were concentrated in the capital. Stable marriage was often unattainable for poor women. Widows were usually dependent upon remarriage to support their families after the death of their husbands but this left them just as vulnerable to the possibility of illegitimate childbirth and increased poverty. Widows often had to apply for parish relief and widowers were much more likely to remarry than widows. The numbers of men who abandoned their families rose sharply during times of war. Desertions were more frequent, therefore, when men could abscond via enlistment in the army or navy.41 As the previous and the following chapters show, men could always more easily evade their obligations as lovers and as fathers.42 The characteristics of men’s work in the eighteenth century provided them with many avenues of escape. Increasing numbers of men were employed as mariners in the eighteenth century and were obliged to travel far from home and familial responsibilities. Britain’s colonial enterprise reached from the East to the West Indies and incorporated

Courtship, Sex and Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Popular Literature 53

much of North America. Imports from all of these areas were rising rapidly over this period. The British nation’s quest for imperial and military glory disrupted the intimate relations of couples across the country. Workers associated with the sea or the river populated the East End of London and its riverside districts. As we saw in the previous chapter, many of these men fathered the bastard children that caused their mothers to come before the parish for relief after abandonment.43 Sailors were more mobile than many male workers and were renowned particularly for their inconstancy. As a result, they were depicted as inappropriate marriage material in numerous ballads and chapbooks. So said the heroine in The Sailor’s Garland: Said she a sailor I don’t admire, because they travel to foreign parts, The more their company we desire The more they leave us with aching hearts.44 Fathers and mothers also encouraged their daughters to find more reliable marriage partners. Parents believed that sailors could not be trusted to honour the promises they made to their lovers to marry them. As one mother advised her daughter who insisted on marrying a sailor . . . sailors they are roving blades the girls they do adore Leave their sweethearts broken hearted for fresh ones on the shore.45 Although the faithlessness of women is also addressed in this literature, many more ballads and chapbooks were devoted to the inconstancy of men.46 Most of the men in ballads who promised to return to their lovers once they had set sail to sea did not return, but there were a few notable exceptions who did. These stories offered many women the hope that they might be reunited with their lovers. Blue Eyed Mary had fallen for her lover’s charms and lain with him just before he left England. She begged him to come back and six weeks later he returned, honoured his promise and made her a captain’s bride.47 Six weeks was nothing compared with the three years that Little Mary, the Sailor’s Bride waited, without a word, for her lover to return and honour his promise to her.48 It is likely that stories of successful relationships and couples being reunited gave their readers and listeners expectations for their own lives and partnerships.

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Over the course of the eighteenth century, the British army and navy trebled in size. In the literature, wars were frequently blamed for tearing lovers and fathers away from their commitments at home and for bringing an abrupt end to previously successful courtships. Much of these men’s time was spent at sea where they were always at risk of capture, drowning, injury and fatality. If men were not required to go overseas then work often forced them to move to Britain’s port-towns such as Portsmouth and Plymouth because the navy employed thousands of British civilians as well as military men.49 Consequently, those who remained on Britain’s shores as well as those farther afield experienced the destabilising effects of warfare. The government faced a constant battle finding recruits to man their fighting forces especially during the wars with revolutionary France. Many men kept one eye over their shoulder watching and waiting for the press gang to sweep them up. Many pieces of popular literature bemoaned its power Why, the cruel press masters thy father did press, And without God’s assistance great is distress Thus behind we are left in despair, . . . Now I and my babies to the workhouse must go Our days for to pass in sad sorrow Thus behind we are left in despair.50 Of course the recruitment of men with families to provide for caused much resentment among parish officers left to pick up the financial pieces of familial dislocation.51 Many ballads also lamented the separation of couples due to the wars and the devastation wrought to family life.52 One chapbook tells the story of a family ruined by the effects of war and remains an eloquent critique of it. Sarah Durin’s husband lost his job as a weaver in Manchester and was forced to enlist in order to earn enough to support his family. However, his wage remained erratic until his death after which Sarah found it even harder providing for her children following a bad labour. She tried to makeshift for her family but was forced to present herself before the parish for relief. She was refused relief in her home of Manchester because her settlement remained in Sussex, the place of her birth.53 Some couples clearly loathed the separation that war brought. Many ballads focussed on the separation of families and lovers due to war and the fear of a wife and mother for her husband while at sea.54 Others concentrated on women mourning the death of their lovers on the main. The Blooming Young Lassie asked us to

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. . . curse the cruel wars that has forc’d from my arms, The youth I adore, And I shall never no never see my love more.55 Not all men callously abandoned their commitments. Many missed the women they loved on land, and hoped and prayed that a rival would not snap her up in their absence.56 The Distracted Sailor who left his lover to go to sea returned after two years to find that she had married another man. He went mad with a broken heart and ended the rest of his days in Bedlam.57 Numerous eighteenth-century collections of songs and ballads were directed to the men at sea or war.58 The loss of life during this century of conflict was tremendous and there were few families who remained unaffected. About 90,000 men died fighting the French wars. Surprisingly, only 7 per cent did so at the swords of the enemy, another 50 per cent perished due to disease, 30 per cent in accidents and another 13 per cent became the victims of the ‘perils of the sea’.59 These ‘perils of the sea’ were the subject of many chapbooks and ballads. Three whole volumes of the chapbook collection in the New York Public Library were devoted to dramatic narratives of shipwrecks as well as the tales of adventures to be had in the outposts of the empire.60 Many men feared for their lives at sea and in the service of their country in which so many thousands died. Families were frequently deprived of their major breadwinner during the course of the eighteenth century but women, of course, were used to making ends meet. Many of the relationships depicted in popular literature that ended in disaster and frustrated courtships begin and end on the banks of rivers and at the mouths of the sea. Stories open with female characters set wandering along riverbanks and on the promenades of port-towns lamenting the loss of their loves.61 In contrast, their flippant, carefree, mobile lovers worked their way through a succession of conquests on their travels. One such victim begged her lover Sir, since you’ve got your will . . . I pray make me your lawful bride; His reply was appropriately callous I promis’d to meet her there again, But I forgot, and cross’d the Clyde.62 Similar stories were told using the banks of other rivers that meandered across the British countryside. On the banks of the Band, Claudy, Clyde

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and Doun women were abandoned by their lovers and left to face the consequences of pre-marital sex on their own. On the Shannon’s side, one lover was taken by a press gang and on the Nile a woman’s lover lost his life at war.63 Popular literature represented women who became pregnant out of wedlock in various and sometimes conflicting ways. Many ballads warned women to protect their youthful hue and their virginity and heroines who found themselves abandoned and pregnant lamented their gullibility and their betrayal by men.64 Some unmarried mothers in the literature expected nothing but to be confronted with shame and death in the face of their sexual transgression. Such a story is told in the eight-page tale of Miss Sarah Morton a ‘true and melancholy account of a rich farmer’s daughter, near Cambridge; famous for her Beauty and other accomplishments: who was decoyed from her Parents, by W—— M—— esq; who was debauched, and then left her to Poverty and Ruin: when being driven to the greatest Distress, she on Friday last swallowed some Poison, and expired in the greatest agonies, at Three o’clock on Saturday’.65 Other women died of broken hearts in silent and shady groves after pleading, unsuccessfully, with their lovers to marry them.66 Others went mad with distress and ended their lives in Bedlam.67 Very few ballads told stories of infanticide by women of illegitimate children. Those that did demonstrated how women killed their infants to hide the source of their shame.68 However, as Wiltenburg and Dugaw have shown, one of the key characteristics of early modern ballad literature is the depiction of women as powerful.69 There was a tradition of ballads and songs that celebrated the women who disguised themselves as men in order to join their lovers at sea and war. They dressed as young sailor boys and boarded the ships of their lovers.70 The resourcefulness and independence of these women remained the core of these narratives. However, despite their ingenuity and bravery many still died in the pursuit of their loves.71 A pregnant woman who followed The Faithless Captain out to sea found herself thrown overboard in a storm and drowned, to be followed shortly by the captain eager to assuage the guilt and remorse he experienced as a result of her death.72 Nevertheless, unmarried mothers were rarely without resources at their disposal. In the literature, women carefully plotted their revenge against their betrayers. A woman who enjoyed her sexuality was always depicted as constrained by the power of her body and the threat of an unwanted baby. Nevertheless, such women were often depicted as wily and resourceful. Virtuous and cunning women were frequently rewarded

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with marriage.73 The Banks of Inverary begins like the other ballads above that set their scene of seduction by the river but in this tale the woman refused to lie with the man pestering her for sexual relations. Due to her determination, he married her after admitting to beguiling twelve maids before her. ‘Says he, I used to flatter maids, but now it must not be, On the banks of Inverary, I’ve found a wife, said he.’74 Some even found themselves eventually reunited with their lovers. Claudina worked as a shepherdess in Chamony and found herself seduced by a young Englishman named Bradford, who was the son of a London merchant, passing through Geneva on his way to Italy. He left the mountains after seducing and promising Claudina marriage. When her sister discovered that she was pregnant she helped Claudina find a place to lie in and after a lecture from the local curate on the need for compassion in such circumstances, her father also agreed to help her but insisted that she must leave their community so as not to besmirch his name. After giving birth, she disguised herself as a male traveller and singer. She told everyone that her son was her brother and travelled the countryside using an economy of makeshifts to survive. She eventually ran into her old lover while cleaning shoes in Turin. He employed whom he believed were the brothers as his servants when one day Claudina was stabbed while defending her master. As he tore apart her shirt to tend to the injury, Bradford discovered that his young man-servant was actually his former lover. Overcome with guilt he proposed that they should be married as soon as the wound healed. They returned to Chamony for the wedding where the whole community joined in the celebrations.75 Another woman was made pregnant by her master who had promised to marry her but then refused. She reminded him that he had claimed that the Devil would ensure that he kept to his word by disguising herself as the Devil with some help from a neighbour’s son who worked as a chimney sweep. In disguise, she threatened him with everlasting damnation in Hell unless he made good on his promise to marry the heavily pregnant heroine and of course he had no choice but to do so.76 Women were rarely represented as powerless in the literature despite the obvious structural disadvantages stacked against them. Courtship and marriage, at this time, were expected to follow particular conventions and rules, ‘[P]arity of age, status, wealth, reputation and religion, together with personal attraction made the perfect match’.77 Cross-class love was therefore rarely depicted as successful. Many such unions ended in the murders described below, but there are some notable exceptions. Such as that of Amanda, who was the daughter of a farmer fallen on hard times who was courted by a lord of the manor who

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reportedly possessed ‘a hearty aversion to marriage’.78 He promised her marriage in order to seduce her while she hoped that such a union would bring her family out of poverty. He was so impressed with her and her family’s virtue and simple honesty that he was persuaded to overcome his phobia of marriage.79 Women may have been seduced and deserted but many were treated with compassion. There is an implicit sympathy for these women in the literature. Poor Mary of the Moor was thrown out of her father’s home and rejected by family and friends. On a frozen winter’s night, she expired at the door of her father’s cottage. Her father died of grief and her child shortly followed. The whole family was effectively annihilated due to the actions of the villain ‘that lured [her] from virtue to sin’.80 Unmarried mothers were usually depicted as the victims of men’s flattering tongues and promises. Once men gained their will of women, they typically dispensed of their lovers while boasting of their conquests.81 Only a handful of men who later learned of the consequences of their actions that resulted in the death or suicide of their lovers responded by committing suicide in remorse.82 In the seventeenth-century literature, women who bore children out of wedlock were overwhelmingly depicted as foolish and they usually found themselves abandoned and alone, and with no option but suicide. While eighteenth-century ballads and chapbooks begged women not to trust duplicitous lovers, they also warned men not to cheat on women otherwise they would receive their comeuppance. Families and communities expected men to honour their promises even if fewer and fewer were doing so. Men had a moral and economic obligation to support the mothers of their children.83 While in seventeenth-century texts unmarried mothers trying to hide their pregnancies were ridiculed, in the eighteenth century they became sources of sympathy who deserved justice and recompense.84 The emphasis on male responsibility was new to the eighteenth century and was to diminish in the nineteenth century.85 Some revenge narratives played on the rivalries between town and country, and mocked the supposed superiority of Londoners. Pray read it once, I do not fear But that it will make you smile, The Londoner’s call us Country Fools, And laugh at us every day; But I’ll let them know, before I have done, We know as good Things as they.

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So said a young girl from Hertfordshire, who had recently given birth to a bastard child and come up to London with her child hidden in a basket covered with a blanket and two geese. She persuaded two men to hold her belongings while she went to look inside the Royal Exchange. The men ran away with her booty dreaming of the splendid supper that they would share with their wives. When they discovered the five-weekold boy in their basket their wives thought that the child was the offspring of one of their husband’s who was then obliged to pay for the nursing of the child.86 Young, single women were frequently represented as inventive and resilient. They tricked and humiliated the lascivious men who made it their occupation to pursue them for their virtue. The Crafty Chambermaid is a familiar story of cross-class seduction, of a wealthy merchant falling in lust with his mother’s chambermaid. The couple arranged a rendezvous where the merchant hoped to test her chastity but unbeknownst to him the chambermaid arranged for another woman (either an old bunter or a blackamoor, depending on the version) to go in her place. First he was horrified that he had lain with such a woman but then rewarded his intended lover’s cunning with a proposal of marriage.87 Another woman persuaded a wealthy gentleman to purchase her maidenhead and (depending on the version) her maidenhead turned out to be not the woman’s virginity but the name of her bastard daughter or a rabbit that she tricked him into buying instead.88

Vengeful ghosts We are already familiar from the opening with the stories of men who murdered their pregnant lovers to avoid marriage, to evade paying for the cost of the care of a child and to prevent the loss of their freedom. Amongst Boswell’s large collection of reports on criminals, murderers and general ne’er-do-wells, there is a true story of such a crime committed by Watt Diddle on Hannah Hubbard with whom he was cohabiting.89 A Staffordshire gamekeeper who was informed by a farmer’s daughter, whom he had been courting for three years, that she was pregnant with his child simply told her I will not marry yet, said he, For while I’m single I am free, And thus from’s side a durk he drew, He pierc’d her tender body thro’.90

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His death at the gallows was intended to teach all men a lesson in fidelity.91 Similarly an apprentice to a miller courted a young girl promising to marry her if she would lie with him. On discovering her pregnancy he decided ‘I thought it a shame to marry being so young a man’ and he asked her to join him on a walk to discuss their wedding preparations. It was here that he brutally murdered her. His crime was eventually discovered and he received the death penalty.92 The Wittam Miller promised an Oxford girl that he would marry if she would consent to lie with him in The Berkshire Tragedy. When she became pregnant both the girl and her mother begged the miller to follow through on his promise but he refused and resolved to murder her instead. He was also discovered and hanged for the crime.93 In these narratives, fathers of legitimate children also wanting to avoid the cost of their maintenance committed the same offence.94 Few of these murders, that took place in silent, shady groves, went undetected. Most men were caught because a woman’s spirit tended to linger in nature after her murder in order to remind the living of the crime against her.95 In The Oxford Tragedy Rosana was seduced and murdered by her lover. His offence was discovered when a rose bush grew through winter as well as summer on the exact spot where he committed the murder.96 Ghost stories were more familiar to early modern men and women than they are to modern audiences because ghosts had long been significant in popular belief.97 In addition to the ghost stories detailed below, collections of popular literature contained chapbooks on the afterlife.98 The ghosts of people haunting out of revenge were familiar to folk tales passed from one generation to the next.99 Revenge tragedies were also well known to early modern audiences from the plays of Shakespeare and others. These plays were performed on the stage as well as appeared in print in chapbook form for the enjoyment of early modern readers of all social classes. Ghosts had a vital social role to play, more often than not as perpetrators of revenge. They ‘were a sanction for general moral standards, sustaining good social relations and disturbing the sleep of the guilty’.100 In The Broken Contract a man acknowledged his responsibility for the seduction, social ostracism, and death of a woman and her twin babies after being haunted by her spirit. With his last breath he asked that You perjur’d lovers all take note and pray, See you a conscience make and don’t betray, Any poor harmless love Lest you’re their ruin prove, For there’s a God above will find you out.101

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Ghosts attached themselves to particular places and people, returning to the living to ensure that the nature of their death was resolved.102 The ghosts of unmarried mothers haunted the men who were responsible for their ruin and death, and warned other men against committing the same crime.103 The Ghost of Maria bedevilled her lover until he died. Behold, quoth the spirit, the wandering shade, Of Maria a ruin’d unfortunate maid, Untimely sent to her grave, ruin’d by thee, Exposed to want and extreme misery;104 The Gosport Tragedy was a similar but longer version of the ballad that opened this section. Here the ghost of murdered Molly discovered her lover William with his crew preparing for a voyage at Portsmouth and pledged to haunt his ship. She afterwards vanished with shrieks and cries, Flashes of lightning did dart from her eyes, Which put the ship’s crew into great fear, None saw the ghost, but they the voice did hear. The captain of William’s ship feared that the ghost was a murder victim of one of his men. He asked the guilty man to reveal himself to the crew so that their ship might be saved. William confessed to the crime, went mad and died the following night.105 Another sailor who caused his lover to commit suicide found himself humiliated in front of his workmates. Appearing to him on board his ship, the ghost of his betrayed lover threatened to send a storm to kill the entire crew

She look’d at him like a ghost so grim, Which made him tremble every limb. I was said she once a maid. But I was by you betray’d; I am a spirit come for you, You baulk’d me once but I’ll have you now. His captain ordered him into a dinghy that subsequently caught fire and sank.

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Which caused the crew all to admire. All you that do to love belong, And you that heard my mournful song, Be true to one and don’t beguile, Neither forsake poor women kind.106 Crazy Jane was made famous through many ballads, chapbooks and songs during the period. At the start of the story, Jane was depicted as a beautiful young woman who was later seduced by her best friend’s brother. He left for the East Indies when she begged him to marry her after consenting to sexual relations with him. When she discovered Henry had deserted her, her extreme grief caused a miscarriage, insanity soon followed and she eventually died. Her ghost appeared to Henry and prompted his suicide on his return to England’s shores.107 Sometimes female ghosts were accompanied by the ghosts of their infants. In The Unfortunate Grazier’s Daughter, the eponymous heroine was seduced by a rich squire while working as a domestic servant in his parent’s house. He married her privately in London so that he could keep their union secret. On the advice of his friends, however, he soon abandoned her to marry an heiress. On discovering this news, the mother-to-be suffered a miscarriage and died of grief. Her ghost and that of her unborn child returned to haunt the squire Just vengeance shall destroy you. The apparition of his wife, And little infant crying, Whom he had bereav’d of life, Came both like furies flying. She killed him while he lay in the arms of his rich new wife, writing ‘his crime in blue Roman letters about his Body, to be an Example to all false-hearted Lovers’.108 Such stories worked as warnings to conniving Lotharios and as a comfort to betrayed women. The stories of male ghosts haunting female lovers who betrayed their promises are much rarer, although Bateman’s Tragedy set in Nottingham was one of the most popular of these stories that appeared in numerous collections in both ballad and chapbook form. Women could be portrayed as the wrongdoers in fictional courtship relations. A beautiful woman who reneged on her promise to marry Bateman prompted the young man to commit suicide on her wedding day to another by hanging himself at the door of the house she was to share with her new, wealthy husband.

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. . . she could never after that, One day of comfort find; For wheresoever she did go, Her fancy did furnish, Young Bateman’s pale and ghastly ghost Appear’d before her eyes. . . . Great cries and grievous groans she heard A voice that sometimes said, O thou art she that I must have, I will not be deny’d. She was saved from death only temporarily by the presence of her unborn child in her womb. However, she knew, as did others, that once her child was born then she was no longer safe from the spirit’s powers. She disappeared shortly after giving birth despite the protection of her friends and family around her childbed.109 Ghost stories were also used to demonstrate the peril of parents who tried to dictate the love matches of their children. One of the effects of the lessening of community and familial control over courtship was that individuals gained greater influence over their love matches and marriages. In part, this was a symptom of the movement of children away from their familial homes for work. If children moved far from their parents then it was inevitable that parents had less power over who they met and formed acquaintances with. Personal choice of marriage partner was important for individuals of all social classes but sometimes much harder to obtain, the richer one’s parents were.110 In stories where parents intervened to split up a young couple and block their path to true love, tragedy often resulted. One of the most popular ballads to be found in both the American and British collections was The Tragical Ballad of the Nobleman’s Cruelty to his Son.111 This was a story of cross-class love, of a young squire who fell in love with his parent’s servant. At first she shunned his advances telling him that he should be courting ladies rather than maids but he persisted with his wooing and she began to return his love. She eventually agreed to become his wife at a private ceremony. They knew that his parents would not approve of their marriage so they kept their union secret even when Susan discovered that she was with child. After her sixth month of pregnancy she could no longer hide the fact from her master and mistress, and once they discovered her condition they threw her out of their home. They disowned their son when they discovered he was the father of poor Susan’s child and

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his mother in a fit of rage threatened to murder them both. They sent their son to sea intending to separate the couple where a cannonball on the Spanish coast killed him. Rumours suggested that his parents engineered his death and shortly afterwards the young squire’s ghost appeared to his parents tormenting them day and night. The apparition appeared in blood, With his head in his hand at the bedside he stood. With three bitter groans he was heard to cry, It was you, cruel mother, caused my destiny, And then with a groan or two vanish’d away, But still he appeared unto them each day.112 In another popular ballad the Plymouth Tragedy a couple fell in love and before the man left for sea they exchanged tokens and agreed to remain constant until his return. In his absence, however, a wealthy merchant requested her parents for her hand in marriage. They accepted and told their daughter that it was her duty to honour their wishes. To distract her from her first true love, they fabricated a letter from a sailor telling her that her lover had died in the East Indies. In her grief, she married the merchant but later learned that William was still alive which in turn caused her death. Her ghost appeared to William. The sight of which caused him to die on her coffin following his return to shore.113 In The Bloody Gardener’s Cruelty a mother unhappy with the woman her son had chosen to marry paid her gardener to murder her. Her son discovered his mother’s crime when a dove appeared to him in the spirit of his lover.114 In another, a wealthy heiress who pledged her love to a lowly man was sent far from home where her parents hoped she would fall out of love. Instead, she died of a broken heart and once her lover learned of her death he also died.115 Other couples who were separated by parental intervention followed different tragic paths. Many men still ended up at sea but the women found themselves in Bedlam, mad with their love.116 You parents all both far and near, By this sad story warning take; Nor to your children be severe, When they their choice in love do make; Let not the love of cursed gold, True lovers from their love withhold.117

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One woman managed to wreak revenge on her father who tried to prevent her union with a sailor by arranging a mock haunting that scared her father to death leaving her rich and independent to marry whom she wished.118 The moral of such stories remained the same – parents should not interfere with the path of true love otherwise tragic consequences would result.

Conclusion Stories in ballads and chapbooks depicted a world where the moral meanings of a birth out of wedlock could be ambiguous. This reflected the difficulties of forming a successful marriage in Britain at this time. For so many of society’s poorest, marriage became much harder to achieve than in periods before. Even if one was lucky enough to make it to the altar, then long-term, stable marriage often remained an illusive dream. Marriage was many poor women’s ticket to some semblance of economic security. Nevertheless as the previous chapter showed, due to high mortality rates, war and desertion a stable marriage was often unattainable for many women in eighteenth-century London. Britain’s quest for imperial glory disrupted family-life across the nation but its effects were felt particularly harshly in the capital. The commonality of the experience of desertion and abandonment by male lovers for both the unmarried as well as the married meant that unions that led to the birth of legitimate and illegitimate children shared many characteristics. Unmarried mothers were often part and parcel of a shared plebeian context. This fluidity of real life was reflected in the literature.119 In some stories, women who faced the prospect of an illegitimate child felt shame, experienced social ostracism and sometimes committed suicide while others dealt with their predicament as best they could, laughed about it, got on with their lives and sought revenge on the men who had betrayed them. For their eighteenth-century female audience, the stories confirmed the widespread nature of their situation, their betrayal and sometimes their powerlessness. But they also provided hope that their lover might return. The endurability of the belief in ghosts made these stories particularly resonant in a society where men reneged on their promises with frightening regularity. The trick of a good ghost story was to make it seem believable to its audience. It needed a natural, everyday setting and the threat that the same could happen to oneself. Ballads and chapbooks that explored eighteenth-century courtship worked as both warnings and a source of comfort for their readers and listeners. There always remained a symbiotic relationship between

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everyday life and the stories related in the ballads. Poor, eighteenthcentury unmarried mothers could do nothing to change the story of their life but the tales related in ballads and chapbooks of men humiliated in front of their mates, read or heard on the streets or within households at work or leisure, allowed poor, pregnant and deserted women the fantasy of revenge on lovers whom many were never to set eyes on again.

4 ‘Craving Charity’: Poor Mothers and the Public Philanthropic Imagination

His Majesty in order to prevent the frequent Murders committed on poor miserable Infants by their Parents . . . incorporated the Governors and Guardians of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children . . .1 During its first years the new foundation was held up as the very embodiment of a humane and civilised society.2 Women facing the prospect of lone motherhood in mid-eighteenthcentury London had a number of institutions that they might have turned to for support. One of these was the Foundling Hospital which spearheaded the philanthropic campaigns of the mid-century and opened its doors to ‘exposed and deserted young children’ in 1741. It admitted almost 19,000 children, the legitimate as well as the illegitimate progeny of London’s poor, over the course of the century.3 This institution was established and supported by people who demonstrated remarkable compassion towards the plight of unmarried mothers and their babies in their attempts to save infant lives. Many acknowledged that the increase in child abandonment during the eighteenth century was due to parental poverty rather than bastardy alone and that they had an obligation to humanity to alleviate the symptoms of the abandonment of children. They recognised that the relinquishment of children was almost always directly related to the experience of poverty. The objects of the Foundling Hospital were therefore legitimate as well as illegitimate children. 67

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The story of the hospital’s origins is familiar and emotive. Thomas Coram, a retired merchant, was driven to establish the hospital after returning early in the eighteenth century from the illimitable and untouched areas of the New World, where human labour was the greatest need, (he) saw several newly born children left deserted to die, on the dunghills in and around London. This horrible waste of human life filled him with indignation and fury. Thomas Coram, the sea captain, made up his mind that this practice should be ended.4 The same populationist concerns that had led to the establishment of London’s lying-in hospitals drove the campaign for the Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century.5 The evocative image of parental neglect and infanticide was, and is, commonly used to represent the necessity of the Foundling Hospital. It had long been accepted that abandoned and neglected children were a major problem in the metropolis. In 1713, Addison had discussed the subject in The Guardian: I will mention a piece of charity which has not yet been exerted amongst us and which deserves our attention the more, because it is practised by most of the nations about us. I mean a provision for foundlings, or for those children who, through want of such a provision, are exposed to the barbarity of cruel and unnatural parents.6 The establishment of Christ’s Hospital, Thomas Rowe’s ‘Colledg of Infants’ and the parish workhouse movement starting in 1723 were all attempts to remedy the problem of child abandonment.7 The movement to establish a foundling hospital during Queen Anne’s reign failed because it was argued ‘That such an Undertaking might seem to encourage Persons in vice, by making too easy Provision for their illegitimate children.’8 The establishment of the Foundling Hospital was dependent upon the concentrated and systematic campaigning of one individual, Thomas Coram.9 Retired and childless, he spent seventeen years trying to garner support for the charity. Throughout the 1730s he networked with the great and the good to spread the news of his scheme, conscious that approval from key individuals would ensure his success. By 1735 he had gained the written endorsement of Dr Richard Mead, the prominent physician, respected JPs, and other noblemen and gentlemen. Of the twenty-one women who signed the Petition to the King,

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including the Duchess of Somerset, Duchess of Bolton, Countess of Cardigan, Countess of Litchfield and the Duchess of Richmond, thirteen were related to each other by blood or marriage. Coram used this ‘cousinhood’ of the aristocracy to gain effective influence.10 Once Coram had presented the King with his Petition, he provided the names of 375 governors, all men with noble, merchant and political backgrounds, to whom the Charter was granted. The patronage of these men and women of wealth and influence made the Foundling Hospital London’s most fashionable charity.11 Apparently he used images of parental neglect and infanticide to gather support from the influential society ladies who provided the key to the successful passage of the Royal Charter.12 However, the Charter itself contained no mention of the charity as specifically catering to the bastard children of unmarried mothers but instead highlighted the high mortality rate caused by the poor laws as the reason for its establishment. It stated that both mothers and fathers had been driven to abandon their children because they were ashamed and could not afford to support them. It is not clear that this shame was the result of illegitimate childbirth. Shame could also be the result of poverty and of the inability to support a child. It is historians who have insisted that the Foundling Hospital was catering to the needs of unmarried mothers specifically.13 John Brownlow was a foundling who rose to become secretary of the hospital from 1849 to 1872. His account of the hospital’s origins has been among the most influential, in it he stated that Coram was driven to set up the hospital because he knew that the source of the evil of abandoned children lay with the desperate woman who fell a victim to the seductions and false promises of designing man, was left to hopeless contumely and irretrievable disgrace. Neither she nor the offspring of her guilt appear to have been admitted within the pale of human compassion: her false first step was her final doom, without even the chance, however desirous, of returning to the road of rectitude. All the consideration which was given to her condition, was the enactment of laws to bring her to punishment . . . The legislature, from time to time, condemned the unhappy wretch to capital punishment who should, in the madness of despair, lift her arm against the child of her guilt; but it never once considered the means by which both parent and child might be saved from destruction . . . In all of them, the crime for which the punishment was awarded, is stated to have been committed from desire in the mother to ‘avoid her shame’.14

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Brownlow, drawing on a sermon preached by Revd Bromley in 1770, goes on to argue that Coram used this image, of the desperation of women trying to preserve their reputation, in every memorial to the wealthy and influential men and women that he targeted to strengthen his campaign.15 But according to the hospital’s General Committee Minutes of 13 December 1739 His Majesty in order to prevent the frequent Murders committed on poor miserable Infants by their Parents to hide their Shame and also to prevent that Inhumane Custom of exposing new Born Children to perish in the Street of being trained up in Idleness and Beggary or Theft Hath after the Example of other Christian Countries by His Royal Charter bearing date the Seventeenth day of October 1739, incorporated the Governors and Guardians of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children and impowered them to receive Contributions and take Subscriptions for that Purpose...16 Although the Minutes hint at the relationship between illegitimacy and shame, they do not state that the hospital was established specifically in response to the abandonment of children by their mothers because of the shame associated with illegitimacy. It suggests that cruel parents, rather than mothers alone, were responsible for the abandonment of children. The particular emphasis on the unmarried mother, as the object of the hospital’s concerns, took place within an entirely different historical context. During the nineteenth century, the unmarried mother captured the public imagination in a wholly different way as new moral categories took centre stage. Until the end of 1801 there is no mention in any rules that the only objects of the charity are bastards. This is something that even Brownlow acknowledged in his voluminous notebooks.17 In 1760, Hanway, a governor involved with most metropolitan charities, attempted to change the name of the hospital to the Orphan Hospital in an attempt to de-stigmatise the label of foundling.18 He argued that Captain Coram had intended the hospital for the children of the poor, whether legitimate or not. Hanway did not believe that the hospital was set up to prevent infanticide I have heard much talk of unlawful amours, the produce of which have been murdered: but I thank God I have not so mean an opinion of human nature, as to think this is the case in half so great a degree as is generally imagined.19

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Indeed, throughout the eighteenth century, the children of the married as well as the unmarried were admitted.20

Establishment and management The first meeting of the governors took place at Somerset House on the Strand on 20 November 1739. At this time, fifty noblemen and gentlemen were chosen to set up the General Committee that would manage the estate and administration of the hospital. The fifty men of the General Committee, whom the governors elected yearly at the annual meeting, managed the administration of the hospital at weekly Wednesday meetings for the next seventy years.21 Many of the active governors on the General Committee were career philanthropists who used metropolitan charities to establish their business reputations and network as members of the Russia Company. They hoped to forge their gentlemanly identities through campaigning for the good of the capital and the nation by increasing the population and improving the morals of the poor.22 These men were representative of the ‘polite and commercial people’ of eighteenth-century Britain. Historians have charted a rise in sentiment during the 1760s and 1770s that led to the involvement of the merchant community in campaigns to alleviate the social and moral problems wreaked by economic change. Summerson has argued that the spate of hospital building in the mid-century period, ‘originated partly in compassion, partly, perhaps, in fear of the seething filth and contagion of working class London, and partly in the anxiety of medical men to come to grips with the most glaring problems of disease’.23 Middling men and women’s motivations for participation in the philanthropic campaigns of the eighteenth century were many and varied but I want to argue that core to their humanitarianism was compassion, even if it was complicated by self-interest as well as other factors.24 The General Committee met at Mr Manaton’s Great Room at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand on 29 November 1739. Here they discussed possible sources of funding, the experience of Foundling hospitals in Europe and the proposed site of the hospital. Over the next few months these men of wealth and influence helped to lay the foundations of the charity. Women were not admitted as governors to the charity but the General Court did request that they might Receive the Assistance of the Fair Sex, who, although excluded by Custom from the management of publick Business, are by their natural

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Tenderness and Compassion peculiarly enabled to advise in the Care and Management of Children; and they may, without Trouble to themselves, see the Oeconomy of the Hospital, and communicate their Observations to any Governor, or to your Committee, by a Memorandum put into the Charity Box, or in such Manner as they shall think fit.25 The governors’ efforts were consolidated by an Act passed in 1740 which granted the charity greater power than the Charter had originally stipulated. To demarcate the responsibilities of the hospital and the surrounding parishes the Act stated that no children of the hospital or any member of staff could gain a settlement there. Moreover, parish officers, fearing bastard children becoming chargeable to their parish, were forbidden to molest any person bringing a child to the hospital. If caught the parish officer would be liable to pay 40 shillings as a fine. It was established, therefore, that the parish had no authority within the hospital’s grounds.26 Disputes over settlement ensured that tensions between the hospital and the parish continued unabated. The parish officers of St Andrew’s, Holborn, attended the General Committee on 21 March 1740 and expressed their concern regarding the abandonment of children within their boundaries. The governors assured the parish officers that they would let them know when a woman was refused admission for her child so that a watchful eye could be kept on her after her exit from the hospital.27 The governors later resolved that they should employ a watchman to prevent such occurrences. Still unable to prevent children being abandoned in the environs of the hospital, they agreed that they should give St Andrew’s £12 a year towards the cost of a watchman employed by the parish to prevent children being ‘dropped’.28 Nevertheless, despite all their efforts, children continued to be abandoned in the surrounding parishes.29 On 17 October 1740, the General Committee agreed to buy land belonging to the Earl of Salisbury, north of Ormond Street between Lambs Conduit and Southampton Row. The construction of the hospital was now begun. For the time being, they planned to use a house in Hatton Garden as the site of a temporary hospital. The governors recruited staff in preparation for its grand opening. The rules stated that all officers, nurses and servants had to be people of good character and unencumbered with families of their own to guarantee their loyalty and devotion. The steward/secretary had to be a person ‘of unblemished character, diligent, sober, and a good Accountant’ in order to attend to his duties.30 These included preparing the tickets and billets for the

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reception of children, noting down the distinguishing marks of each child and then the circumstances of its reception. He had to look after the account and subscription books, and he had immediate control of the male staff in the hospital. The porter had to live in the hospital and man the door from six in the morning until ten at night from Lady Day to Michaelmas; and from seven in the morning until nine at night for the rest of the year. The messenger was also required to reside in the hospital. He had to act as doorkeeper to all meetings of the governors, deliver all summonses and to go out on messages. It was ordered that the matron had to be 50 years of age or above, live in the hospital and tend to the immediate care of the children and the female staff. On 28 January 1740, the General Committee resolved that children under two months of age, and not suffering from the French pox, evil, leprosy or any similar diseases would be received into the hospital on the following Lady Day. The secretary placed adverts detailing the day and hour of reception in the local papers and in public places. These places were not specified in the minutes until June 1757 when it was recorded that notices should be pinned on ‘the corners of publick Streets, and other places of publick resort’.31 The General Court had set out the rules for admission at their meeting on 20 October 1740. The porter was required to let every woman and her child into the hospital until it was declared full. The children were then delivered to the chief nurse and the apothecary who inspected it to ascertain whether it was diseased or too old to be admitted. The mother would wait while her child was examined to see if he or she was to be admitted or not. If the child was accepted, it was the duty of the steward to record the sex, supposed age, time brought, description of the child (to include distinguishing marks), clothes and any tokens brought with the child. The child would be baptised the following Sunday, unless already christened. On 25 March 1741, the General Committee met at 7 p.m. and according to the daily minutes, crowds having learned of the details of the reception from the local papers and the adverts pinned in public places had been gathering outside the hospital for hours. By the time the doors were finally opened at 8 o’clock in the evening, the porter had to work all night to prevent the throng from gaining entry. At midnight, thirty children had been admitted and the house was declared full. The other applicants were informed that they should try again when a vacancy was next publicised. We are told that On this Occasion the Expressions of Grief of the Women whose Children could not be admitted were Scarcely more observable than

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those of some of the Women who parted with their Children, so that a more moving scene can’t well be imagined. The following day, the Minutes continue many Charitable Persons of Fassion [sic] visited the Hospital, and whatever Share Curiosity might have in inducing any of them to Come, none went away without shewing most Sensible Marks of Compassion for the helpless Objects of this Charity and few (if any) without contributing something for their Relief.32 Following the conventions of the Paris Foundling Hospital, it was intended as soon as possible after admission that children would be sent to country nurses. During the following reception day, 17 April, another thirty children were admitted. The same number were admitted again on 8 May, and twenty-three on 5 June. Poor Londoners fought each other for the few vacancies available for their children. From the beginning, provisions were made regarding the reclaiming of children, which suggests that the hospital was not used simply for the abandonment of children. The authorities recognised that parents might use the institution as a temporary expedient during times of particular hardship.33 The same Court resolved that when a person intended to reclaim a child he or she had to attend the Daily Committee. Here they would be examined as to the right they had to the child, their economic circumstances, and whether they were able and willing to provide for the child. They were also required to pay the child’s maintenance while in the hospital and an additional sum as security. If they satisfied the Committee that they had a legitimate right to receive their son or daughter, the hospital’s records were searched to locate them. If the child was found alive he or she was returned, provided the person applying fulfilled the other terms of the agreement. From 1750, great care was taken in recording the details of tokens left with the children to ensure that all children could be discovered after admission. The lists of the details of tokens, and some actual tokens themselves, were contained in a book. Most tokens were pieces of material from clothes the children were dressed in when they arrived. Others consisted of jewellery, poems, notes and coins. 34 These mementoes given by mothers to their children on admission are testimony to the complex emotions that led to the abandonment of a child, their pain at separation as well as the love that many mothers felt for their children.

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These detailed records aided the discovery of children but they also saved mothers and fathers from prosecutions for infanticide. Concerned neighbours often informed on women and men whom they suspected of killing their children. In 1758, Martha Bateman applied to the General Committee to prove to Justice Fielding that instead of killing her child she had brought her son to the hospital on 7 December of the previous year when he was admitted. She was called in and examined along with the Billet Book in which her child’s token had been placed. The secretary certified to Justice Fielding that Martha’s son had been admitted and not murdered.35 Similarly, from Maidstone gaol, Edward Beeston pleaded to the governors for proof that his child had been admitted rather than murdered.36 The construction of a permanent building continued. This was designed by Theodore Jacobsen, architect and steelyard merchant, to contain about four hundred children and staff. The building was constructed of plain brick and had two wings directly opposite to each other, each built to house almost two hundred children who slept two to a bed. The east wing also contained the Court Room as well as the Committee room, the kitchen was located next to the chapel and was connected to the dining rooms just behind the administrative areas. These wings flanked the chapel and the entire building framed a courtyard that opened on to Red Lion Street.37 The secretary’s office and the steward’s apartment were situated at the front of the building at the end of the east wing. The building was completed in 1745 and the children were transferred from Hatton Garden to Lambs Conduit Fields on 1 October of that year. It was consciously and deliberately designed to appeal both to the emerging philanthropic community and to a wider public audience. The building represented the ‘cardinal principle of Georgian town planning’, which was ‘the creation of urban units containing accommodation for all classes.’38

Fashion and the Foundling Hospital The Foundling Hospital fulfilled a multiplicity of purposes. As well as saving the lives of pauper children, it represented the ‘display of doing good’, allowed the alleviation of the poverty of poor parents as well as the possibility of interaction between mothers, fathers and their children. Benefit concerts provided by Handel from May of 1750 up until his death in 1759, as well as an annual performance of his Messiah until 1777, provided immensely popular and valuable occasions for fundraising. His first performance was enjoyed by an audience of

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1000 but many others had to be turned away. Jacobsen, the original architect, was ordered to build an extension onto the chapel to accommodate the sheer numbers who hoped to attend a performance of Handel’s oratorio. The building was completed in 1753. Fundraising breakfasts and dinners were just as successful. The requests for the 1024 tickets available for a Ladies Breakfast held in 1747 were so numerous that the hospital took the caution of nailing the hospital windows to prevent uninvited guests from gaining entry. Two years later the hospital had learnt from experience that they had to employ seven men to control the crowds at another breakfast.39 The art collection established in the 1740s, musical performances and the spectacle of the abandoned children drew hundreds of visitors to the hospital, many of whom donated huge sums to the charity. On Sundays wealthy and fashionable guests overcrowded the hospital chapel to watch the christenings of the children.40 So much so that after the service, the Committee ordered that the doors at the ends of the arcade and of all the ground rooms be locked up every Sunday afternoon. After prayers were completed, apart from the governors and the hospital’s servants, visitors were forbidden from going upstairs. The doors at the north end of the room, where prayers were held, had to be secured.41 Some foundlings anticipated the benefits of wealthy visitors coming to see them. Several had to be admonished for asking them for money. The governors accused some nurses of encouraging the children to beg. These women were threatened with dismissal if caught not reporting monetary gifts made to the children by visitors. Guests were informed of this resolution on a board placed in the vestibule and at the iron gate of the hospital.42 It is doubtful, however, if the practice ended. It is clear from the minutes that children continued to communicate with visitors.43 In 1753, the governors converted one of the kitchens in the hospital into a shop ‘where the children might work in public for all passers-by to see the virtue and utility of the experiment’.44 Such occasions were also used by mothers, relatives and friends who attempted to stay in contact with their children while under the care of the institution. The General Committee Minutes report incidences where relatives tried to discover the names given to children once they had been admitted and the names of the nurses to whom children had been sent. The Committee prohibited the discovery of such information. Nurses found trying to learn the former identities of children would have their charges taken away from them.45 The Committee felt that the practice was so widespread that copies of the resolution were printed and delivered to every country nurse and fixed up on each door of the taking-in ward, and the other

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public thoroughfares in the hospital, deterring mothers from trying to stay in contact with their sons and daughters. Masters and mistresses who took foundling children as apprentices were frequently irritated by parents trying to approach their children.46 The General Committee resolved that parents could only keep in touch with their children if the child’s master or mistress permitted it. Even parish officers had to be told that mothers could not write to them requesting that they find out what had become of their infants.47 The General Committee was happy to let parents reclaim their children provided that they could maintain them but while the children remained in their care, parents were prevented from learning the whereabouts and condition of their offspring. However, the spectacle that the charity provided often enabled mothers to keep in touch with their children. The hospital catered to the needs of the elite as well as the poor. During the 1740s and 1750s, it became a Mecca for the fashionable and wealthy. William Hogarth, who presented the hospital with his famous portrait of Thomas Coram in 1740, eyed the Foundling Hospital as a space to display the work of English artists in his search for the foundation of a Royal Academy. He was one of the 375 original governors of the hospital. The other artists who contributed their work to the hospital for free were also made honorary governors. Although Hogarth’s presence at committee meetings was only ever sporadic, his support for the charity never waned. He even had Foundling children to stay with him and his wife Anne, in Chiswick.48 His suggestion that the leading artists of the day should supply the hospital with free samples of their work resulted in the creation of a collection that some have called ‘an embryonic National Gallery of Art’.49 Many of the major pieces on the walls of the Court Room drew on Biblical stories of the rescue of children. The collection began with Francis Hayman’s The Finding of the Infant Moses in the Bullrushes (Figure 4.1), followed by Hogarth’s Moses Brought before Pharoah’s Daughter (Figure 4.2). Joseph Highmore’s Hagar and Ishmael took the story of Ishmael from Genesis as its source, and James Will’s Little Children Brought to Christ was based on a story in the gospel of St Luke’s. John Rysbrack contributed a sculpture of Charity that was placed over the fireplace in the Court Room, representing children employed in navigation and husbandry being trained for the national good. Several other smaller paintings, one of the Foundling and seven other London hospitals, were hung on either side of the larger paintings. Other walls and rooms in the hospital contained portraits of governors and benefactors including, Hogarth’s Mr Thomas Coram, which was hung in the Secretary’s office; Hudson’s Mr Milner and

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Figure 4.1 The Finding of the Infant Moses in the Bullrushes, 1749, Francis Hayman (© Coram Family, reproduced with permission from the Foundling Museum)

Mr Jacobsen; Ramsey’s Dr Mead, placed in his room; and Highmore’s Mr Emerson.50 The collection was opened to the public on the occasion of another fundraising dinner on 1 April 1747.51 Many of the paintings were of the great and the good who were responsible for the establishment and management of the hospital but others represented scenes of charity, abandonment, infanticide and London life that were current at the time. These paintings were viewed not only by the administrative and the medical staff of the hospital and by its aristocratic visitors but also by the people who entered the hospital in order to have their children admitted as well as their children once admission had been obtained.52 The art contributed to the hospital’s ethos of beneficence and need in its biblical, mythical and contemporary metropolitan images. The Foundling Hospital was constructed and decorated to appeal to both the elite and the poor. It catered to and represented the needs of different social classes during the eighteenth century. According to Solkin, ‘the building had to serve a dual purpose: it was to be both an

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Figure 4.2 Moses Brought before Pharoah’s Daughter, 1746, William Hogarth (© Coram Family, reproduced with permission from the Foundling Museum)

institution for abandoned children and a site of polite assembly, a place to care for and educate the poor and to refine and entertain their social superiors’.53 Samuel Wale, a founder member of the Royal Academy, prolific draughtsmen and book illustrator, captured this brilliantly in his drawing of 1749 entitled A Perspective View of the Foundling Hospital with Emblematic Figures (Figure 4.3).54 He represented the hospital using two juxtaposed images, one of rich men and women, opulently dressed ambling along through the front entrance, with children skipping around the statue of Venus, and men chatting and enjoying the company to be found in the grounds of the hospital. They were coming to view the children, the art collection and to attend chapel. The other image is of poor women, modestly dressed, sombrely and slowly queuing past the statue of the goddess Fortuna, holding a wheel of fortune. They entered through the back entrance with babes in their arms hoping to gain admission for their children by ballot. The etchings demonstrate recognition of the different requirements and purposes of the hospital as well as the conflicting motivations of

80

(a)

(b)

Figure 4.3 A Perspective view of the Foundling Hospital with Emblematic Figures, Samuel Wade (© Coram Family, reproduced with permission from the Foundling Museum)

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the charity’s benefactors. What is key to Wale’s representation of the poor women who were objects of the charity is misfortune. Misfortune of many kinds led women to try to gain admission for their children into the Foundling Hospital. These women were the victims of circumstance, of poverty and powers outside their control. Misfortune both represented and confirmed the experiences of many plebeian Londoners, especially women during the eighteenth century. Misfortune was also one of the ways in which individuals of all social classes made sense of unmarried motherhood in eighteenth-century London. But these unfortunate women were dependent upon the fortunes of their benefactors. The charity and the poor that it served was dependent upon the funds provided by rich, more fortunate benefactors who frequented the institution as a cultural, political and social locale. These funds and the management of the charity were partly founded on the desire for these people to be seen to be ‘doing good’. Their humanitarianism was facilitated by their wealth. The etchings represented the interdependency of the elite and the poor who created, managed and used the hospital. Hogarth and his art collection were crucial to this construction of the Foundling Hospital as a fashionable charity in the mid-eighteenth century. The art represented and explored important themes related to the establishment of the charity, its management and the demand for its services. It also enables us to question the automatic association between the Foundling Hospital and illegitimacy. In Hogarth’s letterhead for the Foundling Hospital, Coram takes centre stage, clad in robes, with the Royal Charter under his arm. He looks carefully down at a desperately weeping woman with a dropped dagger at her feet. To her left lies an abandoned naked baby, an image familiar to us from Gin Lane, and behind her another woman gathers up another neglected baby that has been left in a bush. Coram guides the desperate woman at his feet to the entrance of the hospital. Some of the boys are waving at ships on the sea, suggesting their future as soldiers and sailors but they might also be alluding to Coram’s past, another two hold a sickle and rake, suggesting their future work as agricultural labourers, others on the porch will enter the building trades. The girls with their brushes will be trained in domestic service while one with a spinning wheel suggests that she might enter the textile trade. The boy receiving the embrace on the steps is supposed to emphasise the compassion of the charity.55 The hospital could provide these children with an education and training out of the reach of their parents. The story being told in the letterhead suggests that women required the aid of the Foundling Hospital otherwise they would have to abandon their children – under bushes and bridges and

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on dunghills. But the reasons for the abandonment of children are not explored. These abandoned children were associated with their mothers rather than their fathers but it is not clear that these mothers are necessarily unmarried. All mothers, married or not, shouldered the responsibility of childcare. A clear link between illegitimacy and the abandonment of children is not made. This might have been because to have done so would have ignored the many other objects that the charity was established to protect. These included foundlings of all types: orphans, children of widows, married parents, of fugitives, and ‘the spurious children of good family whose disgrace may be concealed by the children being placed in this Hospital . . . on payment of £100’.56 Moses Brought before Pharoah’s Daughter, by Hogarth in 1746 (Figure 4.2), and The Finding of the Infant Moses in the Bullrushes, by Hayman in 1746 (Figure 4.1), parallel the admission of Foundling infants and the returning of the Foundlings to London after nursing in the country. Hayman’s painting represents the infant Moses found in the bullrushes first being brought to Pharoah’s daughter and then fortuitously, for his mother, being sent to nurse with her. Hogarth’s painting depicts the later returning of Moses after being nursed by his mother. As she receives payment from the Pharoah’s servant for nursing her child, a recent cleaning of the painting has revealed the tears gushing down her face as she relinquishes the care of her son to Pharoah’s daughter.57 David Bindman argues that Hogarth’s depiction is striking because of its ‘warmth of feeling’ compared with Hayman’s and the other biblical pictures that hung in the Court Room.58 Moses stands between his nurse and mother. His nurse is being paid for the deliverance of her child to Pharoah’s daughter, his new adoptive mother, who sits graciously welcoming her child with outstretched arm but remaining in ignorance of the child’s parentage despite the gossiping going on behind her between her two servants. Moses is torn between leaving his true mother, he hangs on to her skirt while holding his hand limply towards the Princess before being parted from her. Again the story of Moses was not one of illegitimacy but of desperation and abandonment and one that many women who brought their children for admission might identify with. In 1750, Hogarth offered his March of the Guards to Finchley (Figure 4.4) as a prize in a lottery. He made out 2000 tickets, sold 1843 and donated all the unsold tickets to the Foundling Hospital. Among the batch of 157 that he gave away was the winning ticket. The painting was delivered to the governors on the night of 30 April 1750 and was hung in the Committee room.59 In the painting, Hogarth recorded British soldiers on their way up to Scotland to fight the Jacobite rebels at the Tottenham

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Figure 4.4 The March of the Guards to Finchley, 1750, William Hogarth (© Coram Family, reproduced with permission from the Foundling Museum)

Court turnpike. The painting is divided in two, which was typical of many of Hogarth’s compositions. The left side provides the context for what is good, the moral, and the right explores what is bad, or immoral. Legitimacy is represented on the left and illegitimacy as well as excess on the right. A contrast can also be made between shadow and light. On the right, the King’s Head Tavern, is represented as a cat-house (a familiar eighteenth-century term for a brothel) kept by a well-known procuress, Madam Douglas of Covent Garden, who can be seen praying for the safe return of her soldier customers, while her whores lean out of the windows reaching towards their clients. Aligned with the sign of Charles II, who had no legitimate children, is the barren tree representing the Stuart line. If you look at the opposite of the painting the tree is alive. The ‘Tottenham Court Nursery’ sign refers to Taylor’s boxing school, you can see the boxers beneath, and Giles Gardiner, the inn-keeper’s actual name, is written under the sign of Adam and Eve, the legitimate parents of humankind. In the foreground on the left is a small family bidding farewell to the father and husband going off to war. The women and children are in tears. In the centre the grenadier is torn between the

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pregnant woman on his left drawing him towards the Adam and Eve and the darkly dressed woman, yanking him towards the brothel and the disruptive forces on the right. The soldier is kissing the milkmaid, causing her wares to be spilt (which was a sign of sexual excess) and being gathered by another soldier in his hat while a chimney sweeper waits his turn. This is all watched over by the pie-man who laughs while his pies are being stolen by another soldier, and behind him a keg had been punctured so that soldiers can steal some drink. These frolics lead us to the group in the far right. A drink of water is offered to a paralytic soldier, which he rejects in favour of a glass of gin offered to him by a sutler whose baby reaches for the same. This infant can be seen suffering from the symptoms of infant alcohol syndrome, which was an image used by Hogarth in his well-known Gin Lane. The group is meant as a parody of the Good Samaritan. All of this liquid excess runs into a puddle by the feet of the drunken and collapsed soldier where abandoned chicks flap in search of their mother – who lies captured in the pocket of the soldier offering the flask.60 Paulson has suggested that the baby chicks separated from their mother informs us of the fragmentation that takes place not only as a result of war but also as a result of life in general.61 From the mid- to late eighteenth-century migration, urbanisation, the anonymity that urban life offered, the experience of constant war and poverty amongst plebeian Londoners ensured that illegitimacy and the abandonment of children were much more common and therefore morally ambiguous than might otherwise have been the case. Hogarth explores this ambiguity together with the experience of poverty in all of his paintings given to the Foundling Hospital. Moreover, as an individual he represented both the ethos of the poor and their benefactors. He had grown up in Smithfield and, in the course of his life, suffered the ups and downs of fortune common to many eighteenth-century Londoners. In her compelling biography of Hogarth, Jenny Uglow states that she first fell in love with him because, ‘He drew ordinary, flawed people in everyday settings and told powerful stories, bawdy and violent, appealing and grim. He eyed his city, its posturing rich and flailing poor.’ His youth was spent in one of London’s poorest areas, Smithfield, where he developed an awareness and understanding of poverty that was to feed through to his later work and continue for the rest of his life. His own family had been stricken with debt and his father confined to the Fleet. But like many individuals who grew up in the City during the early years of the eighteenth century, he made the decision to move west to take up an apprenticeship as an engraver, intending to make his fortune in Covent Garden and Leicester Square. Soon bored by the conditions of

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his apprenticeship he left to become a painter, and joined the innovative artist’s academy in St Martin’s Lane.62 Hogarth was eager from an early stage in his career to establish his reputation as a great artist but he coupled this with a burning desire for increased social status.63 His involvement in the charities of the 1740s, like many others, represented his striving for status and recognition as well as social improvement.64 The Foundling Hospital captured Hogarth’s imagination ‘as a patriot, [and] as a man who believed in public benevolence’.65 He used his portrait of Coram, which deliberately broke with conventions, as an attack on the pompous and titled.66 He used it to symbolise the coming of the age of commerce as a cultural force in eighteenth-century England.67 The majority of the men actively involved in London’s mid-century charities were merchants rather than aristocrats. The landed rich were used as symbolic heads of these establishments but it was the middle classes, men such as Hogarth and Hanway, who made up the bulk of the men who managed and administered them. In the move to acquire status and recognition, Hogarth never lost sight of the social usefulness of his art.68 In much the same way, other members of London’s philanthropic community made it their life work to improve the state of the poor by recording their plight and in their attempts at reform. Hogarth’s awareness of the complicated and morally ambiguous realities of everyday life fed through his involvement in the charity and his commitment towards it as well as the work he produced for the Foundling Hospital. In his scenes of metropolitan everyday lives, relationships and encounters, Hogarth captured the insecurities of life for eighteenth-century Londoners.69 His involvement with the hospital also represented the meeting of the concerns, expectations and motivations of the elite and the poor – the frequent interaction between those who managed the charity and the women who attempted to have their children admitted. The ambivalent status of, and the sympathy for, the unmarried mother and her illegitimate child were fundamental to the management of the Foundling Hospital until the late 1790s. The reasons for the hospital’s establishment, its rules and practices as well as its founders’ recognition of the constraints of poverty for plebeian Londoners was represented in these paintings and etchings displayed on the hospital’s walls.

The ballot The demand for the hospital was overwhelming. There were only a handful of beds available in the hospital’s temporary premises and yet often over a hundred women a week tried to gain admission for their

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children. Such a situation led to the unruly scenes at admission times that the governors aimed to end. As the news of the hospital spread throughout London and afar, applications by women increased all the time so that there were frequently one hundred women at the door when twenty children could only be received. This gave rise to the disgraceful scene of women scrambling and fighting to get to the door, that they might be of the fortunate few to reap the benefit of the Asylum.70 It was decided that a balloting system would provide a more acceptable admission process. The taking-in procedure described in the General Committee meeting of 27 October 1742 continued for the next fifteen years. All the women who brought children to be admitted were ordered to enter the Court Room and to sit on benches placed around the room and not to move from their seats until the ballot was completed (Figure 4.5).71

Figure 4.5 The Admission of Children by Ballot, 1749, Samuel Wade (© Coram Family, reproduced with permission from the Foundling Museum)

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The women were supervised by housemaids, laundry maids or nurses to prevent children being ‘dropped’ or ‘other Tricks being put upon the Hospital’.72 As many white balls as there were children to be taken in were placed in a bag or box with five red balls for every twenty children (or according to the numbers involved) with as many black balls to equal the number of women present. This bag was passed around the Court Room while each woman drew a ball. Those who drew a white ball were sent to the Examination Room to be inspected by the matron. All those who drew a black ball would be turned away under the watchful eye of the porter, who was employed to ensure that the woman did not abandon her child to the care of the surrounding parish. The women that drew red balls were taken into another room to wait until the women who had picked white balls had been examined and either accepted or rejected. If a child was rejected, the ballot would be taken again until all the vacancies had been filled. If any woman desired to keep her identity secret, the matron or another official of the hospital could draw for them. During the ballot, the doors to the garden and the Committee room had to be kept locked. To prevent any suspicion of fraud or favouritism, the ballot balls had to be drawn in front of all the women. This system also proved to be extremely unpopular. Demand continued to outweigh the capacity of the hospital. Many more women with children attended admission days than it was ever possible to provide for. McClure has calculated that from January 1750 to December 1755, 2523 children were brought to the hospital on admission days. Out of these, only 783 were taken in. The governors became convinced that they should expand the powers of the charity by obtaining further funding and support.73 Criticisms of the hospital became louder as the years passed. The appalling state of health and dress of children brought to the hospital not only encouraged a high mortality rate but also attested to the extreme poverty of the children and their parents. In 1746, the Committee ordered that women who tried to remove clothing from a child about to be admitted to the hospital would be sent away immediately even if they had drawn a white ball.74 Another criticism of the balloting process focussed on allegations of bribery and corruption. Lucy Brown swore to Justice James Chaffey of Dorchester that she had colluded with a nurse named Mary Johnson, who worked at the Foundling, to get her child into the hospital. She alleged that she agreed to pay the nurse 12 shillings before bringing her child from Dorchester to London in March 1753. In exchange, Mary gave Lucy a white ball that she held in her hand while she placed her hand into the bag and then drew the same ball out again. Allegedly,

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after gaining entry for her child, she gave the nurse 12 shillings at an alehouse in St Giles’. Nevertheless, the allegations were dismissed when it was discovered that no child had been admitted in March 1753 and there was no nurse by the name of Mary Johnson who worked at the hospital.75 Either Lucy Brown was lying, or she was mistaken as to the nurse’s identity or the hospital had provided an effective smokescreen to dismiss criticism of its admission system. Throughout the 1740s and 1750s, the anonymity of the children brought in was always guaranteed. Children were returned to London from their nurses after three years until March 1755 when the age limit was raised to five.76 From then the children would receive a Christian and useful education before gaining apprenticeships. Foundlings were obliged to attend the chapel services every Sunday. It was here that the governors insisted that they were constantly reminded of the lowness of their condition. The prayers and sermons were intended to enable them to learn humility and gratitude to learn to undergo with Contentment the most servile and laborious Offices; for notwithstanding the innocence of Children, yet as they are exposed and abandoned by their Parents, they ought to submit to the lowest Stations, and should not be educated in such a manner as may put them upon a level with the Children of Parents who have the Humanity and Virtue to preserve them, and Industry to Support them.77 Boys were trained for sea service or husbandry when they reached the proper ages. While they grew up, they were encouraged to be engaged in work or manufacture which required physical activity in the open air so that they might be ‘early inured to Labour and Changes of the Weather’.78 Girls were to be instructed and employed in all sorts of household work, in kitchen, laundry and chambers, to fashion them for service. They also learned how to sew, knit and spin. Others were employed in winding silk and making nets.79 The apprenticeship of children came up for discussion in 1749. When people applied to take an apprentice their character was inquired into by the secretary who wrote to the minister and churchwardens of the parish where the person applying resided asking them to inform him of the person’s character and circumstances. The committee would then take a decision as to whether that person was suitable. It was ordered that no girl could be placed out as an apprentice to an unmarried man. It was also desirable that the person applying for an apprentice was a married householder. After 12 May 1756 they could only be of the Protestant religion.80

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General Reception, 1756–1760 As part of the charity’s plans for expansion, a Special Committee was set up to prepare a petition to parliament asking for state funds. This was presented to the House of Commons on 10 March 1756.81 On 30 April 1756, the House of Commons voted to give the governors of the hospital £10,000 to finance an indiscriminate admission system. Some have argued that the concern over the casualties lost as a result of the Seven Years’ War, and a humanitarian wave sparked off by the establishment of other new charities at this time, influenced the government in the hospital’s favour.82 Populationist concerns were heightened in a period rife with reports of the damaging effects of high mortality rates for Britain. Similarly, the desire for economic expansion drove many men of the merchant and commercial classes to support charities that were seen to encourage population growth. As a result of indiscriminate admission, all children that were offered to the hospital from 2 June 1756, under the age of two months had to be accepted at all times of day and night.83 The age was increased to six months in December 1756 and twelve months in June 1757.84 The hospital advertised these changes in the Daily Gazeteer and Daily Advertiser, and they pinned notices in the usual places.85 If a child exceeded the age of two months but was under the age of two, it could be received if £100 was donated to the hospital.86 Between 3 November 1756 and 1 March 1771, seventeen children were admitted on the payment of £100.87 A sign was placed above the entrance of the receiving room detailing the admission rules. Every person that brought a child had to enter the lodge. The chief receiving nurse then examined the child to check that it was below the age limit. If not, the child would be handed back to the person that brought it. The staff had to take particular care that the person left without dropping it near by.88 Problems with the system became apparent early on. The flood of applicants put immediate pressures on the services of the hospital. On the first day of the General Reception, 117 children were received. By 30 June 1757, 450 children had been accepted and the governors were becoming desperate for money. Numbers had far exceeded the expectations of the Foundling’s governors. They planned that the annual intake of children would reach about 500. In fact, about 300 children a month were being presented to the hospital. The building was often crowded with potential applicants. During the first year of this indiscriminate admission system, 3300 children were received. The lodge used by people waiting while their children were stripped and examined was often the site of bottlenecks. Accusations of

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bribery and fraud multiplied. In October 1756, the porter was discharged for accepting a bribe of 2 guineas to receive a child older than two months. Two weeks later, a watchman was fired for the same reason. Rumours and criticism escalated in the national press. In May 1757, an article was published in the Literary Magazine, the London Chronicle, and the Daily Gazeteer that accused the hospital of breeding the children in irreligion.89 Many people were unhappy with children being brought from all across the country to be admitted into the hospital. Some claimed that enterprising individuals were profiting from the conveying of children to London from the provinces.90 It was thought that many infants were too weak to survive the journey.91 If they made it to the hospital alive, it was unlikely that they would survive another trip to their country nurse. Additionally, there was not enough room in the hospital in London to contain all sick infant applicants, who numbered thousands during the four years of the General Reception period and who contributed to the extremely high mortality rate. Accounts of children being forcibly taken from their mothers and brought to the hospital by their fathers and/or parish officers concerned about settlement and maintenance payments horrified many observers.92 The Committee vowed that any person who had a child taken away from them by force would have the child restored to them and they would prosecute the offenders.93 Nevertheless, the practice continued. In 1759, the governors ordered an advertisement to be printed in the Evening and Daily Advertiser to warn persons against forcibly taking children to the hospital.94 Mary Curl travelled from Stevenage in Hertfordshire to London and presented the General Committee with a petition on 6 June 1759. She claimed that the previous Thursday she had given birth to twins, one of whom died. A labourer and neighbour of hers, Edward Anthony with help from Thomas Williams, a local constable, forced their way into her mother’s house and broke down two doors to reach Mary. They then snatched the child and brought it to the Foundling Hospital in London. Luckily, Mary’s child was still alive and could be restored to her.95 Parish officers were often guilty of coercing children into the hospital to prevent bastard children becoming a financial burden on their parish. The officers of the workhouse at St Andrew’s, Holborn, were convicted of kidnapping the child of a woman in the workhouse to prevent them from providing for it. The mother spent six months in St George’s Hospital recovering from the attack.96 Mothers reclaiming children who had been forcibly taken away from them did not have to pay the hospital any maintenance or provide security for their child. Other parents who reclaimed their children were still

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required to make these payments. However, after January 1760, reclaimers did not have to pay the costs for the maintenance of their child if the child was found to be dead after the billet books were searched to identify them.97 At the same time, the number of parents accused of infanticide increased.98 To discourage such cases the hospital started to issue receipts to parents bringing their children for admission.99 The mortality rates remained extremely high during this period. Almost all children received and kept in London because they were too ill to travel to the country to their nurses died within the first year of their taking in. The level of mortality for the period from 1756 to 1760 was 61.02 per cent. However, this rate compared favourably with the parish workhouse, which was estimated by Hanway to be at almost 100 per cent.100 Out of the 16,326 children admitted, 10,000 died. Of those sent to the country, 53.28 per cent perished. The youngest children received were the most likely to die first. Between 25 March 1741 and 29 September 1760, 75 per cent of deaths occurred among babies under six months of age. From 1756, this proportion increased to 85 per cent, and for children under one year, to 95 per cent.101 Newspaper reports and articles that criticised the hospital grew in number. Satirical poems were published thriving on the widespread belief that the hospital promoted illegitimacy.102 Anonymous letters to newspapers and pamphlets concerned themselves with similar accusations.103 Jonas Hanway, governor and eager campaigner for parish reform, took it upon himself to complain about the process of indiscriminate admission but to defend the principle of the hospital against its critics Nobody conceived it would become a traffic in children: it was never imagined that so many putative fathers would commit violence on maternal affection; nor did we dream that parish officers in the country would act so unlike men, as to force a child from a woman’s breast . ..104 He claimed that the hospital had saved many children despite the high mortality rate. It could not, however, cope with the numbers that the General Reception period had entailed. He argued that the Foundling should only accept children within the Bills of Mortality. He also stated that the hospital should change its name to the Orphan Hospital to de-stigmatise the label of foundling. He argued that four groups should have been eligible for admission: the legitimate infants of very poor people within the Bills of Mortality who could not maintain their children; illegitimate children born to parents that could not afford to care for them; legitimate or illegitimate orphans or children whose parents

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had deserted them and lastly, children who had been found deserted in a public place.105 Hanway believed, like many others, that the secrecy that surrounded the admission of children lay at the heart of the Foundling’s problems we see how powerfully nature works in the breast of very poor women with regard to maternal love, we may with great probability conclude, that many of the children sent to the Hospital are not born of parents who are poor, but of such as are able to take care of them, and would not do it, but that they are covered under the umbrage of secrecy . . . Hanway was convinced that legitimate rather than illegitimate children were responsible for the mammoth growth in admission numbers during the General Reception period.106 Historians who have researched periods of indiscriminate admission in Europe’s Foundling homes have also suggested that many such foundlings were legitimate rather than illegitimate.107 This should encourage us to question the automatic association between foundlings and bastards in any discussion of child abandonment. The unprecedented demands that were being made on the hospital, the high mortality rate, the rumours and stories of fraud, kidnap and suffering convinced many members of parliament, pamphleteers and political commentators that the period of the General Reception should end. Many believed that the experience of the Foundling Hospital from 1756 proved that the poor were largely ‘lazy, irresponsible, and without moral standards’.108 Andrew has argued that the Foundling Hospital could only guarantee continued support and popularity so long as it was seen to cater to the needs of Britain as an expanding economic nation and a country frequently at war.109 After 1760, the charities in London that fared best in terms of subscribers and funds were those that ‘appealed to a “commercial sense”, that promised the quickest returns and the greatest operating efficiency’.110 Between 1770 and 1790, there occurred a marked shift in attitudes towards charity provision. The charity was to feel the aftereffects of the disasters and criticisms of the General Reception period for the rest of its history. What emerged was a strong reaction against institutional care, disquiet about the importance of encouraging population growth (when the death rate was in decline and the numbers of migrants arriving in London were increasing everyday) and a determination to destroy dependency. It is for these reasons, Donna Andrew argues, that the Foundling Hospital was hit the hardest.111 By 1760, the House of Commons concluded that indiscriminate admission ‘has been attended with many evil consequences, and ought

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to be prevented’.112 The funding stopped and no more children were admitted from 25 March. The public was informed via weekly adverts placed in the usual papers and by a nationwide notice distributed to the General Post Office, all post masters and towns and all churchwardens, and overseers of the poor. Except for the orphaned offspring of a handful of soldiers who died in the Seven Years’ War, the hospital took in no Foundlings between 24 March 1760 and 1763. The Foundling Hospital was no longer fashionable. It consequently attracted far fewer funds and there occurred a wholesale shift in the capacity of the hospital to provide for abandoned children. The admission process changed to reflect this development. From 1763, when the hospital could afford to accept children again (although on a much smaller scale than before), people had to petition the governors directly in order to gain admission for their children. The admission process was no longer an anonymous affair. Nor was it deemed necessary to de-stigmatise the label of foundling. The General Committee rejected Hanway’s proposal to change the name of the hospital to the Orphan Hospital.113 Only those children not older than five and deemed proper ‘objects of charity’ could be received after 1763.114 Following the chaos of the General Reception years, there was a dearth of vacancies in the hospital. The charity had lost the patronage of many wealthy benefactors as well as government support. Its income between 1739 and 1756 was around £2700 per annum but by the 1770s it had plummeted to about £590 per annum.115 Many more parents applied for the admission of their children than could be provided for.116 After 1770, it was difficult to maintain as many as 400 children. During the 1770s and 1780s, about a hundred children a year were being admitted but during the 1790s this number had dropped to about 15 per annum. Many parents were to find themselves disappointed in their hope of a place for their child. When refused admission, some people continued to abandon their children in the neighbourhood. To deter others, a note was painted on a board and stuck up at the door of the hospital stating that any child dropped at or near the gate of the hospital would not be taken in.117 The admission rules varied over the years. In 1768, it was decided that the admission of children was at the discretion of the General Committee and the case and situation of every child was enquired into. A child had to be below eight months and living within the Bills of Mortality. If the Committee believed that the mother was able to apply to the parish for relief, they refused admittance for her child.118 Clearly, applicants often turned to governors to further their case. Those children recommended by a governor would gain precedence in the admission procedure.119

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Cases would be enquired into carefully. The secretary was responsible for checking the truth of the allegations in the petitions. The secretary, the messenger, the steward, the clerk or the schoolmaster would enquire into petitions by entering the neighbourhoods of the people that applied to the hospital to acquire character references.120 In 1770, further changes were made. The balloting system was reintroduced. An advert was placed at the hospital gate stating that poor people who wanted to gain entry to the ballot had to deliver their petitions to the secretary. These petitions had to contain the age and sex of the child, whether they were dry or wet-nursed, where it had been born and if it had been baptised. The petitions would be read at the following General Committee meeting. The petitioners were to attend between 12 and 1 o’clock to be examined as to their exigency at the first General Committee meeting scheduled after their petition had been delivered. There the circumstances of each case would be investigated and the case either accepted or rejected. If accepted, the petitioner was required to attend the ballot. The age limit was dropped to two rather than eight months, and the hospital’s catchment area was increased to allow the admission of infants born within six miles of the Bills of Mortality.121 The governors often tried to help those women who were unsuccessful in the ballots. The General Committee used an emergency fund of 1 guinea a week, which was divided amongst ‘distressed objects’ while they waited for the ballot. Money was deliberately put aside to help them eke out an existence until the next ballot day.122

Who were ‘proper objects of charity’? As the years passed and the capacity of the hospital decreased due to restricted funds the rules became much stricter. By 1790, the hospital changed their definition of ‘proper objects of charity’ to those exposed and deserted young children who could not be taken care of and supported by any other person or body.123 After the French Revolution, this included the children of soldiers and sailors killed in battle.124 Increasingly, if the child’s father could be identified, located and compelled to maintain his child then the Foundling Hospital rejected such children as ‘parish cases’. The mother’s character was also enquired into and the inspector was looking to see if she could return to work if her child was admitted.125 The change in hospital policy followed accusations of gross mismanagement.126 In 1795, the General Committee minutes first mention the hospital’s new double purpose – the saving of infant life as well as the restoration of the mother to work and a life of virtue.127 The 1796 account of the hospital

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reiterated this change in hospital policy. The governors stated that the objective of the Foundling Hospital was ‘to preserve and educate Infants otherwise exposed to perish, and to restore the mothers to a Course of Industry and Virtue’. This explicit focus on the virtue of mothers was a new development that was to become crucial to the rules of admission in 1801. The rules changed again as the century turned. Children could no longer be accepted, no questions asked, if delivered with £100.128 In June 1801, only illegitimate children became eligible for admission.129 The hospital singled out the children of unmarried mothers as well as the mothers themselves as the primary objects of the charity. The admission process was, once again, shrouded in secrecy to prevent the details of the transgressions of unmarried mothers hoping to return to the world of work becoming public. when a Recommendation is made of the case of an Exposed or Deserted Child and with a statement that it is an illegitimate child, and that the circumstances are of such a Nature as to render the public examination of the Mother by the General Committee, and the usual enquiry into the facts by the Schoolmaster either impracticable or very prejudicial to the Mother, or likely to preclude her return to a course of virtue and Industry, the General Committee may (if they shall conceive it to be proper) appoint a Select Committee to Enquire into the circumstances of the Case and to report to the next Meeting of the General Committee, whether such a Child be a proper object of admission into the Charity; and in Case such report be Satisfactory, the General Committee may admit the Child.130 From 1801, petitioners had to convince the Foundling’s governors that the child was illegitimate unless the father was killed in the service of his country; that he or she was under a year old; that the petitioner had not previously applied to the parish for relief or given birth in the workhouse; that the mother had born a good character prior to her pregnancy and that the father of the child had deserted her and could not be found and compelled to maintain his child. Petitions were enquired into, by the staff of the hospital, and judged according to their relative merits. Children were more likely to be admitted if the petitioner was poor and had nobody else to turn to for support and if her delivery and shame were a secret to anybody who did not actually witness the birth.131 But until this point in the Foundling Hospital’s history, there is no specific mention of bastard children as the only objects of the charity.

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Conclusion The Foundling Hospital for exposed and deserted young children was established to prevent the loss of the lives of children due to abandonment. Abandonment, widespread for centuries but becoming increasingly common in the eighteenth century, had always been associated with the experience of poverty rather than with illegitimacy alone. Economic change, enclosure, increased migration and urbanisation produced a period of transition in mid-eighteenth-century London. An awareness of the effects of this transformation and the increased poverty of thousands of poor Londoners led to the campaign to save infant lives. The governors could not ignore the overwhelming demand for the Foundling Hospital amongst plebeian Londoners at this time. The need of London’s urban poor always far outweighed the hospital’s capacity. This was especially true after 1760. It has been shown that legitimate as well as illegitimate children accounted for the spectacular numbers of children brought to and admitted during the General Reception period. Not only poor unmarried mothers were obliged to seek charitable assistance when bearing and rearing their children. The evidence in the minutes, the hospital’s accounts and the art that hung on its walls suggests that no automatic association can be made between illegitimacy and the Foundling Hospital during the eighteenth century. The Foundling Hospital changed its rules in 1801 to focus on the unmarried mother and her child. It is not clear from the sources discussed in this chapter what the reasons for this change were. Many of the men involved in the committees from the hospital’s establishment either died or retired by the end of the century after lengthy years in service. A new generation of philanthropists took over the management of the institution in the late eighteenth century. But what must be key to any explanation is the changing status of the unmarried mother within the philanthropic culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century London. It would be naïve to suggest that compassion was the only, or indeed the most important, motivation behind support for the charity and individual petitioners but it did play a distinctive role in this story of eighteenth-century philanthropy. The Foundling Hospital represented the philanthropic culture of the mid-century, and key to its establishment and management was the compassion shown to London’s poor unmarried mothers by their benefactors The Detail of their wretched and deserted Situations sometimes too well confirmed by the almost starved condition in which some of the Infants are brought into the Hospital is one (I might say the only) painful Circumstance to those who attend as the acting administrators

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of the Charity: a detail of which if it could be fully given to the world without injury to the Unhappy Subjects of it would serve to deter from vice those who might otherwise have been the victims of Seduction.132 Many of the men involved in the charity were core to London’s philanthropic culture. Hanway devoted much of his life and writings to cataloguing and hoping to improve the plight of the poor for the ends of national utility, and Andrew has stated that he was ‘nothing if not extraordinarily representative of his time and class’.133 Such men were also very much aware of the limits of the poor laws in providing an adequate safety net for London’s plebeians.134 These men’s sense of social duty, humanitarianism and the desire to ‘do good’ embraced the cause of the children of the poor – legitimate as well as illegitimate. This was clear in the accounts and rules of the charity as well as the paintings and drawings that hung on its walls and also in the day-to-day practice of the institution. The managers of the hospital and the mothers that came to them for help constantly interacted throughout the eighteenth century. They did so within the hospital grounds, at concerts, in the chapel, when mothers were interviewed by the Committee, when governors personally involved themselves in certain cases, when petitions were checked by hospital staff and at the ballots for the admission of children. The institution was designed and decorated to deliberately appeal to both rich and poor. The aristocracy frequented the Foundling as a site of fashion, the middling orders used it as part of their strategies of social advancement and the poor hoped to ameliorate the symptoms of their poverty. The plight of London’s unmarried mothers could not be ignored when it was presented to the General Committee day in and day out. Thousands of men and women sought aid from the Foundling Hospital during the eighteenth century, sometimes married sometimes not, but all apart from the individuals that paid £100 to have their infant admitted with no questions asked were suffering from the vagaries of poverty. It has already been established that the experience of poverty was similar for mothers with children whether they were married or not. Nothing establishes this more clearly than the petitions for admission submitted by the mothers that came to the governors to have their cases considered from 1763 onwards, which are the subject of the following chapter.

5 ‘Unfortunate Objects’: Petitioners to the Foundling Hospital

From 1770 an advertisement was placed at the gate of London’s Foundling Hospital for ‘exposed and deserted young children’ stating that any individual who hoped to gain admission for their child had to deliver their petitions to the secretary. If their petition was passed, the applicant was requested to return with their child the following Saturday to participate in the ballot.1 When Saturday came, mothers cradling their babies were ushered into the hospital chapel while spectators were positioned in the gallery above.2 Two foundling children, flanked by governors supervising the proceedings, would pass a ballot box or bag around the room from which the women would draw one ball. Those who drew a white ball were permitted admission for their child; but if a black ball had been picked out of the bag, admission was denied.3 Frances Barnes took her chance at a ballot on 11 January 1772 at which she explained in a petition that she submitted the following July, ‘I unfortunately drew a black ball.’ She hoped the governors would ‘alow her to take the second chance of a Ballot at the next reception of Children As your petitioner being only a poor Servant and has only 4 pound a year wages as rendered her Incapable of Maintaining her Self and Child out of it’.4 In this chapter, it is argued that the ballot both symbolised and confirmed the role of fortune in the lives of the poor detailed in the eighteenth-century petitions for the admission of children into the Foundling Hospital. Recently a number of historians have used evidence from the Foundling Hospital to support the contention first posited by cultural historians that early modern feminine lust became untenable by the end of the eighteenth century as women were re-imagined as sexually passive and men as sexually aggressive.5 Tim Hitchcock has argued that fundamental change occurred in sexual practice over the course of the eighteenth 98

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century – mutual masturbation and fondling sexual practices were replaced by a new emphasis on heterosexual penetrative sex. Attempting to marry two historiographies, that of demography providing evidence of a rise in reproduction and illegitimacy and cultural history identifying a transformation in sexual discourse, he argued that elite discourses filtered through social-policy initiatives influenced the demographic behaviour of London’s poor. His evidence was rooted in the discourses produced by metropolitan institutions, including the poor law, the Magdalen, the Asylum for Orphan Girls as well as the Foundling Hospital that, he argued, aimed to moralise London’s plebeians. The middle classes that made up the majority of active governors of these charities forged a new cultural discourse of correct behaviour by drawing on the concept of seduction familiar from contemporary literature. All petitioners appealed to the governors of the Foundling Hospital as ‘seduced and abandoned’ and the Foundling petitions constituted part of the narratives that created the ‘cult of seduction’. Unmarried mothers who tried to gain admission for their children were forced to buy into the concept of seduction, presenting themselves as the pathetic victims of their seducers, because this was the only way their child could be admitted into the hospital by governors unsympathetic to their plight. This new emphasis on male sexual aggressiveness and female sexual passivity filtered through metropolitan charities and came ‘to characterise the sexual self-image of all men and women.’6 Hitchcock’s analysis of the effects of the increase in urbanisation, industrialisation and the change in London’s philanthropic culture and discourse for the unmarried mother is immensely valuable, but his assumptions about the experience of female sexuality and an increase in penetrative sex are based on the evidence primarily of elite discourse and demographic evidence drawn largely from English rural parishes rather than the words of the poor themselves. This complicates his assertion that poor women internalised the concept of seduction. There is little evidence to suggest, in the petitions themselves, that penetrative sex increased or that poor women had to conform to a ‘model of female sexual passivity which lay at the heart of eighteenth-century social policy’ in order to receive charitable relief.7 In these accounts of historical transformation, plebeian women have been overwhelmingly portrayed as the victims of change: as objects of male sexual aggression with no sexual desire or expression of their own. This aggressor/victim dichotomy, founded on the double standard (and closer to a language of sexual politics that emerged in the late-twentieth century), masks the ambiguities of the power relations involved in sexual attraction, courtship and the formation of marriage.8 The aggressor/victim

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dichotomy is unhelpful when considering cultural representations, let alone lived realities; but it is particularly unhelpful when used to describe the circumstances of plebeian female lives.9 The concept of seduction, a literary trope of the time that largely excluded plebeian women until the nineteenth century, cannot capture the complexity of the life stories and the characteristics of plebeian courtship, related in the petitions.10 The purpose of this chapter is to explore the petitions of plebeian women to suggest that they called upon a range of narratives to explain the births of their bastard children when hoping to obtain their admission into the Foundling Hospital. From 1763, individuals hoping to gain admission for their child into the hospital had to submit a petition detailing their circumstances and establishing their need.11 The petitions vary in detail and length but many tell us where mothers of legitimate and illegitimate babies lived and worked, about their courtships and the births of their children. All petitioners drew on a rhetoric of need; and common phrases used in appeals for charity focussed on their ‘poor state of health’, ‘low circumstances’, ‘great distress’, incapacity to work and inability to ‘get their bread’, the struggle to survive, poor housing as well as their compound misery and melancholy.12 Paupers were clearly familiar with the necessity of establishing their legitimate need and good character in their appeals for aid. Unmarried mothers may not have been literate but many were actively involved in the writing of these documents. Petitioners shared their stories with petition writers, friends, employers, and family who sometimes wrote their petitions on their behalf and who acted as character referees. Some paid visits to the porter’s office before submitting their petition to check that it was appropriate.13 A handful of petitions suggest the use of petition writers, but most could not afford to pay for a professional to write their petition. For example, in her petition Mary Jones stated that she ‘had it not in my power to pay for a Petition an was oblig to wright it myself.’14 In March 1776, the General Committee of the Foundling Hospital demanded that mothers sign their petitions to ensure that the child was put up for admission with their consent.15 Nevertheless, more mothers did not sign their petitions than did. Most women merely provided a mark. Many could neither spell nor construct grammatical sentences but the strength of their appeals could be emphasised as a result. Elizabeth Paine, ‘ham a poure unfornit gal with yong Child and times being so hard it not in my power to Support it.’16 The admission of children, therefore, was dependent upon the truthful accounts of their mothers. Petitions were verified by the hospital’s staff

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and judged according to their merits. The details in the petitions had to concur with the account presented before the General Committee by the petitioners and that related by the referees called upon by the hospital’s inspector. The stories of mothers had to be corroborated and lies were often detected by the secretary, the steward, the messenger, the clerk or the schoolmaster sent to investigate the case. Unmarried mothers did not have to conform to a model of female sexual passivity, of ‘respectable illegitimacy’, in order to receive charitable relief.17 The governors of the Foundling Hospital could be indiscriminate in the petitions that they passed. The language of the petitions challenges the representation of lone mothers as passive, seduced victims and tells us instead of the myriad fortunes and misfortunes of their lives. This was in contrast with the language of the Foundling’s sermons and accounts, where authors drew on a well-known narrative from contemporary literature, of male sexual aggression and female victimhood to encourage their audience to part with their cash for the charity. Male sexual desire was pitted against female innocence in this fundraising sermon preached by Rev. Mr Bromley. it is manifest to all, that there is another part of distress, into which not the poor only, but unhappy creatures in all conditions, too frequently fall; and which it is a principle act of the design of this institution to relieve. Need I mention the case of unfortunate women, deluded by the base strategems of designing men; abused by faithless promises and hollow vows; and in the unguarded moments of confidential affection ruined and undone; – an infant to proclaim her shame, and irrecoverably blast her fair honour, which she too credulously entrusted to the protection of a villain . . . Abandoned by the man, in whom she trusted; reproach and obloquoy, and shame are now only before her: the resentment of her nearest kindred is the next thing she looks for; the desertion of her more distant friends she must expect to follow soon after.18 In the nineteenth century, in an entirely different moral climate, this image of the seduced victim was to come to the fore in the Foundling Hospital’s, particularly John Brownlow’s, representations of the unmarried mothers who applied for the admission of their children.19 The image played a lesser part in the eighteenth-century discourse produced by the charity that allowed for the admission of children born of ‘unfortunate circumstance’ as well as ‘unprincipled seduction’.20

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This did not mean, however, that petitioners were unaware of how best to represent their cases to the governors. From 1795, the enquirer’s notes indicated that he was looking for lengthy recommendations of a petitioner, assurances that she had a job to return to once her child had been admitted, that the pregnancy, if illegitimate, had occurred after a long-term relationship and that there had been a promise of marriage passed between the couple. Increasingly, if the child’s father could be identified, located and compelled to maintain his child then the Foundling Hospital rejected such children as ‘parish cases’.21 From then it became clear that the hospital’s sympathy lay with a particular type of applicant, distinguishable by her virtue and her ability to return to work if her child was admitted. Towards the end of the century with fewer funds and places at its disposal, the hospital’s ethos transformed and the Committee became much stricter when considering cases for admission. But up until then ‘proper objects of charity’ included petitioners with many different stories to tell.22 The eighteenth-century petitions were very different documents from those of the nineteenth century in which a petitioner had to prove that she had been seduced after a promise of marriage, or raped, that this was her first child and that she always acted respectably before her pregnancy.23 However, the stories that women related in the eighteenth century were obviously determined by the concerns and questions of the Foundling Hospital’s authorities and were not unproblematic representations of poor women’s mental maps. Women may have drawn on tried and tested methods to represent their case in the best possible light but the information recorded within them was not uniform and the stories exceeded the questions of the Foundling authorities. The circumstances of poor women’s lives rarely required embellishment to convince others of their necessity. Research on 1290 petitions out of a possible total of around 2000 shows that eighteenth-century foundlings, although mostly, were not necessarily bastards. Three-quarters of the women who successfully petitioned the hospital were single although 9 per cent of petitioners were married and 4 per cent widowed.24 Many people acknowledged that the increase in child abandonment during the eighteenth century was due to parental poverty rather than bastardy alone and the lives detailed in the petitions described circumstances of immense poverty and insecurity.25 Petitions were rejected for a variety of reasons: because the child was above the age limit for admission, a petitioner or referee had lied, nobody attended the ballot, or because the child was a parish’s responsibility. They were rarely rejected because women were defined as immoral or improper.

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Rejected petitions The details of the surviving 152 petitions for admission to the hospital that were rejected between 1764 and 1801 enable us to question whether petitioners had to be ‘respectable’ in order to have their children admitted into the Foundling Hospital. The descriptions of need and distress detailed in these applications are similar to those stated in the successful petitions. Of the petitions, 48 per cent do not contain the reason why the petition was rejected. Often the petitions have ‘admitted to ballot’ scrawled on them. They have, however, been catalogued as rejected and have been bundled together with other explicitly rejected petitions. Petitions were not necessarily rejected on the basis of the mother’s morality. Indeed the governors occasionally admitted the children of women who were clearly working as prostitutes. Despite the fact that the steward after enquiring about Elizabeth Jones discovered that she ‘Appears to be a Woman of the Town’, her child was admitted to ballot in November 1772. In that ballot, she drew a black ball but was admitted to the following ballot in December and her child was received into the hospital.26 However, when Hannah Candlin tried to have her child admitted, her petition was rejected because the steward discovered that her housekeeper ‘Mrs Beekman bears a very indifferent Character in the Neighbourhood there are several young Woman in the House some of whom have Children it is supposed She gets Money by them.’27 It is possible that the governors were becoming stricter about the morality of their applicants later in the century especially after the governors requested that the virtue of mothers be emphasised in petitions and references. Ann Brown might not be described as respectable. She told the Committee that she would have been brought to real want had it not been for the kind and timely assistance of Mrs Saville with who she has lived near a twelve months as a Servant . . . The steward went to enquire after Ann’s case of Mrs Saville in Little Wild Street, Lincolns Inn Square. He discovered that Mrs Saville keeps a Lodging House of loose Women says the Petitioner was her Servant and that a Male of a Ship (now in the East Indies) who lodged there was the father of the Child. That she believed her

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Husband had spoke with somebody belonging to the Hospital about getting in the Child but that he was out of work and she would tell him to send word who it was. Despite the hints that she was a prostitute, Ann’s child was admitted to the ballot.28 The governors were selective about their definitions of acceptable sexual histories. Gertrude Cunningham was described as ‘a woman of bad Character’ by her neighbours because she had left her husband to live with another man but they still hoped that ‘the poor babe may be taken in’, and it was.29 Mary Bentley was supported through her pregnancy and delivery by Mrs Williams, her employer, for seven months. Her child was admitted despite the fact that she had already born a bastard. Her case is interesting not only because of the open-mindedness the governors demonstrated by admitting her child but because she was brought up in the Foundling Hospital herself. Her relationship with the hospital probably influenced the governors’ favourable decision.30 The governors’ rulings on such cases were not consistent. Hannah Holden, an unmarried domestic servant, was rejected after the investigator learned from her employer of three years, Mrs Scott in Holborn that She behaved in every Respect as a good Servant except her present misconduct and once before when she was guilty of a like Indiscretion for which She parted with her afterwards in hopes she would be more prudent in future She took her into her Service again She and the Father of the first Child maintain it together who the Father of her present Child is Mrs Scott does not know She believes her to be in great want.31 Despite enjoying her employer’s sympathy and help, Hannah was rejected by the hospital because she had given birth to more than one bastard child. The reasons for rejection became clearer later in the century when the rules for admission become much tighter. Of the petitions, 7 per cent, like Mary Smith’s in June of 1782, were rejected because the child was over the age limit of two months.32 Sarah Whitfield’s child was rejected because it was one-and-a-half-years old.33 Ann Brackenbury’s petition was dismissed in 1782 when it was established that her child was not born within the Bills of Mortality and that she was married.34 Of the petitions, 11 per cent were rejected because nobody attended the ballot on the child’s behalf after gaining a ticket. Reasons for this

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were varied. The child or mother sometimes died before making it to the Committee or the mother changed her mind and decided to keep the child. Sometimes other forms of material support could be found. After submitting her petition, Ann Crowden wrote to the governors to inform them ‘that God has been Pleased to take my little Infant’. 35 As the years passed and the hospital’s funds diminished, the Committee increasingly decided that the mother should expect maintenance from the parish especially if her husband or lover was still alive and could be compelled to support the child. Of the petitions, 12 per cent were rejected for this reason. Sarah Butt of Grays Inn bore a child by a man who she claimed to be at sea fighting against the French. However, the inquirer discovered from a neighbour of hers, Mrs Saunders, ‘that she knows where the father of the child is and that he is a married man it appears to be a parish case’.36 The governors rejected the petition of Rebecca Floid, a wet nurse left with a child whose mother had died in childbirth and whose father had disappeared, despite her plaintive plea I am in a Ready Furnished Lodging and my Husband has been out of Work Sometime Which causes me With Grief to Lament the unhappy Event that must undoubtedly Ensue, as the parish will not take it in and indeed Gentlemen I Cannot Get it proper food and I have no heart to Drop it.37 The governors rejected her petition judging it to be a parish case. A good character reference played an enormously important part in the decisions of the governors to accept a woman’s child but it is significant that very few women were given bad references. Elizabeth Welch’s child was rejected because her employer Theophilus Walford at Twinkenham reported in a letter to the governors that ‘the conduct of Eliz: Welch . . . during her service with us towards the latter part of it, was such as to preclude either Mrs Walford or myself from speaking favourable of her character.’38 After 1795, the admission of children became dependent upon employers ensuring the Committee that they would continue to employ their servant if their child was admitted. Of the petitions, 7 per cent were rejected because the petitioner had obviously lied about their circumstances. Mary Perrion, a teacher at a boarding school claimed that the father of her child had left her destitute after absconding abroad. However, the steward discovered that the father was, in fact, an attorney and a man of wealth who lived in the

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city. The hospital believed that a wealthy man should be obliged to provide for his child. Mary was penalised for falsifying her case and denied support.39 Another petition was rejected after the steward discovered that the petitioner ‘is not the Mother of the Child but Nurses it for a Man in the Country at £12 a Month, who over persuaded hir to personate its Mother in order to have it Admitted into this Hospital’. 40 On 1 April 1801, Jane Simpson handed in her petition to the London Foundling Hospital hoping to gain admission for her illegitimate child. The steward was directed to William Walker in Covent Garden to investigate the details of Jane’s case. He noted on her petition When I asked Mr Walker if he knew Jane Simpson he answered he knew Miss Jane Simpson. I asked where She dwelt, he said She keeps a Bakers Shop in Stanhope Street. I asked if she had been in his service, at this he paused and recollecting himself said if I told him my business he would have known how to answer me, but he would speak to Mrs Walker After conferring with his wife, he returned and said the Petitioner had not been in his Service, but in the service of Mrs Walker, he did not know where she dwelt but Mr Toon would give me a very satisfactory account, I then went to Mr Toon at Westminster he said he knew Jane Simpson She was a very good Woman I asked how long he had known her, he answered from a Child. I asked if he knew my business he said yes there was a child in the way but a good Woman might have a Misfortune, I then asked how long she had been in his service, he said She had never been in his service, but he knew her to be a good woman . . .41 Unfortunately, Jane’s petition was rejected presumably because of the lies told to the hospital and the obviously suspicious behaviour of Mr Walker. Elizabeth Bevan told the governors that the father of her child was Charles Hudson a bricklayer who had since deserted her and gone to sea. The steward was directed to Mr Hill who kept a pub in Chiswell Street where the petitioner occasionally worked behind the bar. He claimed that Hudson used to drink at the pub before leaving the country. However, the steward discovered, ‘from the conversation of some of the Neighbours’, that Hill was in fact the father of Elizabeth’s child and her petition was promptly rejected.42

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If women’s petitions were rejected, they sometimes returned to the hospital to force the authorities to reconsider their case. Elizabeth Donovan’s petition was originally rejected because the governors thought that she had lied about where she gave birth to her child. She wrote a second time explaining that Her petition has been rejected for an alleged falsity in saying she ‘laid in at Dr. Haighton’s Hospital,’ which the Enquirer deputed by the Committee contradicts by his report . . . She was delivered there, It is probably omitted in the Book because she was delivered without the Doctor’s aid . . . while the nurse was gone to fetch the Doctor she was delivered at 2 o’clock.43 The reward for her resourcefulness and determination was the successful admission of her child. All of these cases attest to the rigorous checks made by the hospital staff to verify the stories that they were told to ensure only ‘proper objects of charity’ were admitted. However, it should be clear by now that ‘proper objects of charity’ embraced a vast variety of applicants.

Accepted petitions Economic need rather than shame was the all-important criteria in the admission of a child into the hospital. The details of the sexual relationships in the petitions shared many of those given in bastardy and settlement exams to the parish and to the lying-in hospitals. Women’s accounts of their lives provided overwhelming evidence that they, rather than the fathers of their babies, were the ‘unfortunate sex’ but they were neither hopeless nor without desire. The evidence suggests neither a move from activity to passivity for mothers nor a lack of desire. Poor women spoke with passion, emotion and love in the course of describing their circumstances and relationships as well as their economic need to elite authorities. The language of the petitions, the descriptions of need, relationships and emotions was closely related to the everyday lives of London’s poor. The petitions may not provide a window onto the intimate relations and feelings of plebeian Londoners in the eighteenth century but the vocabulary, syntax and metaphors used and the circumstances in which the petitions were written, presented and received reveal a rich and evocative language of want and necessity.

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All social classes became more literate in early modern London.44 As we saw in Chapter 3, ballads and their singers had also been part of London’s street life for centuries. They drew on a long tradition of storytelling that included literary and contemporary references and brought together both high and low culture. Ballads were sung, repeated, shared, and bought to be pinned on the walls of homes and taverns where all Londoners enjoyed them at leisure. Hogarth’s idle apprentice was caught sleeping next to a ballad based on Moll Flanders pinned to his wall.45 Most plebeian men and women possessed a mixture of oral and literacy skills, and the written documents that they created reproduced that mix. The Bible, the Pilgrim’s Progress and chapbooks allowed the poor to acquaint themselves with the concepts of elite discourse but the stories told within them also had resonance for their everyday lives and made their mark on the telling of their own life-stories as well as their imaginations.46 If men and women could not write, they were sure to know somebody who could – at work, or amongst their friends and acquaintances.47 Within London households, neighbourhoods and the streets, literate and illiterate interacted. Paupers shared their life-stories with friends, family and employers prior to presenting themselves before parish officers or philanthropic institutions for aid. Poor women could access elite literate culture via the workplace. Most domestic servants found themselves able to draw on the resources of the households within which they worked – these were social and economic as well as cultural. Domestic servants had access to a wide range of literary material with which they might have made cross-cultural references in their speech and in any literature that they or their friends might have produced. Reading and writing was both communal and sociable during this period.48 Some women wrote their petitions to the Foundling Hospital, while others relied on literate friends, family and acquaintances. For example, when Mary Moorsam applied to get her three-month-old child admitted, she borrowed from popular literature as well as misquoting Shakespeare to detail her distress Unfortunately Through the artifices of a Wicked and Designing Man been overpower’d by the Impulse of Nature, and under the Promise of Marriage has Parted with the greatest Blessing a Woman can Enjoy (Her Vertue) . . . Her base betrayer has ungenerously Deserted your petitioner . . . to the Strings and Arrows of Outrageous fortune.49 Mary, or possibly her friends and employers, might have thought that using Shakespeare gave her story authenticity, or an added dramatic

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dimension, or maybe this was the only way she knew how to relate her circumstances to the governors of the charity. The petitions drew on a broad cultural remit but they rarely conformed to the narrative convention of seduction so familiar to us from eighteenth-century fiction. Some women obviously emphasised their victimhood to increase their chance of success. Nevertheless, seduction was not the primary story told by these women and it cannot capture the complexity of the life-stories related in the petitions. Out of a total of 1138 accepted petitions for admission, 867 referred to children who were illegitimate; 391 of those included accounts of seduction – the majority 476 did not.50 What framed most of the accounts presented by petitioners was neither seduction, shame, nor secrecy but misfortune. Women drew less on a discourse of delicate femininity than one of need. Misfortune had forced these people to come knocking on the porter’s door in Guilford Street and they relied on that ever-turning wheel of fortune to pick the right ball out of the ballot box to gain admission for their child.

Misfortune The concept of fortune, signified in the ballot, captured the insecurity as well as the diversity of plebeian life. The ballot was a common mode of admission into eighteenth-century metropolitan charities.51 The poor familiarised themselves with the laws of chance in the games of cards and dice that they played from childhood through to maturity.52 Thousands of people, of all social classes, participated in the state and private lotteries that had gained in popularity since 1694, and fortunes were won each week across London.53 Lotteries enabled the poor to hope that things could get better especially when news of people’s wins were widely reported and spread fast. An article in the Times in March 1798 described how the £20,000 prize of the state lottery that year had been divided amongst a number of poor persons: a female servant in Brook St, Holborn, had a sixteenth; a woman who keeps a fruit stall in Grays-Inn-Lane another; a third is possessed by a servant of the Duke of Roxburghe’s; a fourth by a Chelsea Carrier of vegetables to Covent Garden; one eighth belongs to a poor family in Rutlandshire, and the remainder is similarly divided.54 Songs, chapbooks and ballads, often with courtship as their theme, were full of references to fortune and misfortune.55 The ever-popular

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‘Mother Bunch’, who was renowned for her skills as a fortune teller, promised to show young lovers how ‘to ascertain all future events’ as well as to ‘know if your sweetheart will marry you’.56 While The True Egyptian Fortune Teller pledged to show ‘advantageous ways relating to love and marriage’ and to help women ‘to restore a lost maidenhead or solder a crakt one’.57 Popular literature captured the fantasy of the acquisition of fortune as well as the centrality of chance in people’s lives. One needed neither power nor social status to be lucky. The circumstances of petitioners’ lives were dominated by insecurity. Misfortune tended to accompany poverty at every turn. Women recounted catalogues of misfortunes, of which a bastard birth was one, in a style that was matter of fact. Misfortune resulted from poverty – their own, their family’s and their friends’, death, disease, underemployment or unemployment, seduction, unwanted pregnancy, bastard births, betrayal, war, transportation and abandonment. Sarah Hall had suffered a series of misfortunes since the age of five I am sorry to be thus unfortunate an particular as it is intirely out of my power to suport it as the father is absent .. .to had to my misfortune I have been deprived of parents ever since I have been five years old and have not a friend to apply to and no not in wat manner to support the enfant an I have thus been so unfortunate an only been a servent sence I was fourteen.58 Illegitimate pregnancy and birth usually followed a long list of misfortunes. Misfortune was also synonymous with the meanings of unmarried motherhood at this time. The Oxford English Dictionary and the English Dialect Dictionary provide examples of the use of the word ‘misfortune’ to define the birth of a bastard child for the nineteenth century but not for the period before.59 Indeed, bad luck was central to the definition of bastards as ‘chance children’ in the nineteenth century.60 The concept of misfortune, however, had long been associated with the deception of men and the consequences of pre- and extra-marital sex. In one eighteenth-century ballad, the story of an unmarried mother described as ‘an unfortunate’ is used as A warning to all from sin to keep free. Confide not in men, for they will deceive thee.61 Tony Henderson has also identified the use of the term ‘unfortunate women’ by philanthropic and police authorities to define prostitutes

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in the eighteenth century. Increasingly, women themselves used the term as a synonym for their occupation.62 Misfortune, therefore, was a euphemism that was widely used in popular parlance during the eighteenth century to describe the consequences of women participating in illicit sex. In the petitions, the concept of misfortune could capture single calamitous events, bad luck as well as the broader ‘want of good fortune’. Sometimes misfortune referred specifically to a bastard birth. Mary Bentley pleaded to have her child admitted into the hospital: ‘Although this is my seconde misfortune still I have hopes that the gates of Charity will not be shut against me being one myself, of those poor Orphans who owes their existence to your humane and most noble Charity.’63 Women had no or little control over their own fertility. Consequently, their sexual experiences were likely to lead to pregnancy and the birth of an unwanted infant. There is no evidence in the documents of women’s knowledge of contraception although information learned through experience and hearsay must have been shared between women.64 If a woman became pregnant, she could resort to trying known abortifacients available from a few London quacks and apothecaries but many failed to terminate unwanted pregnancies.65 Mr Dymack a brazier, who lived in Soho, urged the governors to admit Sarah Gillatt’s child fearing for its life because she had ‘denied . . . being with child, and used means to procure abortion’.66 For many women, knowledge of their pregnancies would come when menstruation ceased or when their bellies grew.67 Most women were aware, like the heroine of The Banks of Inverary, that ‘after kissing, there comes nought but woe’.68 But couples who knew little about the workings of their reproductive systems and who had no viable means to prevent pregnancy other than abstention and coitus interruptus crossed their fingers and hoped for the best. Fortune dictated whether unmarried women who participated in pre-marital sex were let down by their bodies – by their desire, fertility, capacity to bring a child to term and to give birth to their children. Sarah Gillatt, ‘in Year 1799 went and lived with Henry Penton Esqr and there became intimate with one Stephen Sandal the Coachman in the Family and unfortunately for me became with child by him’.69 The consequence of Sarah’s and Stephen’s intimacy was that she became with child – the child was part of her being, it was not begotten on her body. Sarah tacitly accepted responsibility for her pregnancy in the description of her relationship with Stephen. Women lamented their lack of control over their own bodies. Ann Williamson, ‘from the unfortunate accident of her lat pregnancy is reduced in Constitution and circumstances to

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great Distress.’70 Sophia Jones stated that she was ‘Now in Great Distress By Misfortune of Becoming a Mother.’71 These women were subject to the power of their bodies after sexual relations but if they were fortunate, pregnancy did not result. Women actively participated in courtship relations. The language used to describe events and circumstances implied woman’s active desire and their crucial role in the conception of their illegitimate pregnancies. Charlotte Williams ‘had the misfortune of becoming acquainted with one Henry May’.72 Mary Bannister had a child ‘from an unfortunate connection’.73 These women told of their unfortunate acquaintances or connections with men who became the fathers of their children. Acquaintance, connection and keeping company were common descriptions of courtship as well as sexual relations. Women actively sought acquaintances, friends, lovers and future husbands. They were attracted to the men they met in the course of their daily lives, at work, in the household, the street, the local tavern and the park. Many may have sought the marriage contract, but the pursuit of economic security was not incompatible with the pursuit of sexual fulfilment and a loving relationship. A petitioner’s body was responsible for other misfortunes than pregnancy. Illness, disease and disability prevented work and the ability to support a family. Sarah Chapman had an unfortunate connection with John Bernard . . . She has been brought to bed of a female Infant . . . to add to her Misfortunes she is at present confined with exceeding bad breasts, and is apprehensive of a cancer is forming in one of them . . . if she cho’d be so fortunate to get her Child into your Charitable Institution and can get her Breasts well, her late Master will give her a Character to get her into place.74 Female bodies were a constant source of misfortune for malnourished, over-worked and under-paid women particularly if they underwent difficult pregnancies and were unable to rest in the final stages of pregnancy or the first month or so after their child’s birth. The language that women used to speak about sex was, unsurprisingly in the environment of the church courts, that of sin.75 But in the very different context of the Foundling Hospital, women drew less on a language of sin than of mistakes. Misfortune dogged their working lives as well as their personal relationships. Employers used the language of misfortune in similar ways to describe their servant’s illegitimate pregnancies and births. Mrs Etchers who lived at No. 41 Goodge Street

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supported her servant’s application to the Foundling Hospital. She told the committee that ‘her Misfortune (has not) been unnecessarily revealed, so as to be injurious to her future Character’. In her own petition, Winifred told the committee that ‘my present mistress in compassion to my misfortune’, had promised to keep her job open for her if she could gain admission for her child into the hospital.76 Petitions reveal the interdependent relationships between rich and poor that had their roots in the institution of domestic service.77 Three-quarters of petitioners described themselves as domestic servants in their petitions. Despite the elite’s belief in the Great Law of Subordination, they frequently demonstrated compassion towards the poor, especially those that they knew personally. The most common reason that children were brought to the hospital for admission was that their parents could not afford to care for them.78 Obviously, the birth of a child would exacerbate a plebeian female’s economic insecurity. Work was almost impossible either in the late stages of pregnancy or for the first few months after childbirth. Employers might be willing to help a servant through her pregnancy but they were unlikely to support her child after its delivery.79 The birth of a bastard baby often resulted in economic ruin. Of the petitioners, 16 per cent referred to their feelings of shame at the conception and birth of their illegitimate babies. Most women’s references to the desire for secrecy focussed on the concealment of pregnancies from employers. Domestic servants feared for their future characters and the possibility of never finding work again. Ann Checkely, ‘stopped in my place till I whase a fraid of been exposed to Sham wich I left then July’.80 Some women spent their savings trying to prevent knowledge of their illegitimate pregnancies and births becoming public once they had left their service. Charlotte Gardiner, ‘in order to conceal her shame during her Pregnancy and lying in She has been Obliged to pawn or Sell all her Cloaths so that she is quite base and pennyless’.81 Mary Jackson stated that she was anxious to conceal her misfortune from the Knowledge of an ancient parent and the world, has reduced herself to very great distress, is unable to support herself and child, which could it be received under your charitable care might be saved from ruin . . .82 Others feared that if their parents discovered their condition it would bring them to an early grave. Mary Edwards worried that knowledge of her pregnancy, ‘Might be a Means of Breaking my Poor Mother’s

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Heart.’ 83 Many statements of the desire for secrecy came from migrant women who had travelled to London to hide their pregnancies. Margaret Broderick came to the capital ‘for the purposes of secrecy’.84 Ann Price was ‘reduced to the unpleasant resource of retiring to London’ to conceal her pregnancy from her parents.85 Susannah Harman from Bath, ‘wishing to keep my Character good entreated a friend to lend me some money to Come to London to lie in’.86 Others hoped to avoid turning to their parish, often outside of London, for relief because the publicity of such an action might prevent future work being obtained. Many women were clearly concerned about knowledge of their pregnancies becoming widespread. But the wish for secrecy did not dominate the stories in the petitions nor was it a requirement for admission until the turn of the century. Most applicants simply stated that they could not afford to support their children without the help of the father. Yet, the experience and understanding of misfortune also allowed for the hope of fortune, good luck as well as more money, in plebeian lives. Many mothers of bastards struggled for as long as possible to rear their child through work and with the assistance of others.87 Women tended to use up all of their savings to cover their expenses during the four weeks of a lying-in period and many parents hoped that their infants would be better taken care of in the institution than in their own homes.88 Within the hospital, children received an education and training that was beyond the means of their poor parents. Many women harboured hopes for years that they would be able to reclaim their child when circumstances permitted. This was inevitably when their material conditions had improved. Poor women spoke of their tenderness and affection for their children but their poverty prevented them from caring for them. Many acknowledged their responsibilities as mothers but, without adequate resources, they knew that they could not fulfil their duty to their child.89 The Foundling Hospital was one strategy used among many others by poor mothers making ends meet. Petitioners understood that to some extent their lives and their success at the ballot were in the hands of fate. If they had nothing else, at least the ‘unfortunate sex’ had hope. The literary trope of seduction has to be separated from the very different conventions, language and purposes of the petitions. When it is used, and it is in only a handful of the petitions, it is clear that the petitions have not been written by the women themselves. It seems unlikely that seventeen-year-old Ann Norman from Suffolk wrote this petition herself

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[She] hopes you will think the misery she has already undergone, the Treachery which has been practised upon her, the consciousness of this evil Transaction, and the perpetual Remembrance of it within her own Breast will be so far an Attonment for the crime . . . though her child is illegitimate and obnoxious to the last yet the natural Affections of a Mother is still the same but however binding the ties of affection may be your petitioners forlorn and needy situation preponderates . . . [she] is one amongst the number of her unfortunate Sex who now shamefully undergoes the Miseries brought upon her by too unwary a Resignation of her Virtue to the unlawful Embraces of a Man, whose Repeated Assurances of Honour and Integrity she had not the least Reason to suspect till the Dreadful Effects of such an intercourse grew conspicuous: which now obliges her to make this necessitous Application . . . [she] had the Misfortune a few years ago to be deprived of the Benefits of her Father whose paternal Care she was and whose life would have prevented her present Ruin, and preserved her from the disgrace and shame now brought upon her. The petition draws on a familiar language, taken from the Bible, of sin and repentance to describe Ann’s predicament.90 Ann, like many women, had fallen prey to the promises of a man. The author uses the vocabulary of law as well as of sin – ‘unlawful embraces’ had produced an illegitimate child. Her weakness as a woman was exacerbated by the death of her father. The lack of parental supervision explained her unlawful actions. This was a petition written by an author that was very familiar with the conventions of the seduction narrative. Her application was supported by Mr Sarjeantson, a distiller who lived in Bishopsgate Street.91 He may well have been her employer. Like many country girls who migrated to London to work as domestic servants, Ann turned to her employer for help in such a situation. Although poor women did describe seductions, they usually used different words, metaphors and tones in their petitions. Their style was much more matter of fact when describing the conditions of their lives and the circumstances of their relationships. Many women used phrases, images and metaphors in their petitions that were also common to depictions of love, courtship and their consequences in contemporary popular literature.92 Both elite and popular literature teemed with warnings to young women not to be ‘beguiled’ by ‘false men’ with their ‘deluding’ ‘flattering tongues’ who tried to tempt them from the ‘paths of virtue’ only to abandon them when pregnant. The female protagonist of one ballad lamented such a fate,

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I was betrayed, By his false tongue I was beguiled At length by him I proved with child . . . To his fond tales I did give way, And did from the paths of virtue stray.93 An understanding that sexual desires belonged to men rather than women and a discourse of feminine weakness could be juxtaposed or incorporated within a narrative of female agency.94 Women may have portrayed themselves as weak but it did not necessarily follow that they represented themselves as sexually passive.95 Women slept with men whom they trusted would marry them or provide for them if pregnancy resulted. Sex was exchanged for a promise of marriage, a token of affection, kind words and declarations of love. Sarah Jones had been ‘unfortunately deceived by a Man whose confidence and Integrity according to outward abilities and show the most Sanguine Trust might have been Reposed [sic] In him when after a correspondence of near 3 years he absconded to sea’. 96 Mary Seagrove had sexual relations with her lover after ‘hearing all his Vows and Promises of making me his Wife . . . when two late I fowened my Rewing by his leaving me With child.’97 Only 18 per cent of unmarried mothers mentioned that a promise of marriage had passed between the father and the mother before sexual relations commenced. The number is surprisingly low if we believe, as most historians have suggested, that petitioners took care to describe their cases with a sharp eye on the presentation of their moral status. Indeed 12 per cent of petitioners did not provide details of their marital status, which suggests that the governors wanted petitioners to detail their economic distress without embellishment or excuse. Petitioners therefore gave details of their destitution rather than their morality. However, the promise was mentioned much more frequently during the 1790s when it became clear that this was what the steward was looking for during his investigations. From 1795 the hospital insisted on the virtue of successful female applicants and after 1801 a promise of marriage became a requirement for admission. Men made many promises not all of them necessarily to marry the women they slept with. Proposals of marriage may have been inferred rather than the more legally recognisable promises of a time that had long passed.98 Verbal contracts were, of course, easily broken. Sometimes men simply disappeared out of the lives of their women. Three-quarters of petitioners claimed that they had been abandoned. Betrayal and a sense of injustice seeped through many of these accounts of desertion

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by men but the petitions demonstrate women’s awareness of their rights, expectations and the obligations of the fathers of their children.

Fathers The occupations of fathers were given in 40 per cent of the Foundling’s petitions: 11 per cent of the fathers worked as servants, 9 per cent as sailors and soldiers, and the rest were made up of carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, labourers and other tradesmen, many of whom were apprentices. The others we do not know about, but it is likely that they were constituted from similar occupations and trades, especially if we appreciate the similar evidence to be found in bastardy and settlement examinations given to the parish and lying-in hospitals. There was little mention of wealthy men, gentlemen or of masters of domestic servants but some were discovered to be the fathers of children admitted. Such children were often rejected because the hospital believed that wealthy fathers should be compelled to maintain their children usually through the mechanisms of poor relief. This was not the case with gentlemen who were believed to be guilty of the rape of a domestic servant that had resulted in the birth of a bastard child. These mothers were usually, but not always, treated with compassion and sympathy by the Committee and their children accepted. When May Hendrie was working in Edinburgh for a few weeks during the summer of 1766, a gentleman lodging in the house ‘got the advantage of her when there was none of the family in the house and got her with child’. Petitioners were more likely to have their children admitted if their accounts of the rape were detailed and corroborated. Stories of sexual violence in the petitions, although sometimes hard to define because of the ambiguity about the articulation of consent, increased after the changes to the admission procedure at the turn of the nineteenth century. During the nineteenth century each petitioner had to state that she had been seduced after a promise of marriage, or raped. No wonder, therefore, that more accounts of rape were presented to the Committee.99 We can conclude, however, that most of the fathers of children admitted into the hospital were poor. Servants, shoemakers, tailors and labourers were employed seasonally. Soldiers and sailors were impressed or sent abroad by their employers leaving their dependants without support and many fathers, as we see here and in the exams, were soldiers or sailors in their Majesty’s Service. Some fathers were slaves hailing from the farthest outposts of Britain’s empire. Many men could not find regular work. Some terminated their relationships through choice, by

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fleeing from their commitments to their lovers and families, but for many such control was out of their hands. Sixty-five of the fathers of illegitimate children were apprentices or journeymen. Apprentices, because of their youth, lack of independence and income, were unable to marry let alone provide for a mother and child. A journeyman, not bound by the ties of apprenticeship, was able to marry but remained economically incapable of supporting a family. Jane Winn could expect no financial support from the father of her seven-week-old child because he was only an apprentice to a shoemaker. In her petition, she told the governors that he could not afford to help her and nor could the few friends that she had. The father of Katherine Dolman’s child was ‘a Young Butcher who is just out of his Time, but not yet in Business, therefore neither of them are able to keep the Child nor have any Friends to Assist them’.100 Many, even if they pooled their money, earned too little to support a family. The father of Elizabeth Draper’s child, ‘is only a Poor Labouring Man and is truly Uncapable of assisting in helping me to keep my Child’.101 Soldiers and sailors frequently left their families without the benefit of their regular wage. Elizabeth Beek’s husband had been at sea since February, in November she petitioned the hospital describing how through Sundrey Misfortunes is in Greate Distress having had a Bad state of Health and two Children Been out of Business these Six months and has no way to Support her self and Children be pleased to Release her of one of her Children.102 Unfortunately for Elizabeth the governors told her that they could not help her and asked her to turn to the parish instead. Mary Davies was luckier in procuring the admission of her infant after her husband William ‘was induced to enlist himself in a regiment going to America, for which place he is since (all Endeavours to procure his discharge proving ineffectual) embark’d’.103 The children of men in the service of their country were singled out from 1763 as particular objects of the Foundling’s charity. Mary Evans’s husband was, in 1763, on board the Rainbow Man of War, leaving her with a four-month-old child which ‘By reason of illness and Excessive Poverty she is unable to Support.’104 In February of 1776, Mary Davies’s husband enlisted himself in a Regiment bound for America. She was assisted in her lying-in by the staff of the hospital in Brownlow Street. Worried that she would not be able to support herself and the infant after leaving the hospital, she ensured that

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The Family in which she lived some years before she married would gladly take her again as a servant But . . . The incumbrance of her child prevents her entering into that or any other method of getting her bread . . .105 As we have seen in previous chapters, many men fell victim to the press gang during times of war. The father of Elizabeth Gibbon’s infant was pressed to go to sea rendering her incapable of providing for her child and herself. Her father was unable to help her because of his advanced age and so she had nobody left to turn to but the hospital. Widowhood also left many mothers unable to support their children on their wages alone. At the end of January in 1776, Sarah Headly told the governors that She was a poor Widow in Great Distress With my Poor Infant and Have no place of abode . . . consider my Deplorable Condition and admit my Dear infant to presarvit from parishing in this very Inclement Season . . .106 During the winter months, work was hard to find and the weather unforgiving. Homeless and poor Sarah struggled even harder than usual to keep her child alive. Katherine Mabbet, from Queen Street in Limehouse, told the Committee in January 1774 that she has three Small Children and in great Distress and that hur Husband has been Dead five Months and Being Unable to provide for them is the Reason of hur Craving Your Charity In Taking the Youngest Witch is 12 Days ould . . .107 Mary Jones and her three children from Hertfordshire lost the support of her husband Andrew on his death. When attempting to gain admission for her infant she told the Committee having during her Husbands Sickness, dispos’d of everything she had, even the bed she lay upon, for their Support and the support of her two other Children, now finds herself helpless in a most deplorable Condition, being so far from her own Country, and no parishioner where she is, which prevents her from having any redress from that quarter and in consequence renders her incapable

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of supporting herself and Child . . . the other two she will struggle with thro’ Life with the help of Almighty GOD . . .108 Andrew’s death had been preceded by a long period of illness that had prevented him from working and supporting his family. After selling everything of any material value and following a move to London far from extended support networks and her parish of settlement, Mary knew that she could not support her family while nursing her infant. In the petitions, 26 per cent of the fathers referred to did not wilfully desert the mothers of their children. Although the father of Martha Chaplin’s child deserted her when she became pregnant, he later returned and gave her £26, of which she used £25 to put towards an apprenticeship. Her sister took care of her child while Martha waited for her to be admitted into the hospital.109 At the beginning of the American War of Independence, the father of Elizabeth Parker’s child was a coal porter who assisted her the best he could untill he was pressed and sent abroad and she is not able to provide for her Child.110 Peter Allen was sentenced to transportation leaving his wife Ursula and their two children without support. After giving birth in the British Lying-in Hospital, Ursula petitioned to have her youngest child admitted I have a boy not yet three years old and labour under the misfortune of being deaf which is the reason no one will take me in there service If your mercy extends so far as to assist me with the youngest till I can provide for it I hope to be able to struggle with the other but with both I dare not hope to exist much longer.111 Eighty-one of the relationships detailed in the petitions had been brought to abrupt ends by the death of the father of the child. Mary Brown was an outpatient at St Thomas’s Hospital when she petitioned the hospital. The steward reported that ‘she appears to be in very great distress and much affected for the loss of the Father of Child, who dyed sometime past of the smallpox and prevented their Marriage’.112 The conditions of poor London men’s lives: unemployment, low wages, apprenticeship, service, war, illness, death, transportation and lack of material possessions prevented many from adequately providing for their families. However, many men simply absented themselves from women’s lives. Christian Beer had a two-month-old infant, fathered by John Waring who had since disappeared

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She knows not where she is very willing To do so to her best Endeavours For its Maintenance But having no Friends Capable to Assist her and Having nothing to Depend on but Servitude which in some measure she is deprived of . . .113 Ann Martin told the Foundling’s Committee that the father of her child has either been impressed or dead since last Christmas, which makes me misery still greater and fears it can only end by my child’s death and mine being now left friendless having none to relieve me.114 Like many women forced to come before the Foundling Hospital, Ann Parker had ‘not seen the Father of her Child for many Months nor does she know where or how to find him’.115 Others at least knew what had become of the absent fathers of their children. The father of Mary Corrick’s six-month-old child, a fellow servant named George Newman upon hearing my situation left me and went a Soldier and I have never heard of him since – I have struggled to support the child so far, by selling my cloathes etc but am now totally unable to support it any longer.116 The economic circumstances of an unmarried mother deserted by the father of her child were little different from those of a deserted wife. Marriage did not protect women from the disappearances of their husbands. Thirteen per cent of the petitioners to the Foundling Hospital were widowed or married. David Kent’s work on the settlement examinations of St Martin’s in the Fields in the latter half of the eighteenth century has demonstrated the wide extent of the abandonment of wives by their husbands.117 Elizabeth Marsh’s husband left her three months before she gave birth to their daughter. She told the Foundling Hospital Committee that your Petitioners Husband left her, six months ago, she has been thro’ God’s Blessing, delivered of a Female Child and . . . is in the greatest Distress having travelled one hundred and seven Mile in Search of her Husband, but vain has been her pursuit, which has reduced her to the greatest Extremity.118 Sarah Salbot’s husband, a journeyman shoemaker, also absconded before she gave birth. Without knowing her husband’s settlement

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details and in poor physical health following the birth of her child, she petitioned the hospital for the admission of her infant after almost a whole Weeks inexpressible Pains she was delivered of a Male Child on the Seventeenth of March last, wch through the severity of her Labour has reduced her to a very weak State this, together with the absince of her Husband has rendered her totally incapable of supporting herself and her helpless Infant.119 Frances Purcell described her similar circumstances to the Committee, from a train of unfortunate circumstances finding it impossible to provide subsistence for her self and an unhappy infant . . . having no Friend from whome she can reasonably expect that Support she stands in need of the Father of her unfortunate Child being in his Majesty’s service – and has absconded both her and her Infant to the Greatest Distress and melancholy state . . .120 Some men left their wives after many years of marriage and the births of several children. In these cases, women sometimes requested the Foundling Hospital to admit their youngest child so that she could struggle to support the others. Sixty men petitioned the hospital in my sample, only eighteen of whom were the fathers of the children for whom they sought admission. Others were the officials of hospitals where women had died at childbirth, women’s employers or other friends petitioning the Foundling on the mother’s behalf. However, the descriptions of men and women’s circumstances, the tone of their petitions and the way in which their petitions were received by the governors of the hospital differed. The Committee accepted that the economic need of most mothers was unquestionable, the same was not true for fathers. It is important to acknowledge, nevertheless, that it was in women’s interest to represent the fathers of their children as sexual aggressors and deserters. If a father could be identified and located then he could be obliged to maintain his child through the parish and the Foundling frequently rejected such cases for admission.121

The language of sex Women sometimes explained the conception of illegitimate children as the result of a momentary weakness. They claimed that a loss of control

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had resulted in the birth of their bastard child. Mary Bennett ‘being young . . . admitted a Young man to Pay his addresses, and they were even asked at Church for Matrimony . . . but she had been so weak as to consent to his Desires too soon’.122 Mary was aware of the legalities of the marriage contract and the significance of illicit sex but she was also acknowledging the power of her sexuality. Mary had relinquished control over her sexuality too early – before the signing of the marriage contract. We might interpret her statement as suggesting that her sexual desires were too strong for her to control before they could be contained within legal matrimony. Mary Barkers’ ‘weakness has been taken the advantage of by a Man which I flattered myself would have married me’.123 Mary gave in to her own desire for a chance of marriage. Kitty Plume regretted the ‘imprudence’ that had resulted in the birth of her bastard child.124 Mary Redman asserted that she had ‘never Violated the path of virtue, tell this Imprudent Step’.125 These women regretted not paying enough attention to the consequences of pre-marital sex with the men who they hoped to marry. Imprudence and weakness allowed for the expression of female sexual desire that was articulated by a few petitioners. Such depictions of female sexuality were common to advice to young women in ballads and chapbooks. One young woman who was deceived by her lover described how Long was she woo’d ere she was won to lead a wedded life, But folly wrought her overthrow before she was a wife . . . Too soon alas! She gave consent to yield unto his will, Though he protested to be true and faithful to her still.126 Elizabeth Herod, ‘through my own weakness was lead away by a Man that promis me such things that Drive me now to the utmost distress’.127 Weakness was something that followed the event of pregnancy. An unguarded moment provided a space for illicit sexual activity. Women consented to their desires when their guard was down when their virtue was left undefended. Elizabeth Brook, ‘in an unhappy hour, was so foolish as to trust to his promises, and so wicked as to yield to his Desires’. Elizabeth invoked both her weakness at taking her lover at his word and also her guilt for allowing herself to have sexual relations with him. Mary Taylor ‘having been kept Company by a Young man under pretence of Marriage was in an Unguarded Moment deluded by him’.128 This was an image that was also common to the depiction of sexual relations in chapbook literature. Crazy Jane’s

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breast . . . was the abode of love, innocence and hope, till one fatal hour when the guardian angel of virtue slept, and the daemon of vice reigned triumphant, the ill-fated Jane surrendered her virtue to the importunities of the deceitful Henry, and bade adieu to peace for ever – til she sunk to the narrow confines of the grave . . .129 Some women acknowledged their complicity in the sexual act and its consequences by appealing to these momentary weaknesses. A commonly used synonym for seduction employed by the women was to be ‘drawn or draw’d aside’ by a man.130 Women applied their own vocabulary of seduction in their petitions. ‘To be drawn aside’ involved temptation by a man but a woman took her own ‘bad steps’. Elizabeth Hill had been ‘unfortunately drawn away by her fellow servant’.131 Charlotte Norton described how she had been ‘drawn into a Snare (under professions of very great advantages) to be gotten with Child by a false faithless and most Abandoned Wretch’.132 Charlotte had been attracted by the thought of an advantageous match. Women took bad steps because they fell in love and their hearts told them to. Mary Mose ‘fell a Victim to the too great Credulity of her own Heart’.133 In the vocabulary of contemporary physiology, the heart was the seat of passions. Ballads often used the image of the ‘ensnared heart’ to describe the process of falling in love.134 Mary Seymour ‘trusting too much to the Deceits of a Man whom she really loved, and by whom she believingly thought herself reciprocally regarded until the Fruits of her unlawful Connection undeceived her’.135 These women had been let down, not just by the men who fathered their children but also by their own judgements. Sarah Johnson from the most complicated misfortunes is reduced to the lowest state of wretchedness, but more particularly, for having placed too much confidence in the fair tho’ unmeaning promises of one to whom my hart was entirely devoted; and is at this moment left with an helpless Infant, who together with myself are almost entirely destitute of the common necessaries of Life, and what still adds to my distress, is to find my self deserted by the only man who I ought to call me Friend.136 Both young men and women were encouraged to avoid life’s ‘snares’ and to stick to the ‘path of virtue’ but pre-marital sexual relations and the conception of illegitimate babies were wrong turns on the path of life.137 Even if mothers strayed from the paths of virtue, the hospital

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enabled them to retrace their steps by admitting their child and allowing them to return to work.

Conclusion Thousands of women in eighteenth-century London asked the Foundling Hospital to admit their children. Not all their petitions were dominated by the pathos of the seduced maiden even though many thousands of women had been betrayed by men they had hoped to marry. Their narrative structures could be influenced by many different sources – from stories, ballads and chapbooks read or shared orally, from the Bible and from Shakespeare.138 They shared the vocabulary of destitution, want of the common necessaries of life, distress and misfortune. Each woman’s circumstances – economic, social and psychological – were different. Some women dramatised their economic necessity but most chose not to. The descriptions of the conditions of the lives of unmarried mothers rarely required elaboration to convince others of their need. Most women described the custom and conditions of their own culture, where the breakdown of courtship and marriage was a frequent occurrence, and men abandoned the mothers of their children with frightening regularity. It was easy for young women and men to fall in love or lust at either work or leisure. In many ways, London life had become more anonymous in the eighteenth century where poor migrant women had fewer support networks than they might have called upon closer to their natal home. This meant that many could enjoy relatively free relations with men of their own class that often led to the conception of bastard children. Compared with the century before, however, it was much harder for women and men, as migrant servants and apprentices, to achieve the economic independence that would allow them to set up a household on their own. The anonymity of London life and the continuing expansion of Britain’s empire through colonisation and war also meant that men could disappear out of the lives of their lovers with relative ease. The petitions show that 75 per cent of the men who fathered babies brought to the hospital absconded before or shortly after their child had been born. Men could seek opportunities outside London and abroad much more easily than women could because their work and personal responsibilities allowed them more mobility. A sense of misfortune shaped and explained plebeian lives – in work, personal relationships, leisure and popular culture. Women drew on an understanding of misfortune to explain their bastard births. Individuals

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of all classes, employers as well as servants, shared an understanding of the misfortunes of unmarried mothers. Plebeian women used their own language of seduction, emotion and expectation to explain why they had slept with men out of wedlock. A minority of women told tales of the consciousness of their evil, shame, and ruin, their betrayal by wicked men and alienation. Few women conceptualised sexual activity that had resulted in the birth of a bastard child as a mortal sin. They drew on a vocabulary and a language of custom that reflected their everyday lives. Plebeian women did not have to conform to a model of female sexual passivity, or of victimhood, when describing the circumstances of their courtships and illegitimate pregnancies to the Foundling authorities in order to receive relief. There is a limit to what historians can gauge about the experiences of the poor in the past, particularly in the context of their sexual relationships but this material provides important evidence, however fleeting it may be, of a diversity of practice, experience and emotion amongst poor Londoners in the eighteenth century. It cannot tell us whether there was an increase in illegitimacy during the eighteenth century or whether there was a change in sexual practice. It does however suggest that models of female sexual passivity, although central to eighteenth-century literature, played a marginal role in the cultural products produced by those who used the Foundling Hospital at this time and that its meanings were more relevant to a middling and elite audience than to plebeians. If middling and elite employers more readily appealed to a language of seduction and an image of the unmarried mother as the victim of a predatory male to explain birth out of wedlock, it was perhaps because their values and references were informed by literary convention and Christian belief or because they understood the value of appeals to sin and salvation. Plebeian women themselves were less likely to frame their accounts in this way. Women were not passive either when they participated in relationships that involved consensual sex or when they dealt with the consequences of those sexual encounters. The diversity and ambiguities involved in these depictions of sexual relationships and their consequences defy simple explanations dependent upon male aggressive sexual desire and female sexual passivity. The significance of the double standard cannot be negated but this is an attempt to prove that eighteenth-century poor women were not simple, hopeless or passionless. Like most eighteenthcentury plebeian Londoners, their lives were dominated by insecurity. They lived their lives making shift, surviving, falling in love, facing betrayal and rejection but always hoping that fortune would help them on their way.

6 The Duty of Poor Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London

On 14 September 1757, five-day-old William Green was brought by his parents to the Foundling Hospital for ‘exposed and deserted young children’ in London. He was dressed in a cloth shirt, a fine diaper waistcoat and wrapped in a new flannel blanket with a napkin, embroidered with the initials EB, possibly his mother’s or father’s, pinned under his chin. When they handed him over to the Foundling’s porter, they also passed a note and a piece of copper to be kept as a token of their affection. The letter read For neither want of affection nor honesty of intention but from an absolute disability of providing for it, to the care and instruction of the Hospital, under the direction of divine provedence, the Anxious parents particularly the fond mother, afflicted to be torn thus from her beloved Child, Commits and Earnestly recommends her tender babe, wishing she was so happy as to be in a capacity of discharging the duty of a good mother towards it . . . They asked that the note, of which they kept an exact copy, a description of the token and their child’s clothes be securely preserved whereby the parents may recollect their own offspring, as they fully propose if Blessed with Life, to take it into their own hands sooner or later, when Ever it shall please God to Inable them to do.1 Before going on to delineate the meanings and experiences of pauper motherhood that are revealed in material such as this provided by parents to the Foundling Hospital when submitting and reclaiming 127

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their children, I want to contextualise this evidence in the wider social and cultural meanings of motherhood in eighteenth-century England. According to Blackstone, ‘the power of the parent over the child [was] derived from . . . their duty’.2 In line with natural law, mothers and fathers who had produced children had a moral duty to maintain, protect and educate them. Theoretically, parents could therefore be held accountable if their children were believed to have perished due to their neglect. But the duties of mothers and fathers were fundamentally gendered; they differed ideologically as well as in practice. Theological, medical, social and legal understandings of women were intimately bound up with their capacity to bear children.3 A woman’s reproductive core defined her, and motherhood was deemed her natural role. Both Stone and Shorter suggested that the emergence of modernity produced a transformation in affective relations between lovers and marriage partners, as well as between parents and their children. Elizabeth Badinter arguing that motherhood was an invention of capitalism suggested that the elite’s practice of the wet-nursing of children and the poor’s propensity to abandon theirs proved that early modern mothers and fathers felt little love for their offspring.4 Only in the eighteenth century did children come to be valued.5 The staggeringly high rate of infant mortality up until the mid-1750s had supposedly encouraged parents to make less investment in the lives of their newborns.6 Until the 1800s, it is argued, indifference towards infant life and death was common.7 The decline in infant mortality, deemed to be a direct result of the increase in breastfeeding amongst the aristocracy and more importantly the bourgeoisie, as well as a philosophical reassessment of the role of mothers within the family precipitated this change. This was the ‘century of the mother’.8 Evidence of early modern maternal affection and the value for infant life is not hard to find.9 It is clear that many parents felt deep affection for their children and despite the frequency with which they faced their deaths, grief was both widely experienced and expressed in early modern England.10 Instead of emphasising change, historians now insist on the value of studying continuity as well as change while highlighting the enduring characteristics of parental care as well as emotion. It seems that we no longer need to assume that historical actors were without emotions. What we do need to explore is how the ideas and practice of parental care varied at different times and the reasons why, together with the ways in which emotion was constructed and articulated.11 Social historians have revealed the significant experiential differences between mothers of contrasting social and marital status as well as age

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and it is now clear that women did not experience motherhood as a homogenous group.12 Unmarried mothers were far less likely to look forward to the births of their children, due to the disruption caused to their working lives, and because of fears about the loss of reputation, familial displeasure and communal rejection. But many married women also feared the processes of childbirth and motherhood that remained out of their control. For most poor families the birth of children, legitimate or not, resulted in increased poverty. It is clear that the cult of breastfeeding also made little impact on the lives of the poor because they had no choice but to nurse their own children. Nevertheless, the eighteenth-century revaluation of motherhood was to have enormous implications for the lives of pauper women in the establishment of charitable institutions, lying-in hospitals and the Foundling Hospital, all intended for the poor and pregnant. Although the meanings of motherhood have changed according to historical context, the struggle of poor mothers to support their families has endured.13 We now know a great deal about the discursive outpourings on motherhood during the eighteenth century. We know a lot less about the experience of pauper mothers in eighteenth-century London and this chapter is an attempt to trace the experiences and emotions of some of those women. At a time of imperial expansion and constant war, all mothers, rich and poor were re-conceptualised as producers of imperial citizens and new philanthropic endeavours sprung up in response to the fears about population decline in the mid-eighteenth century.14 Charity sermons and fundraising appeals for hospitals set up from the 1750s exhorted the benefits of these institutions for Britain at a time when child mortality and the increasingly visible problem of abandoned children occupied the minds of the ‘polite and commercial people’ of eighteenth-century Britain.15

Abandonment The eighteenth-century metropolis teemed with abandoned children. Over a thousand a year were being left on the rubbish heaps, in the streets, alleys and other public thoroughfares of the city.16 But the extent of abandonment at this time needs to be located in its social context.17 It was a practice that was familiar to ancient as well as early modern Europe and cannot be understood as part of the continuum of infanticide.18 The convention of leaving a child at a rich man’s door was familiar in contemporary literature as well as reality. Most parents tended to leave their children where others were likely to find them.19

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Unfortunately, the establishment of the Foundling Hospital seemed not to solve but rather to exacerbate the problem of abandonment in the capital.20 The hospital was always overwhelmed with applicants. Throughout the century, the governors were troubled by individuals who left their children at the hospital gate hoping to circumvent the admission procedure. 21 Other women ‘abandoned’ their children to the care of wet nurses. At age two, Sarah Miles ‘was put to nurse at Hammersmith where she now is, and the people have not heard of her Mother since which is now Five years’.22 Sarah Sneath asked the Foundling Hospital to accept Edward Brookes. His mother had committed him to her care, ‘to be nursed, with a promise to pay a small sum of money weekly for her care of him but has never received a single shilling both father and mother having soon absconded’.23 For those who have suggested that the practice of putting a child out to nurse was further proof of child neglect in this period, it is interesting to note that families often chose to place their child with a nurse that was located in easy travelling distance.24 Surrogate motherhood, by grandmothers, sisters, friends, neighbours and older children was also extremely common.25 Moreover, the practice of leaving children with nurses employed by the parish was widespread when most women were obliged to work to support their families.26 Rachel Fuchs has discovered that some women who brought their children for admission into the Hotel Dieu in Paris hoped to get the hospital to pay them to nurse their own children. Popular and elite culture teemed with references to surrogate motherhood and the difficulty that poor mothers faced when maintaining their own children. Moses was perhaps the world’s most familiar foundling. His story was told in the one book that poor households tended to possess, and replayed on the very walls of the Foundling Hospital in which women stood when being interviewed by the General Committee.27 Poor mothers identified with Biblical images of mothers struck by misfortune but so too did the men who managed the Foundling Hospital. Although the Bible may have condemned illicit sex and child abandonment, all good Christians were expected to treat unfortunate women and their innocent children with compassion. Despite the fact that a correlation between abandonment and illegitimacy has always been assumed, as we have seen bastardy alone was not responsible for the rise in child abandonment during this period. A number of historians have attributed the increase in abandoned infants to the rising poverty of all families at this time. Historians who have researched the abandonment of children on the Continent have also suggested that many foundlings were not

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bastards.28 Across Europe at this time, children were being abandoned because their parents simply could not afford to care for them.29 Many of the philanthropists involved with the day-to-day management of the Foundling Hospital recognised the numerous structural impediments that were stacked against lone mothers trying to rear children on their own. The petitions for the admission of children show that most of the mothers who petitioned the Foundling Hospital were young, unmarried and trying to acquire admission for their first child. The births of their children did not necessarily result in social ostracism but the characteristics of their work prevented them from maintaining their children. Domestic servants could not keep their child under an employer’s roof even if their master or mistress sympathised with their condition. Women, who earned at most two-thirds of the wages of men, simply did not earn enough to support a family on their own. The experience of poverty for many women remained similar whether a mother was married or not. This chapter does not argue that all mothers cared and loved the children that they ‘abandoned’ to the Foundling Hospital but it does aim to provide evidence of maternal love for the bastard child in the testimonies of women given to the hospital authorities when seeking to admit and to reclaim their child, and in the notes and tokens they left with infants when admitted. We need to look at women’s own words to explore the reasons for the abandonment of their children. Their petitions and tokens can tell us something about their feelings for their children. However, the representation of emotional expression in historical documents is not unproblematic. 30 Many petitions for the admission of children were written carefully, but this does not mean that emotion could not be expressed in the course of relating life-stories and destitution. In effect the petitions represent the cultural expressions of plebeian women.31 In their petitions, mothers used cultural narratives that were familiar to them and to the men of the General Committee to describe their circumstances and emotions. Clearly, women were eager to tell a story of their life that would guarantee the admission of their child but the attachment of women to their children and declarations of maternal love provided were irrelevant to the Committee when assessing the relative merits of petitioner’s cases. Few women relied on literary constructs to represent their circumstances. It is suggested that in spite of the image, in law and in the historiography, of the infanticidal and abandoning mother of a newly born bastard child, many unmarried mothers loved and cherished their children dearly and did everything in their capacity to care for and support their infant.

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Many women did not use the Foundling Hospital to carelessly abandon their children. Despite the difficulties that a single woman encountered trying to support a child on her own, many women struggled for as long as possible to rear their child through work and with the assistance of others. In their petitions, plebeian women described how impossible it was for them to combine work with motherhood if left unsupported by a partner. This was particularly the case for the mothers of very young children who required breastfeeding as well as constant care. Mary Morris had nursed her child for over a month but knew she had to return to work. She hoped that her infant would ‘fall into some good nurses hands who will use it well god enable me to take it out in two years time’. She returned to reclaim her child seven years later.32 This was the age when a child was perceived to be able to contribute to the family economy. Many mothers did not intend for the admission of their child into the Foundling Hospital to signify the end of their relationship. The desperation and economic need of women feeds through many of the petitions.33 Women tended to use up all of their savings to cover their expenses during the four weeks of a lying-in period. Most children were brought to the hospital after four weeks and when under one year old, but a significant proportion of parents tried to bring up their children for several months and sometimes even years after their births in spite of the age limit imposed by the hospital. The care of children was a part of most women’s economies of makeshift. Married women, with several children, sometimes asked the hospital to take their youngest child while they struggled to support the others. Ursula Allen pleaded If your mercy extends so far as to assist me with the youngest till I can provide for it I hope to be able to struggle on with the other but with both I dare not hope to exist much longer. 34 Mary Legget asked them to do the same for her, ‘she hopes by the assistance of a few friends, and her own industry to take care of the rest, and make them fit for service’.35 Women recognised their physical obligation to nurse their children but they had to choose how to ensure the existence of their entire family. Breastfeeding prevented mothers from working; so many asked that newborns be admitted so that they could return to work more quickly.36 This was a strategy that was shared by mothers across Europe.37 Surprisingly, women did not appeal to the image and the instincts of the infanticidal mother in their petitions. Only one woman told the

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authorities that ‘she was allmost Tempted by the Devel to Destroy it, but Blessed be god he stood her Friend against the Temptation’.38 Other women recognised their wrong in having a child born out of wedlock but they also acknowledged their duty to their child. Martha Young admitted that she was ‘Abashed at her Misfortune, But still willing to embrace the Laws of Humanity, and ready to save the Life of an Innocent Babe’.39 Another petition has the mark of an author familiar with representations of unmarried mothers in contemporary law and literature. Ann Norman told the Committee that ‘though her child is illegitimate and obnoxious to the last yet the natural Affection of a Mother is still the same but however binding the ties of affection may be your petitioners forlorn and needy situation preponderates’.40 However, in most petitions mothers concentrated their efforts on describing their poverty and desperation in a tone that was matter of fact, using a language that reflected their everyday lives and which tended to be unembellished with dramatic licence. Women did not abandon their children without suffering personal torment. Catherine Smith claimed that ‘at the Time of parting with the Child [she was] distracted’.41 Indeed ‘distraction’ and ‘distress’ were the words most often recorded by women describing the effects of parting with their child.42 Other mothers described their children with affection. Ann Curtis admitted that ‘she is a mother, she feels sensibly the tender claims her child has upon her, to resign the precious deposit, will be indeed an exquisitely painful task’.43 Charlotte Smith talked of her ‘sweet baby to see it starve I cannot’ and Mary Brown of her ‘tender babe’.44 Another Mary Brown brought her infant for admission ‘though full of Affection to her Child and is feeling the greatest Grief at parting with her yet’.45 Mary Carter ‘cannot bear to see her offspring suffer want’.46 Ann Brown asked the hospital to ‘Assist me in the greatest distress that can possibly Attend Womankind having a Child and not being Able to provide for it.’47 These women feared for the survival of their children. Mary Lewis believed that ‘both she and her Child are in imminent danger of starving’.48 Two women asked for their children to be saved ‘from becoming a prey to death through Want’.49 These women were appealing to the raison d‘être of the charity – the conviction that infant lives needed to be saved. Many women therefore evoked the vulnerability of their children in their petitions. Not all women found it easy to leave their child at the hospital. Some women found themselves before the General Committee testifying to their circumstances and necessity before realising that they were unable to part with their infant.50 Parents often tried to stay in contact with

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their children – coming to the hospital to catch glimpses of them or attempting to approach the nurses or employers to whom the children had been sent.51 The hospital prohibited the discovery of such information. Nurses found trying to discover the former identities of children would have their charges taken away from them.52 The Committee only allowed for mothers to stay in touch with children who had been apprenticed out if their master permitted them to do so. Even parish officers were told that mothers could not write to them asking for information about their infants. One woman, having a change of heart, even tried to snatch her child from the nurse to whom it had been sent.53 The Committee was happy to let parents reclaim their children provided that they could afford to maintain them but while the children remained in their care, parents were prevented from keeping in touch (if they were caught trying to do so). Women often described their children as unfortunate. The concept of misfortune and bad luck had long been associated with the consequences of pre-marital sex and conception.54 Others characterised their children as innocents. For Elizabeth Fanejoy, her children were the ‘dear innocent victims of her shame’.55 Mothers hoped that their children would escape social censure if taken into the hospital. Of course, the Foundling Hospital authorities had entirely different intentions. The charity provided children with a ‘Christian and useful’ education and training that was out of the reach of their parents but they were taught never to forget their roots. Foundlings, rather than their mothers, became the focus of the hospital’s attempts at moral reform. Constant prayer and the sermons they were obliged to listen to in the chapel every Sunday were intended to teach them everlasting humility and gratitude and, above all, to know their place.56 Fractured family life was a common experience amongst plebeians in the eighteenth-century metropolis. Single mothers struggled harder than most to support their families. In their petitions, they commonly described their children as ‘inconveniences’, ‘incumbrances’, ‘burdens’ and ‘insurmountable obstacles’, and they hoped that the hospital would enable them to return to work.57 The demands and costs of caring for an infant were almost impossible to meet by an unsupported mother. This was because her infant prevented her from working. Elizabeth Wright described herself as an unhappy mother though she was ‘in hopes when rid of that Incumbrance to get a Place’.58 Mary Davies stated that ‘the incumbrance of her child prevents her entering into that or any other method of getting her bread’.59 Mary Smith stated that ‘(provided she can get rid of this Burthen) will be enabled to get her

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living in Service’.60 Elizabeth Williams hoped the hospital would ‘lighten her Burden . . . thereby enabling your petitioner to earn her livelihood’.61 Others stated simply that their child prevented them from working. Sarah Barnaby had ‘nothing to subsist on but by Servitude and being entirely deprived of that by the Child being upon my hands’.62 Betty Parker told them that if ‘her Child is taken off she then will be able to get her Bread’.63 Sarah Harrison ‘has not any means to provide for herself and Child but by going to Service which she cannot do whilst she has her Child to maintain.’64 These women could not earn enough to support both themselves and their children. Jane Burton ‘has got no money to keep her child’.65 Many women declared their income in their petitions and calculated that the cost of nursing was beyond their means. Maria Thomas ‘wishes very much to return to service, yet as the wages she would earn could not in any way suffice for the maintenance of her Child’.66 Martha Mansell was lucky to be working again after giving birth but was ‘unable’d to pay for it for my wages is but nine guineas and I pay twelve for it’.67 Mary Jewitt told the Committee that ‘she is going out to service for the Small Wages of £6 per annum, and the Child at 4 weeks will come to £10.8’.68 Elizabeth Sarah Mills placed out her offspring to Nurse at one Guinea per Month expecting the Childs father according to promise would come forward to pay for the Nursing of the Child but the Child’s father not coming forward according to promise your petitioner hath in vain tried to find him out and supposes he is gone out of this Land. Your Petitioner being at this time only a servant at the yearly Sum of five pounds cannot pay for the support of the child having already made away with all of her clothes except those in daily wear.69 Everybody knew that ‘the wages of a Servant, are nothing near sufficient to defray the expenses of a Child’.70 Servants were utterly dependent upon assistance to survive. Thomasin Whily received ‘£7 a year, £6.10 of which she is Obliged to pay for nursing her Child. So she has but 10 shillings a year for herself which Unless her Mistress was exceeding kind to her, would be utterly unable to Maintain herself’. 71 Mothers scrimped and saved, counted their pennies, sold and saved their clothes for emergencies such as these. Many of these women believed that their child’s only hope of survival was the hospital. This was their ultimate duty to their child and it was this that justified their abandonment.72 Mary Graves was so poor that it

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rendered her ‘incapable of Discharging my duty to my Child to prevent from Perishing with Hunger.’73 Ann Page offered her child for admission ‘being intirely unable to act with Justice or perform the Duty of a Mother’.74 Eleanor Richardson hoped that in time she would be able to return to reclaim her child and ‘Do the Duty of a Mother by it.’75 Without charitable assistance Ann Butler ‘knows not by what means she can discharge the Duties of a Mother’.76 Women turned to the hospital for aid because they believed that their children had a right to survival. Mary Wilson knew that the hospital could do a better job than she could, ‘I think in Justis Between God and man it is beter to imploor your Goodness than to keep it to starve by Enshes.’77 Elizabeth Sugars ‘finds herself not able to do that Justice to her ofspring she could wish, being oblig’d to go to hand labour every day’.78 Ann Erradge told the Committee that ‘it will not be in her Power (as a fond and Tender Mother in her present situation) to render Justice to her said most dear and Valuable Infant . . . being at this time without all manner of employment’.79 Sarah Elm asked the hospital to take her child, ‘whom she is convinced will do it more Justice than lay in her power to do’.80 The Foundling Hospital was one strategy used among many others by poor mothers. Unmarried mothers could be discerning about the types of charitable relief that was available to them. Some parents felt that their children were more likely to live if admitted into the Foundling Hospital than if forced to enter the workhouse. The particularly high mortality rate in workhouses was common knowledge amongst the poor. Sarah Preston implored the charity to, ‘Save me from the Relief of a Parish.’81 Elizabeth Swindell had tried for some time to support her child after its father had run off, using the wages she had saved while in service and by selling her clothes, but after these means had run dry she was forced to petition the Foundling Hospital she has no other means to get to Service again, unless your Goodness will take her Infant son under the care of your most Excelent Charity, or to send it to the parish, which She wishes to avoid, on account of exposing herself and the Dreadful Manner the Parish Children are generally brought up.82 Sarah Whitfield had supported her illegitimate child for one-and-a-half years through her wages earned in service together with 1 shilling a week provided by the parish but soon found the burden too great and petitioned the hospital for the admission of her child. Her employer told

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the steward that ‘she has a great affection for her Child and cannot bear the thought of placing it entirely with the care of the parish’.83 Ann Kingston’s child was born in the workhouse at Bethnal Green and was given 2 shillings a week for its upkeep but she claimed that this was ‘not enough to keep us from starving . . . they will not take the child into the workehouse without I goe in with it and this Day they have stopped my money and wont give me aney for Last Week so that Starve I must unless I part with the Child.’84 Many avoided the workhouse in favour of the Foundling Hospital because it allowed for the admission of their children while they escaped institutionalisation. The charity allowed them to return to work to earn their bread. The hospital, unlike the parish, also provided children with carefully supervised nursing, education, training and apprenticeship. Women used all the skills and resources at their disposal to give their child the chance of life. Women might have known about the high mortality rate in the Foundling but the recognition of their incapacity to fulfil their duties as mothers meant that all they could hope for was the greater chance of survival that their child might have in the hospital.85 Moreover, the mortality rate in the hospital improved substantially after the General Reception period and over the next forty years. Mothers demonstrated their love for their children by providing them with the chance of life.

Fatherhood In a sense, mothers saw the hospital as providing the role of a surrogate father for their child. Louisa Gurney appealed to the Committee’s ‘paternal sympathy’ when considering her case.86 Mothers begged the hospital to protect their child. Elizabeth Taylor believed that ‘herself and Child must Perish without your Fatherly Care’.87 Ann Robins asked the Committee to ‘let me place the child under their protection, it being quite out of power to support it’.88 Katherine Dolman, ‘having a motherly love for my child I should be very happy iff I could put it under your protection’.89 It was a father’s duty to provide for the maintenance of their child. Women trusted men to look after them if pregnancy resulted. In their petitions, they evoked the duty of fathers to provide for their illegitimate infants. 90 The hospital protected children, saved their lives and educated them. The authorities consistently exhorted this as one of the benefits of the charity in their sermons and appeals for funds. Here children would receive an education and training that their parents could not afford. Mary Tinswood ‘would be very happy to have the infant taken care of and educated’.91 Martha

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Pearce hoped to have her child ‘brought up in the path of virtue which her distressed Situation will not permit her to do’.92 Sarah Stains hoped that her child once admitted would ‘be taught to shun those errors its unworthy Parents have fell into’.93 Martha Maurice asked that her child might be taken ‘from her hands into your Care and Protection’.94 The hospital’s staff was often the only family that the children knew. This helps us to understand why eighteenth-century foundlings reciting the Lords Prayer believed themselves to be praying to Thomas Coram, ‘Our father’, whose portrait hung over them at mealtimes.95 The petitions also show that parenting practices and the language of parental affection was gendered. Only eighteen fathers had petitioned to have their children admitted in the petitions that I analysed. Widowers were compelled by their poverty and reduced family support system to turn to the hospital for help. Laccheus Thorn, for example, tried to obtain admission for his youngest child. He stated that he was at present encumbered with Three Children one of between Two and Three Years of age – the second of eighteen months, and the youngest only two Months . . . your petitioners wages is only Sixteen Shillings per week, when in work, but that often . . . has been unfortunately out of employment, during the winter months . . .96 David Evans, a widower with four young children, told the governors that ‘yesterday he lost his Wife and has nothing to depend on but his Business being a Chairman’.97 John Watkins was a journeyman perukemaker who had also lost his wife. His problems were further compounded by a swelling in his knee, left with two children and unable to work he asked the Hospital to admit, ‘the youngest which is but four months old I know not what to do with, as ‘tis out of my power to pay for a Nurse for it, I have no parish to put it to’.98 The Committee judged men and women’s petitions according to different criteria. Men tended to present their circumstances in a much more matter of fact manner than women did. Both emphasised how little they lived on, their insecure and low-paid work, and the struggle to support several children if their families were large but men rarely embellished their accounts with descriptions of their emotions and desperation.99 Only after the deaths of their wives were men usually confronted with the sole responsibility for the care of their children. William Putt described himself as a poor man with nine children unable to look after them, ‘as my time being taken up entirely in the office’.100 The petitions describe how men felt that their work allowed no time for

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childcare. The mothers described how childcare took up all of their time and rendered them unable even to find work and facing certain destitution. Many more women than men submitted petitions to the Foundling Hospital because it was they who had to deal with the consequences of illegitimate as well as legitimate childbirth. The nature and characteristics of women’s work also meant that women with young infants were incapable of working. If work was obtained, then the likelihood of being able to care for children was often too much of a struggle for most women. Men did not tell the same stories of economic destitution as women. Their petitions were not couched in the same desperate terms as women’s were. Men did not mention turning to friends for help nor did they detail how they had to sell their clothes before contemplating the admission of their child into the Foundling Hospital. The hospital was often their first port of call rather than their last in the attempt to ensure the survival of their children. Their petitions often followed fast after their wives’ deaths. Poor women always bore the brunt of the responsibility for childcare and the petitions suggest that they struggled for longer before bringing their children for admission. Moreover, the Foundling authorities assumed that fathers were financially capable of providing for their offspring. The Committee accepted that the economic need of most mothers was unquestionable. The language as well as the economies of makeshift and parental affection belonged to women rather than men.

The tokens Some mothers hoped that if they saved enough money or if they married they might be able to return to reclaim their son or daughter. From the start, the hospital facilitated the reclamation of children. From 1750, great care was taken in recording the details of tokens left with the children to ensure that all children could be discovered after admission. The lists of the details of tokens, and some actual tokens themselves, were contained in a book.101 Tokens and love billets had been exchanged between couples amongst all social classes as symbols of affection and commitment for centuries.102 In this context, the giving and receiving of gifts created ties of obligation and reciprocity between lovers. The social and cultural meanings of letters and billets were economic, emotional, symbolic as well as contractual. Historians of this material culture suggest that men were the more proactive givers of tokens and women their passive receivers.103 The tokens given to the Foundling Hospital on the admission of children and kept securely in billet books

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and elsewhere did not have the same meanings, although the types of gifts given shared characteristics. For the Foundling authorities, the tokens were used merely to identify a child in the event of a parent returning to reclaim them. They were kept in the possession of the authorities and never passed on to the children. Yet for parents, the tokens signified their relationship with their infant and represented the only tangible link that they had to their child. The giving of a token was also a moment when they could express their love. The types of tokens given testify to the poverty of the majority of applicants but they also suggest that this was a culture within which women rather than men predominated. Notes were the most common tokens that were left with children. These often conveyed information that the hospital requested concerning the age of the child, whether it was wet or dry nursed, and if it was christened. Women and men, on the brink of literacy, scrawled most of these notes. Many were clearly written in haste rather than carefully crafted and, like the petitions, relied on the spoken word rather than literary constructs. Despite giving up their child to the hospital’s care, many parents hoped to have some say over the name their child was given. One note stated, ‘this Child is not baptised and I desire he may be baptised and Called Roger Brown’.104 Out of 367 tokens I have examined that were handed in during the 1740s and 1750s, 147 were notes, 39 were pieces of material (mostly ribbons and knots), one a coin (an English shilling), one a heart-shaped piece of card and another a playing card (a King of Clubs with the child’s name written on the blank side).105 Some of the notes attached to the clothes that children were wearing reveal the everyday concerns of mothers. Mothers of all social classes shared these worries. A handful of parents who brought their child for admission after 1760 bypassed the petitioning process by paying £100 to have their child admitted.106 One mother of such a child hoped that her child would continue to be breastfed, ‘The Child was obliged to be put to the breast and will not do without it [all] it has to eat has been biscuit or semolina with sugar in it should it appear to want any thing the most likely thing is cherries.’107 Some notes detail the emotional wrenching that accompanied the separation of children from their parents. Mary Webb scrawled her daughter’s name ‘Ann Webb born on the 10 day of Dec 1766 about the hour of ten at night in Middlesex Hospital and Baptised on the 28 of the same month as witness the hand of its poor broken hearted mother.’108 The types of tokens given were related to the social and economic context within which women operated. Coins were frequently provided

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as tokens because they were an everyday possession that obviously symbolised value. These, and other objects, were frequently personalised with the engraving of a child or parent’s name.109 It is possible that mothers passed the same love tokens given by lovers promising them commitment and marriage on to their children. These coins often had a hole through the middle of them suggesting that they may have been worn as a pendant on a chain, a piece of string or ribbon. Some coins were severed in half suggesting that the hospital was given one part while the parent kept the other – this was a practice shared by lovers symbolising their commitment and vows of constancy. The majority of these tokens testified to the poverty of most applicants but some attested to the affluence of a few. In 1758, the hospital decided to offer parents receipts for their children. These took the place as signifier of the relationship between parent and child.110 From 1764, receipts were systematically replacing tokens. As a result, gifts were given far less frequently on admission.111 Between 1763 and 1811, only 112 tokens exist for the 2687 children admitted.112 These shared many of the same characteristics of the earlier memorials. Most were notes, coins, ribbons and bows. In the later years of the eighteenth century, only the parents of the children admitted on payment of £100 and with no questions asked usually included tokens. A petition for admission could not be used to identify their relationship to their child so a token effectively took its place. The tokens exhibited in the Foundling Hospital’s display cases were clearly chosen because they were thought the most aesthetically pleasing. They were also often the most valuable. But they can still tell us something about the material culture, the economic need and the emotions of the mothers who brought their children for admission. Of the seventy-four tokens displayed, forty-nine were pieces of jewellery. Mothers left pendants, bracelets, lockets, rings and crosses. There were also three coins, three notes, two ribbons, four household objects (including a key and some tweezers) and sixteen others (including eight buttons and an eyeglass). Such tokens could not be stored in the billet books but were locked away for safekeeping. In the storeroom of the museum, over 300 coins that were brought as tokens are kept. For many parents only the smallest coins, one, two or three penny pieces, could be spared. Again many of these have holes through their middle, while others have been cut in half and some fashioned in the shape of a heart. Others used buttons, beads and the stones or pips of fruits – objects close to hand, cheap or free and fingered in pockets from day to day.

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Many tokens were fragments of material, ribbon and clothes. Like the coins and notes, these were often embroidered or marked with personal inscriptions making clear the link between a mother and her child. The culture of clothes was one which women dominated.113 All poor girls had at least some training in needlework. Working with a needle, often done in addition to other jobs, was usually women’s means of earning extra bread. Many of the tokens given and the clothes that children were wearing when admitted point to the economies of makeshift within which mothers and their families operated. Clothes were of significant economic value in the lives of the poor and crucial to the struggles to survive of poor women. When women were obliged to leave their places on account of their pregnancies, many worked through their wages saved in service and they sold their possessions, especially their clothes, in order to survive. Clothes may have had particular value for domestic servants who sometimes received clothes as payment in kind.114 Poor women also ran the second-hand clothing market in London which was crucial to many individuals’ and families’ strategies of survival.115 In their descriptions of necessity, it was women rather than men who stated that they had sold their clothes to eke out an existence. Even the poorest men had a security of income and employment that was denied to women. Their survival was less dependent upon making shift and chance. Some of the clothes that children were dressed in when admitted suggest that many women were making do while others were remarkably well-dressed. The inspector could have recorded on his pre-printed sheet twenty-six separate pieces of clothing that a single infant might be wearing when admitted. The inspector noted that one girl who was about six weeks old and had a red birthmark under her left breast was ‘very poorly drest’.116 While another who was around ten days old wore ‘white cotton sleeves turned up with blue mantua, a fine double Cambrick cap with a double cambrick border and 3 fine diaper clouts’ was ‘extremely clean and neat’.117 Some clothes were clearly makeshift – a piece of material, for example, is often described as being used ‘for a mantle’.118 These tokens enable us to reconstruct some of the feelings that mothers had for their children as well as their economic necessity. Their mementoes are testimony to the economic desperation and complex emotions that led to the abandonment of a child, their pain at separation as well as the love that many mothers felt for their children. This material also allows historians to glimpse at the uses of literacy by society’s poorest. The notes written by mothers in their own imperfect hand, as well as their petitions for admission and reclaiming provide evidence of the literacy skills of society’s poorest. Some notes contained verses that

Duty of Poor Mothers in Eighteenth-Century London 143

described and excused the circumstances of illegitimate pregnancy by drawing on a language familiar to popular literature and song. Pity the offspring of a youthful Pair, Whom folly taught and Pleasure did Ensnare; Let the poor Babe, its parents fault Attone, Stand you its friends, or else it is undone.119 This verse together with the name and date of birth of the infant was written on a rectangular piece of card and sewn on a thick length of deep purple ribbon and handed in with the child when admitted. The following verse accompanied another carefully crafted, heart-shaped token made out of paper. Here I am brought without a name Im sent to hide my mothers shame I hope youll say mes not to blame Itt, seems my mothers twenty five And mattrymony laid a side.120 Many tokens, including notes, pieces of card, material and coins, were fashioned into the shape of a heart. The writing of poesies for Valentine’s cards and rings exchanged between lovers influenced the ways in which rhyming couplets were composed for these tokens for children.121 One woman handed in a pendant with ‘You have my heart, tho wee must part’ engraved on to it with the details of the child’s birth.122 The heart was a well-known symbol of love, affection and memory, and some parents clearly took great care and time creating a lasting remembrance for their child.

Conclusion This evidence counters the image of the infanticidal and abandoning mother of a bastard child. The petitions for admission, the notes and tokens handed in with children into the Foundling Hospital provide valuable insights into the meanings and experiences of motherhood for poor women in eighteenth-century London. The widespread abandonment of bastards needs to be situated within the context of the abandonment of other poor children and the popularity of surrogate motherhood at this time. Moreover, many women believed that the admission of their child into the Foundling Hospital was not final but

144 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

hoped to use it as a temporary expedient during a time of particular hardship. Other women used numerous methods and means to remain in contact with their children. Many mothers stated that their duty to their child was offering them the chance of survival. If they themselves could not provide that, then they had a moral duty to ensure that another could. Poor women bore the brunt of the responsibility for conception, birth and postnatal care. Few mothers could support a child on their own. Society expected mothers to care for their children but they acknowledged their financial incapacity to do so, especially if they were unmarried. Fathers, however, were expected to support their children although many reneged on their responsibilities as parents. The evidence presented here points towards the gendered nature of parental care, the language of making shift and of emotions. Few fathers appealed to their feelings in their petitions and, as we will see in Chapter 8, far fewer men than women returned to reclaim their children once they had been admitted. The emotions described in the petitions, the notes pinned to children’s clothes, the time that passed before women brought their children for admission when faced with no alternatives, and the efforts made at reclamation attest to the maternal love of poor mothers for their children during this period.

7 Childbirth

Establishment of Lying-in Charities 1747

Middlesex Lying-in Wards

1749

Lying-in Hospital for Married Women/British Lying-in Hospital, Brownlow Street, Long Acre

1750

City of London Lying-in Hospital, Aldersgate Street

1773

moved to City Road, St Luke’s, Old Street

1752

General Lying-in Hospital/Queen Charlotte’s

1791

moved to Bayswater from Quebec Street (off Oxford Road)

1809

named in honour of Queen Charlotte

1757

Royal Maternity Charity/Royal Lying-in Charity (delivered women in their own homes)

1765

Westminster Lying-in Hospital/General Lying-in Hospital (1818)

1828

moved to York Road, Lambeth

1767

New General Lying-in Hospital, Store Street, Tottenham Court Road

Up until the eighteenth century, women had dominated the culture of childbirth. The vast majority of mothers gave birth within their own homes using midwives recommended to them by family, friends and neighbours.1 These midwives were usually mature married or widowed women who had had children themselves.2 The rituals of childbirth and churching, where women would mark the end of their lying-in period with a religious ceremony of thanks, were practised by women 145

146 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

regardless of social status.3 Between 1747 and 1767, the culture and experience of childbirth changed for many women as religious, social, mercantilist and humanitarian motives combined to contribute to the establishment of seven institutions dedicated to the delivery of poor pregnant women in London, and as upper-class women began to use male physicians during their deliveries. The voluntary hospital movement was just one element of the new philanthropic endeavours of the mid-eighteenth century.4 Plebeian mothers entered the public imagination of Britain and Europe as populationist concerns swept through the corridors of power.5 Even after the establishment of the lying-in hospitals, only a tiny fraction of women were delivered within such institutions. The image of the hospitals overshadowed their size; combined, they housed the deliveries of only about 5 per cent of London births in 1760. 6 In contrast, the Hotel Dieu in Paris delivered almost 1500 women every year – a much higher proportion than that achieved by London’s institutions.7 Women who could not gain admission into the lying-in hospitals and who were too poor to support themselves during their labour and lying-in period could find an alternative source of support in the parish. Women were delivered in the workhouse unless the parish provided out-relief (usually of 2 shillings 6 pence) to women if they gave birth in their own homes.8 As we have seen, women also relied on the support of family, friends and neighbours to help them through their deliveries. The establishment of London’s lying-in hospitals was driven by the desire for a strong nation. In an age of empire and frequent wars, Britain required poor women to provide a healthy population. Charity sermons and fundraising appeals for the hospitals exhorted the benefits of these institutions for Britain. In his sermons to raise funds for the City of London Lying-in Hospital, John Nicols argued that they ‘secure the birth, and protect the tender lives of infants, who may hereafter be usefully employed in trade and manufacture, or supply the waste of war in our fleets and armies’.9 The men driving the hospital movement were men-midwives, such as John Leake and William Hunter, eager to demonstrate their professional abilities on women too poor to afford their own midwifery care. They used the hospitals to hone their skills and to publicise their expertise. As men ousted women from the control of midwifery by using their skills as surgeons to position themselves as the experts of childbirth, increasing numbers of poor women could hope to find a hospital bed in which to give birth.

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Lying-in hospitals were instrumental in the creation of the manmidwife and the loss of female control over the culture of childbirth.10 The focus of this chapter is on the women who gave birth within these institutions. Their experiences may have been atypical because most women did not give birth within hospitals but the details of their deliveries are still important. Information on childbirth is provided by the encounters between the mothers and the hospital authorities described in the hospitals’ minutes as well as the narratives mothers gave to the hospital authorities in their settlement exams. It discusses the origins, circumstances and experiences of the mothers that lay-in at the hospitals and explores how women used them for their own ends. The Middlesex, the British Lying-in Hospital and the City of London Hospital stated that they accepted only married women as patients. Nevertheless, it is shown that unmarried mothers were able to gain admission into these institutions. In contrast, the General Lying-in Hospital the Westminster Lying-in Hospital and the Store Street Lying-in Hospital admitted unmarried as well as married women.11 The similarities in the circumstances and experiences of poor married and unmarried mothers were striking. This had long been recognised by midwives and was also acknowledged by those who ran the institutions that provided for plebeian women during the mid- to late eighteenth century. Few midwives distinguished between the mothers that they delivered by their marital status. According to Wilson, ‘(m)idwives may well have been drawn into helping unmarried mothers, given their general role as supporters of women and the essential continuity between illegitimate and legitimate births’.12 Defoe had Moll Flanders lay-in at the house of a midwife renowned for helping unmarried as well as married women through their labours. For her, all the Ladies, that come under her Care were married Women to her; every Woman says she, that is with Child has a Father for it, and whether that Father was a Husband or no Husband, was no Business of hers; her Business was to assist me in my present Circumstances, whether I had a Husband or no; for Madam, says she, to have a Husband that cannot appear, is to have no Husband in the sense of the Case, and therefore whether you are a Wife or Mistress is all one to me.13 Historians have argued that London’s lying-in hospitals admitted only women of ‘good character’, women who could be identified as ‘proper objects of charity’.14 The evidence presented here suggests that this

148 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

category included unmarried mothers. The Middlesex Lying-in wards, established in 1747, explicitly stated that they only wished to provide help for poor married women.15 Similarly, the British Lying-in Hospital, instituted in 1749, claimed that it attended only to the pregnant Wives or Widows of Persons who have been reduced from affluent to indigent Circumstances, of Distressed Housekeepers, Mechanicks, Soldiers, Sailors, and of the Labouring and Industrious Poor, at a Time when their Condition renders them useless, or rather a Burthen to their Families at Home.16 Alistair Gunn has suggested that the exclusion of unmarried mothers from these institutions was ‘a symptom of a common attitude in those days that the erring must pay the price’.17 It has been argued that the lying-in hospitals were established to promote and reward the process of marriage among the working classes. Marriage was preached as the bedrock of morality and essential to ensure the growth of England’s population. Certainly, if one looks at the accounts and sermons of the hospitals, as Donna Andrew has done, we can trace the constant references to the importance of reproduction within marriage.18 Addresses to the public as well as the governing boards themselves often reiterated why the charities admitted only married women. It is from them we are to supply our fleets and armies – from them we are to be supplied with the ingenious mechanic, the industrious manufacturer and labourers, they are in fact the Riches of the Rich, without whom their wealth would be of little use. The Governors do not mean by this to insinuate that unmarried women, in a state of pregnancy, are not very great objects of charity: but take the liberty of suggesting that, at a time when the lower order of the people seem to pay so little attention to moral virtues, and when the forms prescribed both by our religion, and the laws of the country are so little regarded, an institution where this distinction is made, seems likely to be of the greatest service . . .19 Preachers portrayed unmarried mothers as the victims of seduction, betrayal and the villainy of men. The City of London Lying-in Hospital, set up in 1750, justified their admissions policy by arguing that though charity is willing to extend its good wishes and good offices to all; and though several poor creatures are real objects of compassion,

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who have been seduced and betrayed by the artifices and villany of men, and who, though not innocent, are not abandoned; yet, where our bounty cannot reach to all objects of distress, no doubt can be made, but that the honest and virtuous ought to have the preference. And it would be a reflection as any publick foundation of this nature to appear to give any encouragement to licentiousness, or to take sober and regular, together with profligate and prostitute women, indiscriminately into your favour.20 This chapter explores the stories of the mothers who delivered in the hospitals, rather than such sermons and accounts to test whether unmarried mothers were the victims that preachers claimed and whether hospital authorities interpreted the rules on marital status as strictly as the sermons suggest. All of London’s lying-in hospitals were funded from voluntary subscriptions, donations and legacies left in wills. They vied with each other for funds and often shared benefactors.21 While subscription played an important part in the financing of the hospitals, donations, bequests and fundraising initiatives that included the staging of plays and concerts provided the hospitals with the mainstay of their income as well as providing the opportunity for social exchange. The men who managed the hospitals were elected, as in all voluntary institutions, by the subscribers of the charities. The hospital movement appealed particularly to the new commercial classes, especially merchants and traders.22 Donna Andrew has calculated that only about 18 per cent of the subscribers to the British Lying-in Hospital were aristocrats.23 Such men and women were driven by their obligations as property owners to help the poor.24 Middle-class subscribers were supposedly encouraged by the presence of aristocrats on hospital boards of governors.25 Croxson has suggested that people contributed to hospital funds for a combination of several reasons; they derived personal pleasure from their actions as well as social prestige and business contacts, and their involvement ensured that funds were used properly.26 Active governors on hospital boards were not aristocratic but usually men of the middling orders striving for respectability and social prestige.27 Men such as the merchant Jonas Hanway, perhaps the most famous and assiduous philanthropist of the eighteenth-century metropolis, were driven to help the poor through Christian charity but were also concerned with the promotion of self-help and economic self-sufficiency. Hanway, like many men on the boards of governors of philanthropic institutions, was a member of the Russia Company. Involvement in such charities

150 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

allowed men to network effectively and also to work towards the national good.28 Political allegiances drove men to associate themselves with certain hospitals. Adrian Wilson discovered that the Westminster and the Middlesex hospitals were predominately funded by Whigs. Whig politicians elected to seats for Westminster and Middlesex were also governors of the Middlesex and Westminster lying-in hospitals. During the midcentury, Whigs made up the majority of men involved in the lying-in hospitals but the General Lying-in Hospital had a more eclectic political mix of subscribers. Wilson suggests this began as a Whig hospital because Tories were unlikely to fund the support of unmarried mothers. However, as the charity expanded, it attracted many Tory as well as Whig subscribers.29 Clearly, people chose to support London’s hospitals for a multiplicity of factors. Middling men striving for recognition as gentlemen of civic virtue who became involved in the funding and management of voluntary hospitals, central to mid-century philanthropic endeavours, were united by ‘(T)he display of doing good . . . but their motives and goals arose from a range of values and social relationships’.30

Admission Most women were admitted into the hospitals via a letter of recommendation from a subscriber to the charity. A woman who sought admittance into one of these hospitals was required to attend the Weekly Board Committee and to produce a letter of recommendation from a governor that certified that she was a ‘proper object of charity’.31 A subscriber on payment of an adequate subscription was entitled to recommend patients to the hospitals.32 Benefactors were supposed to examine potential patients for their suitability and then, if deemed proper, to put them forward to the Weekly Board of the hospital. Each woman who hoped to be admitted for her delivery had to justify her case to a governor and promise to obey the rules of the institution while in its care.33 She was also required to bring an affidavit containing the details of her marriage and her husband’s settlement, sworn before a Justice of the Peace.34 After an examination by the Committee members, these women would be admitted in the final month of their pregnancies.35 Most women remained in the hospital until about three weeks after their child’s birth. Although patients were not required to pay for the care they received within the institutions, they adhered to strict codes of conduct. In return for the ‘gift’ of recommendation, patients were obliged to obey the rules

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of the hospital, to aid the nursing and domestic staff in their duties, they could not drink, swear or gamble and were obliged to attend church on Sundays.36 Due to the scale of demand, in January 1754 the British Lying-in Hospital instituted a balloting system. After providing an affidavit of their marriage, a letter of recommendation and a testimonial of their poverty from two substantial housekeepers in their neighbourhood, women could try their luck at the ballot.37 Those who drew a white ball would receive immediate orders for admission; a black ball meant that the woman would be referred to the following Board Day to try her luck at a second ballot.38 In the same year, the City of London Lying-in Hospital instituted a similar practice and the Middlesex Hospital followed suit in 1771.39 On the receipt of a white ball, each woman would be admitted only if she arrived in clean clothes and was free from disease. She was permitted to stay no longer than three weeks after her delivery unless the board lengthened her stay due to ill health. Although the hospitals were established as centres of instruction, female patients often complained about the intrusion of pupils in their deliveries. Most labours were directed by a midwife but if any proved to be an emergency then a man-midwife was called in.40 The matron was responsible for the day-to-day management of the hospital. On her discharge, a woman who had given birth in the hospital was obliged to thank the hospital for her treatment, to publicly demonstrate her gratitude at the Weekly Board meeting and to send a letter of thanks after her delivery to the person who recommended her into the hospital. This expression of gratitude was vital to the process of building a personal relationship between benefactor and patient. If a letter of thanks was not sent then the woman was prohibited from receiving any future help from the charity.41 After their deliveries, women were encouraged to breastfeed their babies as soon as possible after birth rather than after the customary three to four days afterwards. Poor women had no choice but to feed their children with their own rather than a wet nurse’s milk but male medical practitioners working within the developing hospital movement advocated breastfeeding among women of all social classes. Following their publications, elite women were encouraged to take up the practice in significant numbers after 1770.42 The General Committees of the British, Middlesex and City hospitals tried to ensure that unmarried women could not gain admission to their institutions. Married women were supposed to present evidence of their husband’s settlement before entering the hospital although some

152 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

women were admitted without the requisite documents.43 In 1751, Ann Poole came to the British Lying-in Hospital and handed in an affidavit to the Committee that claimed she was married to her husband at the Fleet in November 1747. On examination, she told the Committee that her husband had left her six months ago and she was granted an order of admission. The Committee minutes reported that she entered the hospital on 24 April and the following day Dr Layard was informed that she was not, in fact, a married woman. When she was confronted with the discovery, Ann was reported to have given Dr Layard very inconsistent and evasive Answers, but being required to confess the Truth, at last owned she was not married, and that her necessity obliged her to crave the aid of the Charity for Assistance on the Occasion, which induced her to make Such false Affidavit . . .44 She was immediately discharged from the hospital after being severely reprimanded before all the staff and patients. The governors were often taken to task for giving letters of recommendation to those who were described as ‘unworthy Objects’.45 They were accused of not adequately inquiring into each individual’s story in order to ensure that they could be defined as a ‘proper object of the charity’. ‘Improper objects’ included women claiming parish relief, as well as unmarried women.46 In 1767, a woman managed to obtain a letter of recommendation from Rev. Mr Pilgrim and armed with a certificate of marriage, borrowed from Elizabeth Wild, she faced the Weekly Board of the City of London Hospital. The Committee discovered the truth as to her identity only when they questioned her as to what her maiden name was – she answered Nurse but the certificate stated that she should have said Leach. When confronted by the Committee she admitted that she had lied about being married and she was denied the benefits of the charity.47 The admission of unmarried mothers into lying-in hospitals was a policy issue debated among the governors of all these institutions. The unmarried mother was the most likely to be unable to afford midwifery care, but her uncertain settlement and the fear of her baby being a burden on the parish fed local opposition to the reception of such women. Debate over whether the hospitals should admit unmarried women continued through their respective histories.48 In 1755, the British Lying-in Committee felt the need to advertise that the hospital had changed its name to the British Lying-in Hospital for Married Women, and to explain why they did not admit single women in response to an advertisement

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published by the head of a rival lying-in institution. The author of this advertisement claimed that he had once been a governor of the British Lying-in Hospital and had witnessed a poor woman gain an order for admission that was then revoked on the discovery that she was not married. He claimed that she tried to commit suicide by stabbing herself in front of the Committee. She was only rescued from death by being received into his own hospital where her infant was delivered. The British Lying-in Hospital Committee obviously denied the truth of this story and declared that the author had never been involved with their establishment.49 In 1759, a motion to consider whether single mothers should be admitted was brought before the Committee but later withdrawn after some discussion in the General Court.50 Nevertheless, the minutes provide evidence of women gaining admission and being delivered in the hospitals and at home with the help of money and midwives provided by the governors without producing affidavits of marriage.51 Catherine Penfold was admitted into the City of London Lying-in Hospital on 27 March 1801 and died during childbirth.52 The hospital’s records do not state that she was unmarried but we know that she was because her sister, Elizabeth, petitioned the Foundling Hospital in June in order to have her niece admitted.53 We can never know exactly how many unmarried women managed to give birth to their children in the British Lying-in Hospital or the City Hospital.54 Poor women were renowned for lying or being evasive about their identities when questioned by authorities. Women arrested for prostitution in St James’s, Piccadilly, would give nonsense names, such as ‘Mrs No Name’, ‘Mrs Don’t tell you’, and ‘Miss Nobody’, to constables recording their offence in the parish charge books.55 Bronwyn Croxson discovered one unmarried woman who was admitted for her labour into the Middlesex hospital so long as she promised to deliver the child to the Foundling Hospital for admission after its birth. She also found that the hospital minutes contained two examples of women admitted after presenting the hospital with forged documents necessary for admission.56 It may be that the handful of women whom I have traced represents the tip of an iceberg. They may also only represent a tiny minority of the women delivered in these institutions.57 It is clear, however, that plebeian women knew how to play the system and that they used the lying-in hospitals for their own purposes. 58 The hospitals, in practice, whether consciously or not, admitted single women throughout the eighteenth century despite the many claims in the sermons, accounts, adverts and the rules that stated the contrary.

154 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

The General Lying-in Hospital, the Store Street Lying-in Hospital and the Westminster Lying-in Hospital Three hospitals were established that deliberately set out to provide beds for unmarried women who were rejected by other charities. The General Lying-in Hospital, on the corner of Quebec Street and Oxford Road, was opened in 1752 and was the first to offer aid to poor unmarried as well as married women.59 Here they intended to comprehend all pregnant Women in Distress, but more especially those wretched and unhappy Persons, who from the Restrictions of other Charities, and from the Remoteness of their Settlements at the Times of the extremist Danger and most complicated Distress, are incapable of having relief elsewhere . . . such unhappy Objects almost daily offer themselves to the View of the Governors of this Charity, being the only Place of refuge, where they are sure to find Relief at the important hour of Need.60 Similarly, the New General Lying-in Hospital was set up in Store Street to specifically help single mothers who were ‘overwhelmed with Shame and remorse, and destitute of every other Means of Subsistence’.61 The accounts claimed that the institutions would prevent acts of infanticide and help to restore the unmarried mother to society. The Westminster Lying-in Hospital resolved to admit Such Women [who] have been unwarily seduced from the paths of virtue . . . as several melancholy Instances have been known where those unfortunate Women, when destitute of Hope, Money, or Friends, – overwhelmed with Shame, and wounded with Contrition for their past Indiscretion, were driven to despair by such accumulated Misery, and tempted to destroy themselves, or murder their Infants.62 All of the hospitals admitted women for one pregnancy only to guard against these institutions becoming ‘an encouragement to vice’. In order to gain admission to the General Lying-in Hospital and the Westminster Hospital, women had to obtain a letter of recommendation and present themselves to the Weekly Board. Admission to the Store Street Hospital was slightly easier because letters of recommendation were often not necessary. The Board acknowledged that obtaining a recommendation would be particularly difficult for single women who

Childbirth 155

were far from home and who lived amongst strangers.63 Again, women were only admitted if they were free from infection and they brought with them a change of linen. They would usually obtain their order of admission about a month before their expected delivery date and come to the hospital when labour had commenced.64 From the start, the Westminster Hospital was keen not to discriminate between married and unmarried female patients. On 12 March 1766, the governors discussed the many Hardships and Inconveniences will arise to poor Women from delays that are often unavoidable in procuring Certificates of their Marriage; in Order therefore to render this Charity more extensively useful They have come to a Resolution not to require any Certificates towards the admission of such Women as are otherwise properly recommended by the Governors as Objects of real Want. As a result the hospital’s doors were opened to unmarried mothers. In March 1768, the General Committee refused to allow the women to be kept apart in separate wards as suggested by some governors in a previous meeting.65 Nevertheless, in July 1774 a decision was made to exclude unmarried women temporarily from the hospital except at the discretion of the Weekly Board.66 Tensions between the lying-in hospitals and the parishes within which they were situated began early in the hospitals’ histories. The parish officers of St Mary’s, Lambeth, attended a governor’s meeting on 29 September 1767 to complain about a bastard born in the hospital who had become chargeable to the parish.67 The governors replied that they regretted such an occurrence, but that they would not be altering their admission policy in response to the incident. The following December the Committee discussed their unease at inconveniencing the parish, but confirmed that they would continue to admit unmarried women in accordance with the original plan of the charity. Nevertheless, the governors were keen not to displease the parish of St Mary’s, Lambeth, and suggested that the matter be resolved by parliament. The disputes continued. On 6 December 1769, the officers of St Mary’s, Lambeth, complained that ten children delivered in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital had become chargeable to the parish. The 1773 Act ‘. . . for the better regulation of Lying-in Hospitals and the settlement of bastard children born there’ was passed to bring an end to the confusion.68 As a result of the Act, all of London’s lying-in hospitals had to obtain a licence to practice from the Quarter Sessions.69 The Act

156 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

ensured that no bastard born within the hospital was entitled to relief from the parish within which the hospital was situated. The parish of the last legal settlement of the mother would be responsible for the child. Before allowing a woman to enter, the hospitals were obliged to obtain an affidavit of the woman’s marriage, if she was married, and if not, a settlement examination to establish which parish was liable to support her and her child on discharge. The hospital authorities had to inform the parish of an unmarried woman’s settlement details before she was allowed to leave and give thanks. The examination of women as to their settlements has resulted in the survival of substantial details of the circumstances of some of the women who were delivered in these hospitals.70

The mothers The records of the lying-in institutions confirm the uncertainties of life for London’s plebeian population, whatever their marital status, during the eighteenth century. The experience of poverty was common to all the women who gave birth in the hospitals.71 Tables 7.1 and 7.2 show the similarities of circumstances shared by married and unmarried mothers. Both required the financial and medical support of the lying-in hospitals in the final weeks of their pregnancies, for their deliveries and the first few weeks after birth. Families usually required the combination of two adult wages to keep above the breadline. When women were in the latest stages of pregnancy they could not work and this could devastate a family’s economy. Many husbands were unable to provide for their families if they could not earn enough to support their wives and families during their lying-in, if they were servants and out of place, if they had been imprisoned due to debt, or if they were in His Majesty’s Service. Many women were widowed as a result of war and others by natural causes. Mothers always struggled to survive on their own. Unmarried mothers were rarely able to rely on financial support from the fathers of their children and because they were unable to work they were unlikely to be able to afford to eat. Therefore, unmarried mothers were most in need of aid (Table 7.1). In the table, unmarried mothers make up 22 per cent of the women delivered in the General Lying-in Hospital. Although married women and widows at 64 per cent made up the majority of mothers admitted into the hospital, unmarried mothers received special attention in the categorisation of women admitted into the hospital. It was claimed in one account that the hospital was established in response to ‘a Mother destroying herself in a Fit of Despair, with her two Babes just ready to come into Life’!72 The published account

Childbirth 157 Table 7.1 Occupational and marital status of the women delivered in the Quebec Street Lying-in Hospital, 1752–1768 (N = 8778) Status

N

Wives of poor tradesmen, labourers etc

963

Wives of servants, mostly out of place, and poor Chairmen’s wives, some of whom are incapable of labour

564

Wives of poor reduced Mechanics in Prison Wives of Seamen, the major part of whom were abroad in his Majesties Service Widows of soldiers and seamen

% 11 6.4

354

4

1245

14.2

729

8.3

Objects who were seduced, some of whom were rescued from death; and, when in Labour, taken out of the street, and admitted, penniless and starving, being admitted no where else to lie in, but in this Hospital

1943

22.1

Widows of tradesmen, journeymen, and Labourers

1069

12.2

Wives of those who were formerly in easy and affluent Circumstances; but since, from Losses and Misfortunes, reduced to Misery and Distress Poor Women from different parts of the Country . . . who are termed Extra Parochial Objects

704

1207

8

13.8

Source: An Account of the Rise, Progress and State of the General Lying-in Hospital (London, 1768), p. 3.

of the hospital, like the sermons, emphasised the seductions of unmarried mothers and their status as victims. Such women were rescued from imminent death by what the author of the pamphlet claims to be the only hospital in London to accept such women.73 The account makes clear that the hospital encouraged the admission of the unmarried mother, the poorest and most desperate of all the women admitted. Such accounts drew on the popular image of the shameful, abandoned, suicidal and infanticidal mother, drawn predominately from popular literature but also the Bible and contemporary legal discourse, to attract funds. The poverty of widows required no explanation. It seems clear that the hospital was established to meet the needs of the single mother as well as those of poor married mothers. These women’s sexual partners and the fathers of children born in the lying-in hospitals belonged to the diverse range of occupations available in London (Table 7.2). Most of these men’s work was seasonal, casual and often uncertain. The fathers of the children of unmarried and married women worked in similar employment and were subject to

158 ‘Unfortunate Objects’ Table 7.2 Father’s occupations of women delivered in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 1767–1773 (N = 783) Father’s occupation

Married women

Single women

Shoemaker Footman Sailor Tailor Soldier Coachman Servant Carpenter Labourer Baker Painter Bricklayer Waiter Barber Cabinet-maker Clerk Peruke-maker Potter Waterman Porter Mattross Gardener Weaver Husbandman Mason Dead Not given Other trades with totals of <5 workers

53 42 45 26 32 26 7 30 33 9 5 12 10 5 8 7 5 4 8 19 6 20 10 5 5 20 31 172

4 25 4 2 2 10 0 7 1 2 0 4 4 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 3 1 0 0 3 2 50

Total

655

128

Source: Westminster Lying-in Hospital Admissions Register, 1767–1773, LMA/HI/GLI/B1/1–2.

similar conditions. Although ‘irregularity was the rule in many London trades’, those listed in Table 7.2 were those most affected by uncertainty and lack of work. Shoemaking was a trade that was easy to learn and as a result was vastly over-stocked with poorly paid workers competing for a handful of jobs.74 Footmen, despite being relatively highly paid with an average wage of £5 a year that could be doubled with tips, worked predominately in the aristocratic houses of the West End and could find work scarce out of the London season. Footmen also had a reputation as hard-drinking, sexual predators, which may go some way to explaining

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the 20 per cent who fathered the bastards born in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital (Table 7.2).75,76 Soldiers and sailors had to leave their wives and partners with little financial support when they left abroad to fight. Coachmen, watermen, gardeners and porters relied upon steady and regular business to survive but their work remained dependent upon the seasons throughout the century. The winter months were times of dearth for many of London’s plebeian workers. The characteristics of many men’s employment, particularly their mobility, allowed them the opportunities to meet and to court plebeian women. Labourers, footmen and coachmen, for instance, were constantly on the move either in search of work or in the practice of it. Carpenters formed a significant proportion of the men who fathered legitimate and illegitimate children who were born in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital. Such men carried out work within the households and neighbourhoods of eighteenth-century London meeting their sexual and marital partners in the course of their daily lives. Both men and women worked long hours and had few opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex. When left unsupervised, as most were in the eighteenth-century metropolis, relationships could spring from chance encounters with people met during the working day or at play. It comes as no surprise to discover that the unmarried women admitted into the lying-in hospitals were predominantly domestic servants because the vast majority of women working in London, as we have seen, did so as servants.77 Sixty-nine per cent of the 373 settlement examinations given to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, between 1786 and 1795, as a result of the passage of the 1773 Act concerning the settlement of bastard children born within lying-in hospitals, were provided by servants.78 The only other named occupations for women were that of mantua-maker, seamstress, milliner and housekeeper. Mary Tamplin who managed to obtain admission to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital had worked as an apprentice mantua-maker with a 10-guinea premium for nine months but had not managed to obtain any written evidence of her apprenticeship to prove her settlement.79 The smaller sample of unmarried mothers to be found in the 184 Bastardy Certificates of the General Lying-in Hospital, between 1791 and 1797, shows that 64 per cent of those examined had earned their settlements as servants. The only other occupations stated by mothers were a ribbon weaver, a wet nurse and a nursemaid.80 The women employed as domestic servants who gave birth within London’s lying-in hospitals were relatively highly paid compared to

160 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

other plebeian London women.81 The term ‘servant’ embraced a wide spectrum of female domestic roles; some were skilled and highly valued workers while others were not.82 A handful of women was extremely well paid – some over £10 a year.83 The records show that most women who gave birth in the hospitals earned the average female wage for a servant – £4–5 during the middle of the century that rose to around 8 guineas at the end. Most women working as domestic servants in eighteenth-century London were ‘maids-of-all-work’ employed in the households of the middling orders, artisans and shop workers but those women who earned the highest wages amongst those admitted into the hospitals cannot have been servants on the lowest rung of the ladder.

Master/servant relationships Poor women were recommended into hospitals by their employers or by other men and women with the power of subscription within their neighbourhood. Despite the fact that she was the daughter of a Jamaican slave, Sarah Poleson’s employer took great pains to enable her to obtain admission into the Westminster Lying-in Hospital. Sarah had served John Gray throughout her entire working life first in Jamaica and then in different areas across Britain before settling in Tottenham where she gained her settlement. When she proved with child her said Master took her a Lodging in the said parish of Saint Mary Lambeth for two Months before her lying in in order that she should be in the neighbourhood of the Lying in Hospital at Lambeth where she had a Letter of Admission as soon as she should be in Labour, that she was accordingly admitted into the Licensed Hospital for Lying-in Women in the said parish of Saint Mary Lambeth . . .84 John Gray felt some obligation to support his servant in the late stages of her pregnancy and through her delivery perhaps hoping that she could return to his service as soon as possible after the birth and with as little disruption to his household as possible. The process of the recommendation of patients was usually by word of mouth. Employers were renowned for using their subscription status as insurance against workers who became sick or who required hospital treatment.85 Neighbourhood obligations as well as those of employment also resulted in the recommendation of individuals into hospitals.86

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Employers frequently used their financial and other resources, especially moral and religious guidance, to aid servants in difficulties.87 The appendix to Samuel and Sarah Adams’ The Complete Servant stated that if a master discovered that one of his servants was pregnant and if he did not discharge her immediately before a magistrate, he was compelled to provide for her until she had delivered and for one month afterwards before being sent to her place of settlement.88 Nevertheless, the authors also advised that one should never keep a servant guilty of immorality no matter how excellent they were.89 Research on early modern service suggests that unmarried pregnant servants were seldom left unsupported by their employers. Quarter Sessions sometimes ordered masters to aid their pregnant servants for one month after the birth of the infant.90 However, research overwhelmingly suggests that few employers tolerated an illegitimate pregnancy in their household, ‘[N]o female servant was too low to have a reputation that was at risk of ruin’.91 Illegitimate pregnancy, therefore, usually resulted in instant dismissal.92 Most contemporary conduct and advice literature on service suggested that female servants were constantly at risk from sexual ruin at the hands of their masters and other men in the household, and employment depended on an unblemished sexual reputation. There is no doubt that some masters raped their servants during this period but there is little evidence of violence towards servants by masters in the material discussed here as well as elsewhere in this book.93 The evidence presented here suggests that employers selectively defined the sexual reputation of their female servants. While they might have tolerated an illegitimate pregnancy in their household they could not allow for the rearing of a bastard child under their roof. A wife as mistress of her household played a crucial role in the lives of young domestic servants.94 The government of servants was the responsibility of the mistress as housekeeper, who familiarised herself with the personal details of all those under her roof.95 Advice literature encouraged mistresses and servants to be friends.96 Eliza Haywood addressed A New Present for a Servant Maid to ‘the Public in General, but to the Mistresses of Families and to Maid-Servants in particular’.97 Donna Andrew’s research on the charity letters belonging to Margaret Georgiana, Lady Spencer has shown how former servants to Lady Spencer’s household were virtually guaranteed a successful application if they applied to her for charity.98 Privacy was rarely possible for female servants. Nevertheless, surveillance of a servant by her mistress was not always negative. Friendship and respect was a possibility between employers, of all

162 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

classes, and their servants and is amply demonstrated in the material discussed here.99 Most of the women in the settlement exams were hired for one-year contracts.100 This enabled them to gain a settlement in the parish within which their employment was located.101 While this gave them entitlement to parish relief, and the yearly contract provided them with a degree of mobility and flexibility, they experienced little security of employment.102 Seventy-five per cent of the Westminster sample and 63 per cent of the General Lying-in Hospital mothers had earned their settlements after only a one-year contract.103 However, a significant proportion of women did serve longer contracts with the same master or mistress. This provided her with security as well as stronger ties of affection with her employer. Tim Meldrum has referred to the importance of the ‘fraternity’ of women in a household. Care and support from a mistress might be provided to a servant in a time of crisis.104 It seems likely that an employer of long-standing would be willing to help an employee try to gain admission into a lying-in hospital. It is certainly the case that employers guaranteed the admission of their servants or workers into provincial hospitals.105 The same was true of the institutions in the metropolis. Servants, even if they lived in large aristocratic households, were well known to their employers and neighbours. Mary Turner obtained admission at a Weekly Board meeting of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital on 4 March 1800 on the recommendation of Dr Poignand on behalf of Lady Cotterell.106 Mary had worked as a servant for Ann Smith for seven years. Two weeks after giving birth to her child, she applied to the Foundling Hospital for its admission. She informed them that she had been seduced by a former fellow servant, a coachman named William Winter whom she had known for twelve months. He had since left her and gone abroad upon one of His Majesty’s ships of war. Although she had obtained another place as a wet nurse with Mrs Clive of Upper Wimpole Street, she was certain that her wages would not be sufficient to support a child at nurse. It seems likely that Mary’s length of service and her relationship with her mistress – Ann Smith described Mary’s behaviour as, ‘remarkably good’ – were crucial to her admission into the hospital. These factors enabled her to obtain a position as a wet nurse on the recommendation of Mrs Blinkinsop, the matron of the Westminster Hospital who had ‘heard so very good a Character of the Petitioner’.107 Ann Todd’s mistress Elizabeth Dutens of Leicester Fields effected her admission into the Westminster Hospital where she was delivered in March 1773. Ann told the Foundling Committee when she tried to gain admission for her child

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That in September last and for a year and a half before that your Petitioner lived as a Sarvent in the House of Mrs Dutens in Leicester Fields where your Petitioner by her Care and Diligence Gained her the good will of her Mistress. That your Petitioner being with child by a fellow Sarvant whose name is John Shepherd who thereupon absconded and cannot now be found your petitioner’s mistress humanely Recommended your Petitioner to the new Lying Inn Hospital near Westminster Bridge whare your Petitioner was on 27 of march last brought to bed of a famale child.108 Ann’s daughter was admitted in July. These examples of the involvement of women in the lives of unmarried mothers seem to test Donna Andrew’s argument that women distanced themselves from charities that provided for the unmarried mother because of their association with immorality.109 Indeed, some women were instrumental to their success. Jane Pilon, a widow, lent £1000 to the governors of the Westminster Hospital to help establish the institution in its early days.110 After many years of subscription and recommendation Mrs Leheup, widow of a late governor of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, left £94 in her will to the Westminster Hospital.111 Women made up a substantial number of subscribers to the charities and frequently recommended unmarried mothers to the hospitals.112 The role of women as managers of charitable institutions was also significant. Mrs Blinkinsop the matron of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, already mentioned, was a vital conduit of employment for many women delivered in the hospital. Margery Adams was grateful that the Matron on Account of my former Good Conduct has procured me a place at Mr Heumes Apothecary and Surgeon in Lambeth – Provided your great Humanity will take my helpless Infant under your Protection as the wages being only Nine Guineas a Year Cannot Support us both . . . The steward called on Mrs Blinkinsop at the hospital to check the truth of Margery’s claims. She told him the petitioner behaved in a very proper manner while in the Hospital, but she is so much distressed that She must Sell her gown to pay for the Nursing of her Child. She is unable to Nurse it herself her milk dried away in order to enable her to take the place which is waiting for her.113

164 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

Along with Mrs Lekeup,114 Mrs Blinkinsop gave Ann Bartlett a reference to get a place.115 Maria Mills had also given birth in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital. She was also assured of a reference from the matron who had heard a very good character of her from her employers.116 Mrs Claverly, a predecessor of Mrs Blinkinsop as matron of the Westminster Hospital, attended the Committee with Ann Belch to help her obtain admission for her child.117 The matron of the Store Street Lying-in Hospital recommended Susan Trimmer to the Foundling authorities as ‘an inoffensive quiet person, and in much destress as being deserted by the father of the Child and no friends to assist her’.118 Mary Wills gave birth to her child in the Store Street Lying-in Hospital where she became well acquainted with the matron, ‘who took pity on her and let her stay longer than usual and now keeps her as a servant’.119

The life cycle and poverty The economic insecurity experienced by the majority of London’s domestic servants was exacerbated by sexual insecurity.120 The ages of the women admitted into the lying-in hospitals suggest that those women who were unmarried and called upon the hospitals for help were significantly and proportionally younger than their married counterparts (Tables 7.3 and 7.4). A higher proportion of unmarried women were under twenty years of age when admitted into the hospitals while the vast majority of married women were between twenty and forty years. Many years would pass before a young, single domestic servant could afford to leave her place to marry and settle down.121 Elizabeth Edwards gave birth to her child Table 7.3 Ages of women admitted into the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 1767–1773 (N = 783) Age (in years)

Married women

Married women (%)

Single women

Single Women (%)

15–20 21–30 31–40 41–50 Not given

58 397 147 8 45

8.9 60.6 22.4 1.2 6.9

27 96 3

21.1 75 2.3

2

1.6

Total

655

128

Source: Admissions Register of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 1767–1773, LMA/H1/GLI/B1/1–2.

Childbirth 165 Table 7.4 Ages of women admitted into the General Lying-in Hospital, 1791–1797 (N = 184) Age (in years)

Married women

Single women

Widows

15–20 21–30 31–40 41–50

6 68 19 2

11 70 4 0

0 2 2 0

Total

95

85

4

Source: Queen Charlotte’s Birth and Bastardy Certificates, 1791–1797, WCA/PV231.

on 15 November 1772. Two weeks later, from her Westminster hospital bed she applied to the General Committee of the Foundling Hospital for the admission of her child.122 She explained that she had been seduced by a young soldier who had promised her marriage which has brought upon me not only Shame to them that knew me, but also Poverty, which I would gladly have hid, but Could not, was glad to make a Friend to get into a Lying In Hospital on the Surry side of Westminster Bridge . . .123 Her master Mr Jones, a publican, supported her story and asked the Foundling governors to take pity on her. Jane Forder told the Westminster Lying-in Hospital authorities that the father of her child was a sailor by the name of John Withers. She gave birth to their child on 5 August 1773.124 In late October, she applied to the Foundling Hospital authorities for the admission of her child. She told them ——yr Petr aged 23 had the Misfortune to be ruined by a Young Man by Name John Withers a Footman to Mr Leppidge of Eastham who kept her Company and promised her Marriage and having got her with Child deserted her That being born of good Parents the poor your petitioner endeavoured to conceal her Misfortune and lay in at the Westminster New Lying In Hospital of a healthy Male Child on the 6th August last and since her discharge from the Hospital hath fortunately got into Service again with Mr William Cook . . .125 Jane, an inventive young woman, told different stories about her circumstances to different people. The housekeeper with whom she

166 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

lodged, Mr Chapman, a collar maker who lived in Tooley Street in Borough, told the Foundling’s inspector that Jane had told his wife that she was going to be married to a man of some property who had abandoned her. She may have been only twenty-three but Jane was clearly experienced in making ends meet. Married women often became poorer as they got older and their families increased in size. This helps to explain why over 24 per cent of the married women who gave birth in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital were aged over thirty (Table 7.4). Many women were left alone with large families to support after their husbands and partners had died or abandoned them. Forty-five of these women were married to sailors who left them with few means of support when at sea. Widowhood also often impoverished women. After Mary Murray’s husband died, she continued to live and rent their house in Bristol where she gained her settlement. When her money ran out she was forced to take a job as a servant with Edward Shipley in Marylebone. When he discovered that she was pregnant with a bastard child she was discharged from her employment before giving birth in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital.126 After her husband died, Elizabeth Asser ‘(she not having any Child living) hired herself as a yearly servant to Mrs Henrietta Egerton in Newman Street’.127 Her childlessness enabled her to find further employment but when she became pregnant with an illegitimate child she was obliged to leave. These women, although desperate and poor, were adept at mobilising the resources at their disposal. Susannah Walters had every intention of returning to her service after the birth of her child. After leaving her place to lie in, she stated in her settlement exam on admission into the Westminster Lying-in Hospital that ‘she received her wages for the time she was there, and hired another person to supply her place during her absence, that her wages are still going on, and when she is well is to return again to service’.128 Susannah’s employer, Richard Jackson, was happy to provide Susannah with future employment provided her job was done in her absence. The hospital authorities acknowledged the negative impact of migration on the support networks of pregnant women far from their natal home. They hoped to aid poor pregnant women, ‘perhaps many hundred Miles distant from their Relations, Friends and Acquaintances, and destitute of every Relief and Succour, (for even such as have a Place of Settlement, are oftentimes incapable from their Situation of being passed to it)’.129 Most women who utilised the lying-in hospitals gained their settlements unsurprisingly from the parishes of the West End.130 This supports the evidence that domestic servants comprised the majority

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of hospital patients. 3016 women, 34 per cent of the patients delivered in the General Lying-in Hospital in a 16-year period from 1752 until 1768 came from the Westminster parishes. Many more had gained their settlements in the central and East End parishes but a significant proportion of women had travelled far across the country and not yet managed to obtain settlements in the city. An eighth of the mothers came from out of town and some even came from as far as the West and East Indies as slaves. The proximity of a hospital must have played a part in a woman’s choice as to where she would seek help at the time of her lying-in. Over 1000, out of a total of 8778, women delivered in the General Lying-in Hospital came from the parish of St Marylebone’s.131 The later, but much smaller sample of the General’s patients from 1791 to 1797, indicates that 29 per cent of single women came from the Westminster area.132 These figures clearly reflect the predominance of the young, single domestic servant as a typical example of an unmarried mother in eighteenth-century London. But 30 per cent had earned their settlements elsewhere in London and 22 per cent from outside the city.133 Thirty-three per cent of the women delivered in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, between 1767 and 1773, earned their settlements from the parishes surrounding the hospital. Nevertheless, the same percentage of married and unmarried mothers came from the parishes covering the rest of London, and 35 per cent of single women and 33 per cent of married women had their settlements in other parts of the country with a handful hailing from abroad.134 With settlements far from London, these women sought help within the hospitals, rather than from their own parishes to which they would have to travel to claim their right to relief. Those women who had settlements outside the capital may have experienced greater insecurity because their support networks were predominantly out of town. This was true of married as well as unmarried women. Mary James was granted an order for admission into the Westminster Hospital on 17 February 1801. She had only known the father of her child for two months when she became pregnant, and the only people she knew in London were her employers whom she hoped would never learn of her pregnancy. She petitioned the Foundling Hospital the following April because having no One to help and I nothing to get my Living But By Service and no Friends in London my Father and Mother Being Dead and my Parish is in North Wales and it Does not Lay in my Power to Maintain the Infant and I am Greatly Distressed at present.

168 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

Luckily for Mary, she could lie in at the hospital and have her child admitted into the Foundling Hospital leaving her able to return to work.135 Those women who obtained their settlements through birth or through their father or husband could find themselves dependent upon parishes far from London and all across the country. Jane Chorley had not managed to obtain her own settlement in London but she knew that her father was last legally settled in the parish of Wiveliscombe in Somerset.136 Elenor Mitchell’s settlement was far from the city. Her only right to relief was from the parish of Iltham, near Berwick upon Tweed, in Scotland.137 Margaret Hume’s father was Irish and her mother Scottish, the only settlement she was entitled to was that of the parish of her birth in St George’s, Hanover Square.138 Anne Cummins had been married in the Highland church in Glasgow before coming to London. Heavily pregnant and with her husband serving as a soldier in Corsica, she was obliged to turn to the General Lying-in Hospital for help during her labour.139 Bridget Reynolds had met and married her husband, also a soldier, in Dublin before coming over to London ‘with no visible means of support’ while he was away serving his country.140 As a result, the hospitals were popular ports of call for women in the late stages of their pregnancies, too poor to afford their own midwifery care and unable to work to support themselves during their lying-in period or to rely on the help of family, friends and neighbours. Elizabeth Baxter, a single servant, gained admission into the Westminster Hospital on 17 December 1799. After the birth of her child, she moved in with her mistress Mrs Ince in Queens Row, Chelsea. She presented her petition to the Foundling Hospital the following June Your Petitioner Humbly presumes that her case comes within the rules and regulations of your humane and charitable Society, and flatters herself that it will therefore meet with your consideration and compassion having been deceived and seduced by the father of my helpless Infant, and being totally unable to maintain it, I rely upon your generosity to take it into your charitable institution. Mrs Ince assured the Foundling Committee that Elizabeth, who had been in her service for only four months, had always behaved decently and that she had a very good character from her previous situation. The inspector also discovered that the father of the child was Edward Clapton, a journeyman carpenter, and that he had promised Elizabeth marriage six months ago after an acquaintance of two-and-a-half years but that he had since deserted her. She had sworn Edward to be the putative

Childbirth 169

father of her child to Lambeth parish, but had received no maintenance from him apart from when she bumped into him by chance in April and he had given her 10 shillings towards her lying-in.141 Elizabeth had obtained limited financial support from the father of her child, she had benefited from the immense generosity of her new employer, had lain in at the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, come under the care of Lambeth parish, and obtained the admission of her child into the Foundling Hospital. It can be seen, therefore, that unmarried mothers could expect support from many unexpected quarters.

Conclusion The material conditions of the lives of married and unmarried mothers were shared. Although they were much more likely to be in need of help because they were approaching motherhood on their own, the circumstances and desperation of an unmarried mother were similar to that of a married woman whose husband worked abroad, often in the service of his country, or who had been deserted or widowed. All of these women if not actually single, were technically so. The mothers who had their babies delivered within the lying-in hospitals were not markedly distinct from the rest of London’s plebeians. The details of the lives of married women who hoped to obtain admission into a lying-in hospital attest to the difficulties of the survival of a family without the income of both parents. The stories told in the settlement examinations to lying-in hospitals, like those in bastardy exams and the petitions for admission into the Foundling Hospital, describe the shared experience of the poverty of these women and the impossibility of single motherhood. An emphasis on published accounts and sermons in histories of these hospitals that represent unmarried mothers as the victims of their male seducers using a formulaic language of shame and distress obscures the day-to-day realities that were experienced by the women that used the institutions. The minutes of the hospitals and the tables pp. 157, 158, 164 and 165 demonstrate that unmarried mothers were indistinguishable from other plebeian women except that they tended to be younger. Most unmarried mothers who gave birth in these hospitals were poor, young, migrant women who came to London in search of work in domestic service. Settlements were hard to obtain in London and support networks were often far from these women’s new homes in parishes outside London. They met the fathers of their babies, shoemakers, footmen, sailors, coachmen and other tradesmen, in the course of their working and

170 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

social lives. Most servants were required to leave their service to lie in. Women at other stages in their life cycle also required the services of the hospital because they were too poor to cope on their own. Married and unmarried women knew how to apply to the hospitals for admittance and many used these hospitals as a stepping stone towards trying to obtain admission for their children into the Foundling Hospital.142 Women lied, borrowed marriage certificates and pulled strings to gain admission, free board and lodging and the services of a midwife for the period of their lying-in. The rules and regulations of hospital admissions and stay were shared among London’s plebeian population, and knowledge was also passed between employers and their employees. The process of recommendation attests to the involvement of masters and mistresses in the everyday lives of their employees. Employers used their powers of subscription or their contacts to facilitate the admission of their servants to hospitals. These charities enabled employers to keep valued servants as well as to exercise compassion towards unmarried mothers they believed to be deserving of such relief. The evidence on master/servant relations provided by this material suggests that unmarried mothers could expect compassion from individuals outside their social class. The motivations of charitable benefactors are hard to pin down but many masters and particularly mistresses deliberately involved themselves in the lives of their servants helping them to obtain admission into the lying-in hospitals as well as the Foundling Hospital after the births of their children. Wealthy women could also be counted among the hospitals’ investors. Rather than throw their unmarried pregnant servants out on the street, employers frequently helped them through their pregnancies. Staff involved within such institutions, especially the matrons, also went out of their way to offer support to unmarried mothers. They helped them obtain work after their births, provided them with good character references and accompanied them to the Foundling Hospital when helping them to gain admission for their children. Some historians have argued that as the century progressed, lying-in hospitals lost their support amongst the merchant community because they were seen as less worthy of funding than smaller operations that did not offer full-time institutional care.143 Croxson has charted a decline in the support of voluntary hospitals and an increase in support for the dispensary movement in late eighteenth-century London. Subscribing to the dispensary service was considerably cheaper than to the hospitals, and dispensaries could administer help to a far greater number of patients.144 Public interest moved away from the institution and

Childbirth 171

refocussed upon the homes of the poor and morality.145 Some believed that hospital care encouraged plebeian dependence on charitable benefactors. Donna Andrew has argued that from the 1770s, fear over dwindling population was transformed into fear of population rise, particularly among the poor who were becoming increasingly dependent upon relief. Only those charities that could be seen to encourage working class independence could expect support in the later years of the eighteenth century. The Royal Maternity Charity (RMC), established in 1757, could deliver greater numbers of women at a fraction of the cost of the hospitals and consequently it grew in popularity.146 By 1768, the midwives employed by the charity had delivered 3999 mothers and the organisation had almost 400 subscribers.147 The charity was overseeing about 10 per cent of all births in London.148 Sermons and accounts of the RMC focussed on the problems associated with the withdrawal of the mother from her home and family in order to lie in. With mother not at home who could protect the children from starvation and vice? The fear was that ‘a child left bringeth his mother to shame’.149 Hospitals were also accused of spreading the incidence of contagion and disease. However, most of the lying-in hospitals enabled women to be delivered in their own homes. It may not have occurred at the same level as the RMC but it was still a significant function of the lying-in hospitals. In 1774, the Board of the Middlesex Hospital started to sanction home deliveries, and by 1786 they had become the norm. After 1786, only two women a year could be admitted for deliveries into the hospital.150 As the lying-in hospitals were scaling down their operations in a drive to cut costs, more women were trying to gain admission before their deliveries. Croxson states that it is not clear why the Middlesex lost support at the end of the eighteenth century, but she suggests that it may have had something to do with the economic downturn of the 1790s which must have affected the incomes of subscribers. While the City Lying-in Hospital and the British Lying-in Hospital did not experience a decline in support in the late eighteenth century, the Middlesex and the Westminster did.151 Certainly, at the turn of the century the Westminster Lying-in Hospital was severely in debt and found itself competing for funds with the much more popular RMC. It did not, however, stop admitting unmarried mothers for deliveries.152 At the turn of the nineteenth century, subscribers and benefactors became increasingly concerned to distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving poor in the attempt to deal with the rising numbers of applicants to the hospitals. Definitions of ‘properness’ and the ethos of these institutions changed as this shift took place. Medical historians

172 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

have argued that during the nineteenth century, medical rather than social criteria became the requirement for hospital admission. As the numbers requiring relief increased, the process of recommendation via word of mouth was no longer viable, and hospital admission, like the system of parish relief, became more anonymous. The face-to-face relationship that existed between patients and their benefactors in the eighteenth century was replaced by more systematic and uniform procedures of admission in the nineteenth.153 The medical worthiness of pregnant women could not be questioned, but the moral worthiness of unmarried mothers came under increasing scrutiny in the nineteenth century. Even if those women who obtained admission into the lying-in hospitals were representative of only a minority of London women, the conditions of their lives were shared across the city. For poor women, local midwives continued to be widely used well into the nineteenth century.154 Nevertheless, it has been seen that lying-in hospitals came to the aid of thousands of unmarried mothers in eighteenth-century London. The institutions were not only popular amongst the women that gained admission but also among the parish officers of London’s poorest parishes who were struggling with the increase in the numbers of women requiring relief during delivery and lying-in.155 Circumstance and necessity required these women to depend upon a variety of sources for economic and social support. In addition to the value of their own labour, help would come from spouses if married – and family, friends and employers, if not. It could also be found within other institutional structures of support established from the mid-eighteenth century in London. Women were extremely creative in their use of their ‘economies of makeshift’. Despite their poverty and desperation, they knew how to use the hospitals to benefit their lives. London’s unmarried mothers could expect to find help in many quarters and they did in all of London’s lying-in establishments.

8 ‘Be so Good as to Remember Where This Child Goes to’: Poor but not Hopeless

Sally you are to take this Petition and on Wednesday next you are to attend your Self if Able at the Foundling Hospital at about 11 am in the fore noon and first Enquire of weather Mr Whatley is there if not there and he is expected you are to wate untell he comes before you Send in your Petition as that Gentleman has took down your Name and has promis’d my Frends to git your Petition passed.1 to be Friendless is the worst Condition, next to being in want, that a Woman can be reduc’d to . . . if a Woman has no Friend to Communicate her Affairs to, and to advise and assist her, ‘tis ten to one but she is undone.2 Before approaching parish officers, lying-in hospital authorities and the General Committee of the Foundling Hospital for charity, lone mothers tended to exhaust other possibilities first by asking their employers, family, friends and acquaintances to help them.3 Many petitioners had several options that they might and did explore before calling upon hospital and parish relief. We have already seen how many people also used the Foundling Hospital, as well as the parish and other hospitals, as a temporary expedient during times of particular hardship.4 Historians have few opportunities to glimpse the poor’s strategies of survival but the material also shows us that informal support was as much if not more significant in the lives of the poor than institutional relief. Indeed it is important to acknowledge that most unmarried mothers did not enjoy the benefits of the parish and London’s charitable institutions and the details of their lives are usually beyond the limits of the historian’s gaze. This chapter uses the sources already discussed as well as the 173

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petitions for reclaiming children out of the Foundling Hospital to delineate the means by which lone mothers explored their options and negotiated the limited power at their disposal in order to support their children and to reclaim them from the Foundling Hospital once they could afford to. Plebeians sought a combination of formal and informal aid as part of their economies of expedience. In the ever-expanding metropolis, we have seen how the young and unmarried might be more anonymous than in rural and smaller urban communities. At the same time, the lives of unmarried mothers did not go unobserved or uninterrupted by employers, friends, neighbours and acquaintances in densely populated neighbourhoods and multi-occupancy households. The new, transient communities of the capital provided vital sources of support for the unmarried mothers in their midst. The visibility of the desperation and poverty of these women, within such communities, could be ignored neither in public nor in private. Unmarried mothers mingled with people of all classes in the households in which they worked, the streets where they lived as well as in the buildings of the parish and charities that they approached for help. My evidence and argument challenges Anna Clark’s assertion that plebeian culture rejected unmarried mothers in the late eighteenth century.5 She suggested that most employers of domestic servants who became pregnant threw their employees out on the streets in the attempt to assert their identities as respectable individuals. Alternatively, my research suggests that unmarried mothers were more likely to meet with compassion and support rather than ostracism from their employers and friends. A combination of charity from male and female employers, relations, friends and neighbours was instrumental to the survival of many lone mothers. In the rapidly changing society of eighteenth-century London, definitions of ‘friends’, ‘family’, ‘employers’ and ‘neighbours’ were interchangeable. The term ‘friend’ could be used to identify kin and non-kin – employers, relatives and fellow workers amongst other associations.6 This chapter explores these networks of neighbourhood, family and friendship. Friends and neighbours continued to have an important influence on the personal relationships, particularly of courtship and marriage, of the women who settled in London.7 Friends met and made through employment and neighbourhood contacts played important roles in the lives of single women despite the short-lived nature of some of these relationships. They shared knowledge of parish and charitable relief, helped mothers through their deliveries by providing board and lodging as well as procuring midwives. Neighbours would help each other to

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find employment after delivery and gave unmarried mothers a roof over their heads when destitute. The details of people’s personal circumstances and relationships were frequently common, if often uncertain, knowledge within a community.

Abandoned and alone? We have seen that some unmarried mothers described themselves as abandoned and alone in the petitions that they submitted to the Foundling Hospital. In the face of their sexual transgression, they claimed that friends and family had rejected them. Eleanor Richardson was ill and too weak to breastfeed her child herself, the low wages that she earned as a needle worker prevented her from affording a wet nurse and to add to her miseries she told the committee that her friends had rejected her.8 Others tried to keep their illegitimate pregnancies and births secret from all who knew them. Hannah Wood was in want of the necessaries of life in order to conceal her Infamy and Disgrace, has been many Months out of place, In Private, and now should her Misfortune be known to those families where she has lived, your petitioner would then lose her Character and be entirely deprived of getting her Livelihood . . . and make her miserable all the Days of her Life.9 Mothers sold their clothes, used wages saved from service and tried to keep their pregnancies and births secret in the attempt to obtain work. However, in the process of describing their destitution and economic need, women almost always referred to their friends. Even if they claimed that they were friendless, they usually had at least one friend who had helped them. If not mentioned in the petition, they were required as referees. It was very rare for a woman to find herself totally bereft of support and unusual for petitioners to say that they had nothing and nobody to turn to. If they did, they often contradicted themselves with reference to a friend. For example, Mary Bentley stated that she ‘not having one Friend on the face of the earth except the one, a Mrs Williams’ she required the help of the hospital.10 If friends were unable to help, it was usually because they were too poor to do so or because young female migrants had recently arrived in the city and not yet had a chance to make any friends. Nor were they likely to have many relatives on whom to rely. A ‘good character’ rested on a number of factors. I have already argued that a servant was rarely judged on her sexual behaviour alone.

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Other social factors – not just sexual behaviour – helped to construct a woman’s reputation.11 Honesty, industriousness, integrity, faithfulness, value, good behaviour, sobriety, decency and diligence are the adjectives used in the petitions and reports by employers, neighbours, friends and family to describe the characters of female servants who bore illegitimate children.12 Most petitions, about 90 per cent, are supported with character references, all of which helped to establish whether the petitioner was a proper object of charity. Women might have lost their positions as a result of their illegitimate pregnancies but this did not necessarily mean that their characters or reputations were lost. Unmarried mothers were rarely abandoned and alone even if they aimed to obtain admission for their child with as little publicity as possible. The evidence presented here suggests that employers, of all classes, felt some obligation to aid unmarried mothers through their pregnancies and beyond. The new social and cultural history has urged us to challenge the social, economic and cultural dichotomy set up between rich and poor. We have been exhorted by Tim Harris, amongst others, to question the appropriateness of Peter Burke’s two-tier model of cultural conflict between learned and popular culture. We no longer take for granted that social, political and economic identities during this period were demarcated by clearly identified boundaries.13 It is obvious to historians of eighteenth-century London that relationships within the early modern household mirrored those outside of it. Diverse social groups clustered around one another on the streets, in the pleasure gardens and within all the buildings of the ever-expanding metropolis. Historians are instead searching for evidence of the multivalency of society and culture. We have also been encouraged not to think of oral and print exchanges as mutually exclusive and to remember that even the very poorest participated in a culture of the printed word.14 Domestic servants had access to a wide range of literary material with which they might have made cross-cultural references in their speech and in any literature that they or their friends might have produced. Indeed the communality and sociability of reading and writing during this period has to be emphasised for all social classes. Naomi Tadmor has shown how some servants were party to the reading of literary texts aloud within their employer’s households.15 Petitions for charitable aid oblige us precisely to explore the cultural interactions between the elite and the poor as well as their social and economic networks that cut across rank.16 They reveal the interdependent relationships between rich and poor that had their roots in the institution of domestic service. We saw in Chapter 7 how important employers were in the process of the recommendation of women into lying-in hospitals;

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they were equally as important in the process of the admission of children into the Foundling Hospital.17 Their character references were crucial in the admission of their servant’s children into the hospital. Many employers were also their employee’s friends.

Employers Some servants tried their hardest to keep their conceptions secret from their employers and left their service several months before their delivery date. If pregnancies were discovered, some employers were unable or unwilling to support unmarried mothers through their illegitimate pregnancies and refused to allow them to keep their job. Yet, ties of family, kin and friendship increased the obligation of employers to aid unmarried, pregnant servants. Certain employers displayed remarkable kindness to the women under their roofs. We have seen that the servants in the petitions came from mostly lower- and middling-class households belonging to bakers, chandlers, button sellers, publicans and shoemakers. Most servants in eighteenth-century England worked in small houses that employed only one or two servants.18 Many of the petitioners to the Foundling worked at the bottom of this hierarchy in households, where they were often the only employees contracted as ‘maids-of-allwork’. In these households, master/mistresses and their servants were of similar social class. Friendships, and sometimes intimate relationships, between employer and employee were common.19 Friends relied on each other in times of need. After Sarah Doughty handed in her petition to the secretary of the Foundling Hospital, the steward went to her previous place of employment at No. 5 Crown Street in Hoxton. Mrs Rolfe, a milk woman and according to the inspector, ‘a person of good character in her Neighbourhood which is but poor’, told the inspector that Sarah had worked for her for seven years and that she had taken her when a Child of 9 or 10 years old from her Grandmother that She lived with her till about a year ago when she discharged her on accot of a Sweetheart that came after her She behaved herself very well and has such a high regard for her she would make no scruple to engage her again . . .20 Mrs Rolfe had known Sarah since she was a child and through years of service had developed an intimate relationship and a high regard for her employee. She disapproved of her lover, but could not control the

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outcome of their relationship despite terminating her employment. Long-term relationships could foster friendship and respect between employer and employee, and might guarantee some degree of employment security for a servant.21 Such servants were often treated like members of an employer’s family especially if their contracts had begun in childhood. Mary Chadborn attended the Committee and claimed that she was In very Great Distress and unable to provide for her Child which is a fortnight old as the father which is a Gentleman Servant is Gon and Left her in the Greatest Distress and she being desirous of Getting her Hoest Livelihood Humble Prayeth that you would be so good as to take her Child in . . . John Jones, a pastry cook in Rilan Street, by the Adelphi Buildings in the Strand, and his wife Mary supported Mary’s petition with a note saying that she had lived as a servant with them for three years and that she was honest and sober. Another note on the petition, written by John West, the investigating steward, confirmed that she was indeed a proper object of charity.22 Employers, like Mrs Rolfe above, tried to play some part in the supervision of their servant’s relationships. Martha Freeman had lived in the service of Mr Bendy, a button seller in Aldgate, before she became pregnant but Bendy was eager to tell the steward that he had always understood the Young Man who debauched her (and who is a journeyman weaver) intended her marriage on wch accot [sic] he suffered his visiting her . . .23 If pregnancy was not prevented then employers helped their servants deal with the consequences. Many women worked for as long as possible into the latest stages of pregnancy and up to the births of their children. Elizabeth Cottom gave birth to a bastard child Thinking that she Should be able to Maintain it by her Labour and has Endeavoured, but Not being assisted as she expected came to the charity for assistance with the support of Mrs Beast of Lower Thames Street, where Elizabeth had lived in service for three years. Mrs Beast told John Archer, a steward sent to investigate the case, that Elizabeth had always behaved well and that she intended taking

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her again if the child was provided for. She even said that she would attend the Committee with Elizabeth to affirm the truth of the case. Other employers kept women in their service after the birth of their child. Margaret Cooper continued to work binding shoes for Mr Arnold after she was seduced by a journeyman shoemaker and then delivered of an illegitimate child. Nevertheless, she still required the help of the hospital because she was in very lowe Circumstances heaving Sould Most of her Cloathes for the Support of herself and Child She has no other prospect But must perish for want of Common Necessaries . . .24 Almost half of the petitioners stated that they had jobs to return to if their child could be admitted into the Foundling Hospital. Employers would frequently reinstate women if the Foundling accepted their child. Indeed, as we have seen, it became a requirement of admission at the turn of the century. Mary Brown told the governors that though full of Affection to her Child she is feeling the greatest grief at parting with her Yet . . . she trusts that her Master and Mistress (who have kindly consented to take her again) will give her such a Character.25 Sarah Aviory brought her child to be admitted when only twelve days old. On inspection it was discovered that neither her Master nor Mistress ever suspected her Condition and so well satisfied were they with her honesty towards them and of her honest intentions towards her Infant from the Steps she had taken in providing it Cloaths and a Lodging for her self, that they are willing to receive her again into their service, if she can but find an asylum for her Child. Sarah’s employer Phebe Gibbes at No. 4 Goldsmiths Street, Gough Square told the steward that Sarah Aviary Lived with me above a year and a half, and was so faithful and valuable in her Conduct that I believe if she can once provide for her Child I shall take her again but her present distress is extreem, nor has she one means upon earth of providing for her Child, or even for her Self, unless that is taken of her hands.26

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Mrs Gibbes was obviously eager for Sarah to return to her employment almost immediately after her delivery. Mary Hickey’s master and mistress offered their support by accompanying her to the General Committee to offer a recommendation and testify to her need in person to support her application.27 Some employers went to enormous efforts to help a servant gain admission for her illegitimate child. The extent of the trouble that they went to suggest that they were not merely motivated by the desire for their servants to return to work. Masters and mistresses did much more than merely answer questions put to them by the Foundling’s inspector. Mrs Spinnage went to some trouble to ensure Sarah Bayton might have her five-month-old child admitted. When the inspector called at No. 93 Newman Street, Mrs Spinnage was absent but she had informed her housekeeper to tell anybody who enquired after Sarah’s character that ‘she was a great object of Charity and that she purpose writing to the Committee in her behalf’. Which she did accordingly Gentlemen Not being at home when the gentleman came for the Carricter of Sarah Bayton, for the further Satisfaction of your Honours I hereby assure you that she is a very honest sober person and a real object of Charity She lived three years with my Father and Mother dureing which time she behaved as a faithful good Servant in every respect and did I want a servant my self there is no one I would sooner take into my own family.28 Short-term employment and frequent changes of employer were not barriers to support from compassionate masters and mistresses. Empathy with a servant’s situation was a common emotion expressed in references. Female servants were often described as victims of their male seducers and lacking in economic opportunity. Although only 18 per cent of petitioners claimed that a promise of marriage had occurred before conception, employers were much quicker to state that a promise had passed between their employee and the father of her child and to refer to the relationship as a seduction. If women were not willing to present themselves as victims then their employers were more than happy to do so on their behalf. It is possible that they thought that the hospital governors wanted to hear a particular story. It may be that character referees were prompted to give certain answers by

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the specific questions that were put to them by the hospital’s inspector. Letters of recommendation, however, were more formal and formulaic than that of references noted by the steward from conversations on the streets. T.D. Harriott a shoemaker in Newgate Street wrote to the General Committee in support of Hannah Peal My Wife hired her as a Servant in May last soon after which she prov’d with Child by my Apprentice then nearly out of his Time, though I would not in any degree countinance a Crime so Hainess in the Sight of God and particular as a Father of Severall Children of both Sex, yet I am ready to believe from various Circumstances She was not the first Aggressor, I mention this not as a justification of her Conduct But as I have no reason to believe but before that time Her Virtue was untarnished, Which I fear was not the Case with him . . . Her Parents being very Poor with a large Family at Leicester could afford her no relief.29 After leaving Harriott’s service, the father of Hannah’s child married another of Harriott’s female servants. Hannah’s deception and the loss of three employees on account of the actions of his apprentice clearly angered Harriott. His awareness that Hannah’s family was too poor to help her rear her child drove him to recommend her case to the Foundling Hospital. Employers provided elaborate details of their servants’ predicaments and their financial insecurity. Mrs Mills, the wife of a grocer in Gracechurch Street, continued to employ Ann Parker in her service after the discovery of her pregnancy considering her as a simple honest girl who had been seduced by an artful man . . .[she] will think herself happy if Parker is thus saved from ruin, but she cannot think of keeping her if the child is not provided for, as she is certain her wages will not provide for both.30 Mrs Murran, the wife of a victualler in Wapping, continued to employ her servant Jane Edwards through her pregnancy and lying-in she still retains her in her place and out of Compassion has assisted her in supporting her Child, hitherto but cannot continue her kindness much longer having a small Family of her own . . .31

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Both Mrs Mills and Mrs Murran were keen to continue their servants in their places but neither had the resources to do so for an extended period of time. Women often stated that their employers were solely responsible for their survival. This was often true for young, migrant women without contacts in the city. Mary Howard told the Committee that had it not been for my Good Master and Mistress I and my poor Infant must have perished for Want. Mrs Lake of Fieldgate Street Westminster confirmed Mary’s story and told the steward that the Petitioner was a very good Servant while she lived with her and is very certain she is very deserving of compassion and relief.32 Elizabeth Thompson became pregnant after a relationship with a journeyman carpenter who was repairing her mistress’s house in Fleet Street. Her petition stated that she has neither father, mother, sister, brother nor any Friends, was born in the Country, but her last place was with Mrs Clarke . . . who has been her only Friend and greatly assisted her and Child, being Allmost Starveing, she has no way of providing for the Child, and has made away with the best part of her cloaths and a little wages she has saved . . .33 Some employers shared what money and resources they had with women in distress. The support of employers was important in many different ways to women applying to the hospital for the admission of their infants. If employers could not promise women jobs themselves then, like Mrs Hayes a merchant’s wife, living in Laurence Pountney Lane, they frequently offered to help to find them another place. 34 Mrs Hewett who was lodging at Mr Bakers’, opposite Old Bond Street before moving abroad, aided Elizabeth Stevens through her pregnancy and continued her in her service until the child was three months old. Before leaving the country she promised that her friends would help Elizabeth to find a new place once her child had been admitted.35 It was often employers who urged a servant to seek admission for her infant. After reading an advert in the London papers, Mr and Mrs Sherman

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at the cloth fair West Smithfield encouraged their servant Elizabeth Cripps to petition for her child. The petition that she handed in on 18 May, as the advert requested, stated that she was advised by my Master and Mistress knowing of my Distress to make application to you Gentlemen: As they informed Your Petitioner that there was an Advertisement in the Newspapers that Children should be received in . . .36 Jane Edwards’ employers at the White Hart in Holborn also drew her attention to an advert for the admission of children into the hospital.37 Middling and upper class, not only plebeian, employers aided unmarried mothers in distress. Servants who petitioned for the admission of their children to the Foundling also came from larger aristocratic households.38 The investigations made by the steward into a petitioner’s past bring to light important evidence on cross-class relations in the eighteenth-century metropolis. Servants, even if they lived in larger households and amongst greater numbers of servants, were well known to their employers and neighbours. Here the gulf between rich and poor was wide but friendship, compassion and concern for the livelihood of servants was common. Employers of all classes shared a language of duty and responsibility and sometimes compassion towards unmarried pregnant servants. The moral ambiguity that surrounded the status of unmarried mothers held true for some members of the elite and middling orders, as well as plebeians such as Mrs Rolfe. William Hunter, a corn chandler who lived in Maddox Street Hanover Square, supported his servant Ann Buxton after she became pregnant as the result of a relationship with another servant of his who had run away. He and his wife assisted her in her lying-in, took her back into their service after the birth of the child and helped with her application to the hospital.39 Mrs Evans, an elderly gentlewoman who lived in Blenham Street off Oxford Road told the steward that Elizabeth Wright had lived with her as a servant and ‘if she had not assisted her she must have perished’, ‘she hoped that the hospital would take compassion on her and admit her child’.40 Lady Popham who lived in Baker Street told the Foundling’s inspector that Elizabeth Matthews was her cook and ‘as good a creature as can be’. She kept her in her service for as long as possible up to the birth and re-employed her two weeks after her delivery. She promised to do ‘everything in her power to save her’. Despite trying every means possible to discover who the father of her child was and to compel him to maintain the infant, she had failed.

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Her only other course of action was to help Elizabeth to petition the Foundling.41 Sometimes the father of the child’s employer would feel obliged to aid the mother left holding his baby. Lady Trafford in Charles Street told the Foundling’s inspector that Mary Allen was a stranger to her but that the father of Mary’s child had worked as her servant and that she had already spoke to Dr Walker desiring his Assistance therein, who promised her Ladyship to use his best Endeavour to get the Child into the Hospital she supposing it a just Object of this Charity.42 Mrs Corredge at the hotel in Suffolk Street told the Committee that Frances Wood had a very good character and that she had taken her into her service again. Mrs Buckle also supported Frances’ application and told the inspector that she had known her from a child and that the father of her infant had worked for her before absconding abroad.43 A married porter Richard Langham had known Rose Latham for four years before making her pregnant. Rose’s employer Miss Pelham of Whitehall recommended her child to the Foundling authorities as a proper object of charity being born unexpectedly in my House which is extra-parochial and the Father being a poor Man and having a large Family and the Mother is willing to exert herself in getting a future honest livelihood. When the inspector called at Miss Pelham’s he was not permitted to see her but a female upper servant informed him that the petition was written under her orders and signed by her, that her Ladyship was well acquainted with the details of the case and that she would provide the petitioner with a place so long as the child was admitted because her general character was good.44 The desire to keep a loyal servant sometimes outweighed the need to make an example of such women by terminating their contracts. Lord Hilbros’ housekeeper in Hanover Square told the inspector that her Ladyship had been very kind to Sarah Saville since she left her place and she told him that the father of Sarah’s child, a journeyman pastry cook who had run off was ‘a Worthless idle fellow’.45 Mrs Davis of No. 66 Great Queen Street supported Frances Moore, who had been her servant for several years, through her lying-in and intended to take her again if her child was admitted. In her petition, Frances was also keen to acknowledge the assistance of ‘the Genteel woman whose house she lay

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in at’.46 Catherine Leslie, a surgeon’s wife who lived in Buckingham Street, wrote to the Foundling Committee on behalf of Catherine Smith Gentlemen The bearer Catherine Smith lived with me as Nursery Maid four Months and during that time behaved herself in every respect very honestly and soberly – I had likewise an exceeding good character of her from her former place – I believe her to be a Proper Object of your Charity, as neither Parents nor herself are by any means able to support the expense of her and her Child and for that reason I have taken the liberty of recommending her.47 When maid-of-all-work Winifred Bowcott commenced labour while at work, her employer Mrs Etchers at No. 41 Goodge Street sent for Mr Fergussion, a man-midwife and close neighbour living at No. 48. Mrs Etchers wrote a long and detailed letter to the General Committee in support of Winifred the unfortunate bearer Winifred Bowcott of the Parish of Bucknock South Wales, came to live with me as a servant of all work, in the Month of Feby last previous to which she lived with Mrs Fisher No 53 John Street Tottenham Court Road, from whom I had a very good Character for Industry Sobriety Integrity etc, which since in my service she has deservingly merited, she has not had any followers nor been solicitous to go out. In the Morning of the 4th of June last, she was taken in labour when I immediately sent for Mr Fergussion No 48 Goodge Street who delivered her of a female child – she has been attended by the nurse, who accompanys her and every assistance humanity could dictate, has been administered during her sickness, nor has her Misfortune been unnecessarily revealed so as to be injurious to her future Character. The father, a connection formed while attending her late Mistress (Fisher) last summer at Margate, who, it appears promised to come to London to marry her, but since that time, she has not had any tidings of him, nor has she any knowledge whatsoever where he could be traced or heard of . . . she is without friends capable of assisting her, and has only her character and industry to depend on for her support. Satisfied that her morals are not depraved, in commiseration for her sufferings, and in confidence that it will effectually be the means of

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restoring her to a virtuous course of life and to character for the obtaining an honest livelihood – disencumbered of the Orphan, it is my intention to continue her in my service . . .48 A woman’s circumstances were rarely secret among her employers and neighbours. Knowledge of distress and need was shared by those suffering and those able to provide relief. Many employers clearly felt obliged to help their servants in times of such crises. Mrs Osbourne enabled Susannah Butt to obtain admission into the Store Street Lying-in Hospital and promised to recommend her to the Foundling Hospital as well. It is possible that Mrs Osbourne was wife to William Osbourne, man-midwife to the Store Street Hospital. He and his entire family subscribed to the charity that granted them the right to recommend patients to lie in. The steward described Susannah’s benefactor as a ‘Charitable good woman of an independent fortain which She chiefly expends in Acts of Charity.’49 Women and men of different classes shared knowledge of how eighteenth-century institutions operated but those who subscribed to and worked within charitable institutions had the resources to be especially helpful. Such individuals could put their influence and connections to effective use. Those who lived under the same noisy, busy and bustling roofs were far from anonymous. People worked, talked, socialised and rested in close proximity. Secrecy was almost impossible under such conditions. The petitions suggest that a mistress was more likely than a master to have an intimate relationship with her servant. This was due both to her control over her household as well as the fact that the steward examining a petitioner’s case usually found the mistress rather than the master at home. But compassion was not the preserve of the female sex. Masters frequently used work contacts to find their servants charitable assistance or alternative employment. Mr Leadham an apothecary in Tooley Street, Southwark, used his contacts to get his servant Catherine Chase into an Infirmary to lie-in.50 Hannah Bagshaw’s master and mistress ‘have compassionated her condition and got her into the Lying-In Hospital in Westminster’.51 Mr Rice also got his servant Jane Keith to lie in at a hospital.52 Employers could also interpose on their servant’s behalf with governors of the Foundling Hospital. Sarah Ney came to the hospital carrying her child, her petition and a detailed note from her employer.53 We have already seen how governors of the charity facilitated the successful passage of petitions. Employers often wrote to governors asking for advice on how best to guarantee the admission of their servant’s child. Such petitions were sometimes accompanied with supporting

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letters from members of the General Committee. Jonas Hanway, for example, wrote many such references.54 Ann Williams was working as a servant in the reputable family of Mr and Mrs Hill in Wandsworth when she was seduced and became pregnant by a fellow footman. Mr Hill wrote to the General Committee on her behalf and told them that Ann had lived with them for over two years during which time, she behaved herself with great Decency, Honesty and Diligence, by which means, she deservedly Gain’d the esteem and confidence of her Mistress, and her friends – the Contents of her Petition I believe to be strictly true and with all due submission beg leave to recommend her, as a proper object of your Charitable and tender regard.55 Mrs Thompson, the wife of a surgeon, gave Mary Matthews, ‘a very good Character and thought she had been very ill used’. She assured the inspector that her husband would help Mary to procure a place as a wet nurse.56 Men’s references tended to be more matter of fact than women’s – usually confirming the woman’s employment, her relationship with the father of her child and they usually stated that a promise of marriage had been exchanged.57 Women’s references hinted at a more intimate involvement in the lives of their servants and sometimes drew on a language of emotion. Mrs Tovey a brazier’s wife had employed Ann Rogers as a servant for five years, ‘she liked her so well during all that time, she would engage her again’. The steward, however, questioned the depth of Mrs Tovey’s compassion, ‘she recommended her to the pity of the Committee with so much warmth as induces some Suspicion that an imposition is intended tho’ it may not be so’. After lengthy enquiry, the steward was satisfied that no such imposition was intended and the child was admitted to ballot.58 The majority of petitioners claimed that their employers supported their applications. Mary Brown stated in her petition that she was the daughter of an elderly hardworking labourer who along with other members of her poor family could not spare her any financial aid. Her employers Dr John Andree and his wife Charlotte of Austin Friars wrote to the General Committee in Mary’s support We trouble you with this on behalf of Mary Brown, and we assure you the Facts stated in her Petition are true, so far as they are within our knowledge. She has served us faithfully and well in every respect,

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is remarkably mild and peaceable in her Disposition, and in a Word is as good a Servant as we desire to have: the best Argument of which is, that we have, at her Request, agreed to take her again into our Service, And that Request is a Testimony of her Principles being good, and we sincerely believe her Seduction was more her Misfortune than her Fault, and that she heartily regrets it. 59 Employers did not describe their unmarried pregnant servants as morally reprehensible. Their illegitimate pregnancies were more often ‘misfortunes’ and mistakes.60 Some employers acted out of a sense of religious duty. Ann Stephens’ employers helped her through two weeks of her lying-in and then told her, ‘I must do the best I could for my Self as they had Acted a Christian Part.’61 But of course, employers were not solely motivated by compassion. In a city renowned for its ‘servant problem’, good staff were hard to come by. Many employers encouraged the admission of their servant’s illegitimate children into the Foundling Hospital to prevent as little disruption to their household as possible. In the late 1790s, children could only be received if his or her mother’s employers agreed to take her back into their service once they had been admitted. The motivations of such employers would be hard to ascribe to a single source but, as the evidence shows, most demonstrated and articulated considerable compassion towards their unmarried servants.

Family The obligations of family could be much greater than that of employers but such categories were often blurred. Many women acknowledged the help of their family in their petitions for admission into the Foundling Hospital. Hester Broad was dependent on the ‘small earnings of an aged Father who is a poor Gardiner at Tooting’.62 Ann Sugg was necesitated to owe her own subsistence to a poor father a Journeyman Staymaker, who was liberated under the last Insolvent after a long confinement in the Fleet Prison, and who is now scarcely able to get sufficient employ to support himself . . .63 Elizabeth Baker was ‘Obliged to Make Youse of my Mother to Defray my Expenses’.64 Jane Jones had ‘been Relieved Heather to by Hur Poor Industrious Parents whose poor Abilities can’t afford any father support’.65 Mary Allen’s mother who kept a grocery stall opposite the pump in

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Bloomsbury market allowed her to lie in at her house.66 Relatives shared their money, paid the costs of lying-in for unmarried mothers, and provided a roof over their heads as well as food to eat. Siblings also helped in any way they could. Maria Smith relied on the sole and limited support of her brother because ‘in order to preserve her Character she applied to nobody for relief (chusing rather to suffer than be exposed)’.67 Elizabeth Matthew’s brother had kindly assisted her in her lying-in but his wages earned as a gentleman’s servant could not support her for long. With no other friends to assist her and in consequence of her having, ‘made so much use of my Wearing Apparel that I have Scarce a Sufficiency Left to appear with any Decency’, she turned to the Foundling for help.68 Grace Scott relied on her married sister for support after losing her place.69 Following the birth of her child, Elizabeth Sadler was too ill to attend the General Committee to petition for the admission of her child, but her sister attended as her representative.70 Sarah Williams stated in her petition that she was taken in travail in my Sister House who is but a Lodger and her Husband is in the 2d Troop of Horse Grandier Guards . . . they have shewed all the Bounty that Lyes in there Power towards my Support but its not in their Power to Support me any Longer. Mrs Mandrey in Gardiner’s Lane, Westminster, was Sarah’s housekeeper. She told the inspector that she knew nothing of the Petitioner only as a Lodger who stay’d with her about Six Weeks and paid honestly for the same during which time she has a sister and Husband who visited her who seemed to be Creditable people that pressed her earnestly to part with her Child to the Foundling Hospital wch she was always very much against but supposed they had persuaded her to it now . . .71 Susanna Franklin was lodging with her sister when she submitted her petition. She stated that she is one of those miserable Beings, who by too credulously trusting to the Promises of a Person, that has lately been Impressed . . . is unhappily become a wretched object of your humane Institution . . . to the Pains of Sickness, the Consciousness of Guilt, and the Fear of Shame, is added the Dread of her Child’s Perishing through Want; which must

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inevitably have happened if she had not disposed of most of her Cloaths, and received some small Relief from her Sister’s kindness.72 Sarah Brown’s sister took her and her child into their lodgings although she had several children of her own, ‘and her Husband grumbles her for so doing’.73 Elizabeth Beety stated that she was altogether forsaken by my friends, and has now been obliged to sell and pawn most of my cloths to support and keep me from Starving and if it had not been for my cousen Alexr Mills and Wife who has 8 Children and she bigg with the Ninth, And he only a Journeyman Dyer, I must have starved before now . . . if ever I am in circumstances or capable to take care of it I will take it, if you will grant me that Liberty.74 Despite how hard it must have been for Alexander, on his journeyman’s wages and already with ten mouths to feed, he took his cousin in. Elizabeth was lucky. Most women, because they were migrants, had few family members on whom to rely in the city. Even if family members were located close by, many were too poor themselves to help. Other women turned to their friends in times of necessity.

Friends, neighbours and acquaintances Friends and neighbours afforded women other relief. Women played a dominant role in the all-important immediate aid of other women in need.75 The different roles that men and women played in neighbourhood relations are also evident in the petitions. Men’s employment was often much more mobile than that of women’s. We have already established just how easily fathers and husbands could simply disappear.76 Men were also far less likely to be involved with the female worlds of childbirth and rearing. Men did help unmarried mothers in need but they did so in different ways than women. Women would be called upon more readily in the event of a crisis, particularly that of childbirth. Midwives were easily identified in their neighbourhoods and relied on personal referral for business.77 Elizabeth Johnson, a midwife, delivered Mary Cruse just off Tottenham Court Road. She told the inspector that I delivered this poor Woman at a house in my neighbourhood . . . knowing her to be a decent woman and many years a Servant in good families . . .78

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Martha Pearce’s friend managed to procure her a midwife from the Royal Lying-in Charity.79 Midwives played a particularly significant role in these women’s lives. Mrs Spense, a midwife in Granby’s Buildings in Lambeth, took Ann Westage into her house to lie in after seeing her obvious distress.80 Sarah Rapley stated that she and her infant would have starved had it not been, ‘for the Humanity of a few well disposed Christians who assisted me in my Lying-Inn’.81 Mrs Hyde a midwife who kept a private lying-in house at No. 50 Castle Street, Oxford Market attended the General Committee with Rachel Hunt to help obtain admission for her child.82 Mrs Brooks a midwife at No. 129 Tooley Street delivered Ann Brewse, ‘of a Child in a poor Lodging House in Bermindsey Parish out of Charity’.83 Prudence Green worked as a washerwoman and nurse for Mrs Mayo, at No. 9 Deans Court off the Strand, before and after giving birth to her child. She stated in her petition that I am distrest to the last degree I have not a friend in the world that I can go to and I have made shift to get my living before I was put to bed for helping the women I am now with I have a child I can’t help myself nor she for I have got a cold settled in my side and I am afraid it will render me from doing any hard work and the woman I am with is going in the country to live as soon as her husband sends for her and then I shall have no place to be in for I have no acquaintaince but she in town . . . I have no more close than I have on and no monny to help myself with . . . nothing but the poverty and distress I am in ever could make me think of parting with my dear child from my brest for it is as fine a Child as any in London of its age . . . Her mistress asked Mrs Steddy, a midwife who lived several doors down at No. 30, Deans Court, to deliver Prudence’s child. Mrs Steddy told the inspector that she thought that Prudence was a worthy object of the charity and when he asked her who had paid her for her services as a midwife she told him, ‘there was no pay in the Case, there was nothing to pay with’.84 Rebecca Evans told the committee that without the help of ‘good Charitable Neighbours’, she would have starved on the streets. She attended the committee with the support of a housekeeper in her parish who had saved her ‘from unavoidable perishing’.85 Before turning to the Foundling Hospital for help, Mary Wilson had made her case known to all my friends in generall and have Encroached so far upon their goodness that its not in their power to support me and my Child any longer.86

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Jane Slater had to rely on the ‘charity of strangers’.87 Neighbours could not ignore the distress of such women in their immediate vicinity. Elizabeth Bloxham from Banbury in Oxfordshire came to London to try to find the father of her child and could not, ‘having no friends in London is now supported by the Charity of a few people in the Neighbourhood where she lay in about Six Weeks ago’.88 Ann Night had nothing to support her, ‘but what the Neighbours are so kind to send’.89 Judith Hart, ‘with the Assistance of a few Friends, and Sometimes being obliged to part from her Cloaths, Maintained herself and Child as long as possible But her friends not being able to Continue their Assistance and the Resource of her Cloaths being Exhausted’ she petitioned the Foundling Hospital.90 Such clothes could be sold in Monmouth Street and the area around Seven Dials, London’s market for new as well as second-hand garments.91 Lengthy relationships involved stronger ties of reciprocity and responsibility. Mr and Mrs Watkins who owned a leather shop in Little Newport Street gave Elizabeth Burford a good character and told the inspector that Elizabeth and her mother had washed for them and other neighbours for several years and that everyone had always found them ‘very honest and industrious and upon this Misfortune have Charitably assisted her in support of herself and Child’.92 Mr Clay a pencil maker in Woodstock Street paid for Jane Kell’s lodgings in the same house as his and assisted her in other respects, ‘out of pity to her self and regard to her Mother who was his housekeeper’.93 Mrs Higgins became acquainted with Ann Hardy when she worked as a servant in her neighbourhood. After Ann was forced to leave her place on account of her pregnancy, Mrs Higgins, ‘out of Compassion took her in as a Lodger, being quite friendless and destitute of almost every Necessary’.94 Mrs Spinks a carpentess at No. 15 Chesterfield Street in Marylebone introduced the inspector to Rosanna Doleman who was lodging with her while attempting to gain admission for her child. He found her very unwell and was told her child was nursed in the neighbourhood, ‘there were other women in the room who all Pleaded her destress and that she was deserted both by the Father of her Child (who is a mate of a ship) and her own Friends’.95 These women provided a phalanx of support for Rosanna while she was being examined by the Foundling’s messenger. Andrew Grant of Ratcliff Highway had known Alison Jeffries since she was a child. In her desperation, Alison had turned to the only person she could rely on in the city. Andrew told the General Committee that she had become pregnant by a man who had since

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gone to sea but who had promised if he returned alive that he would marry her But times is so hard now that if I had not taken hir in she must have starved in the Street for she has been obliged to make Away with all her Cloaths to Support herself As She has no Relations in London . . . it is a sin that Such a Child should starve in a Christian Land which must be the Case if not provided for as she cannot get hir living with the Child . . . hir Character for honesty is undeniable . . . He also promised that if her child could be admitted he would obtain her a place.96 Mr Cookesley a pawnbroker in Norton Folgate had known Ann Woodey originally from Devon, ‘some years coming from the Town he came from she has no Friends in London he got her into the hospital to Lay in she being in great distress’.97 His loyalties stretched all the way from Devon to London to help the migrant Ann. Family, friends, neighbours and acquaintances took care not to reject mothers whose desperation was obvious to anyone who looked. Many helped unmarried mothers in as many ways as they could, lending money, providing rooms to lie in, midwifery services and food. They provided a vital support network for women struggling to survive with newborn babies they could barely provide for.

Reclamation As we discussed in Chapter 6, the Foundling Hospital was not used simply to abandon children. Some petitioners stated in their petitions for admission that they hoped to reclaim their children in the future. Hundreds of petitioners returned to reclaim their children when they could afford to. After the establishment of the Foundling Hospital, elaborate methods were put in place to ensure that children could be reclaimed once admitted. The evidence contained in 452 petitions for reclaiming children submitted to the governors of the Foundling Hospital also demonstrates that some parents used the hospital as one strategy among others to help them in times of especial economic crisis.98 Evidence of parents attempting to reclaim their children can be found in a variety of places in the Foundling’s archive: in the Register, in the bundles of petitions for reclaiming, among petitions for apprenticeship and within the voluminous minutes of the General Committee and Sub-Committees which makes the numbers of attempts at reclamation hard to calculate.99 Nevertheless, the numbers of attempts made by

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parents to reclaim their children remained a tiny proportion when compared to the number of children admitted. 356 of the 452 petitions I have found related to children admitted during the General Reception period, when the total number admitted during that period between 1756 and 1760 was 14,982. The following discussion is based on the 452 petitions spanning the years 1756–1800. Anybody hoping to reclaim their child had to attend the Daily Committee where they would be examined as to their right to the child and whether they were able to provide for them. From 1749 they had to leave a petition, stating their case, with the secretary. The petition was then delivered to the General Committee who would make enquiries as to the legitimacy of the case.100 If they satisfied the committee that they had a right to receive the child, an administrator would search the records to locate him or her. If the child was found alive, the petitioner would have to pay for the maintenance expenses that the child had incurred since admission, and to provide a bond of £80 as security to ensure that the child would not become chargeable to the parish or to the hospital. Then the child could be returned to them.101 If the child was dead, the petitioner was still required to pay the costs of the maintenance of the child up until the point of his or her death. On 25 July 1759 Francis Magnus submitted a petition on behalf of the mother of a female bastard child placed into the hospital in April. But he was two weeks late – the child had perished in the hospital’s infirmary at the beginning of July. Nevertheless, Francis paid £1.16 in expenses.102 In 1764, the clause stating that petitioners who wanted to reclaim their children had to pay for the cost of the care of the child while it was in the hospital and to provide a bond of £80 as security for the child was dropped.103 After this change was advertised in all the major London newspapers and in all the ‘usual publick places’, 159 people attempted to reclaim their children in that one year and many more parents came forward to reclaim their children in subsequent years.104 This suggests that the high cost of reclaiming had discouraged many parents from coming forward earlier to reclaim their children. William Downie was one father who came to reclaim his child in 1764 as a result of this change in the rules regarding payment. In his petition he stated by his unavoidable Misfortunes and to escape being thrown in to jail, by unrelenting Creditors, was driven to Necessity of going to Holland in the Month of March 1757, my wife being then at the

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lying down and in weakly condition, it was not Prudent to take her with me for fear of accidents on the Voyage . . . was advised tho Sore against her inclination to Send the Child to this Hospital . . . after having lived about Six years at Amsterdam we returned to London with an intention of recovering our Child again, but was deterred from any attempts to that Purpose by being assured that it would cost us a great deal of Money . . . having now constant employment I am enabled to maintain my family in a Decent Manner . . . Sadly for William and his wife, their child was one of the ten thousand who died during the four years of the General Reception period.105 Nevertheless, despite the expense, at least 130 people attempted to reclaim children before this clause was dropped. People went to enormous lengths to find the £80 Bond and to provide securities to ensure the Foundling authorities that their child would not become chargeable to any parish or to the hospital and that they were capable of maintaining them. Some reclaimers compromised and only offered to pay the expenses that the child incurred while in the care of the hospital – many crossed out the relevant sections of the petitions when they did this and the governors frequently waived the rules regarding payment of charges. They recognised how difficult it was for such individuals to make up the costs. William Stewart had his child returned to him in 1760 even after stating that he could not afford to pay the expenses of the child while it was in the hospital’s care.106 John Williams was not so lucky. His child died at nurse in Isleworth before being reclaimed. The Committee offered to bend the rules and told John he did not have to contribute to the child’s expenses. Nevertheless, John popped 2 guineas into the charity box for the hospital’s trouble.107 Elizabeth Smith had laboured hard for ten years at the long warehouse on the corner of Tavistock Street in order to save the money to reclaim her child in 1760 [but] has not Wherewithal to defray the great Expenses wich may be demanded but still can maintain her Without ever becoming Chargeable to any one by my own Industry.108 Similarly, Isabella Ross told the governors that Your Petitioner is at present unable to pay the Expenses attending the said Child, she humbly hopes you will take compassion on her Case, by dispensing with the usual forms in her favour.109

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The General Committee agreed that Isabella could claim her child, ‘without paying any expense in consideration of her indifferent circumstances’.110 Mary Teeny handed her twin babies over to the Foundling Hospital in March 1760 but returned in July because since which time I can have no rest . . . consider the yearnings of a Mother’s Bowels and grant that my Children may be delivered to me again . . . as she is incapable of procuring the Security, [she hopes] you will wave this consideration in her favour; and that she is at present but in very low Circumstances, you will accept of the little she is able to produce towards the Expenses which the Hospital has incurred in support of her said Children.111 Some people would only name securities if the child was found alive. Others refused to pay the expenses if the child had died while in the hospital’s care. After the change to the rules in 1764, all the petitioner had to prove was their relationship to the child. This was done by describing the child’s clothes and appearance when it was brought to the hospital, or by producing the receipt that they received when the child was admitted (from 1757).112 They would also have to assure the hospital authorities that they were capable of maintaining the child. There are only two examples of women being refused their children. Mary Brown a single servant working for a green grocer in Aldersgate Street had her petition rejected because she had another child in the workhouse.113 Good character references were vital for reclamation as well as admission. The steward who investigated the case of Eleanor Butler discovered that This Woman has been almost distracted since She parted with her Child. She is so deeply affected as to render her incapable of getting her living Dr Grindlay thinks She has not the means of providing for it But Mrs Gray assured me that herself and another Friend will assist her untill she can return to Scotland, where she has Friends, and some little property.114 Unfortunately for Eleanor, the General Committee took the advice of Dr Grindlay rather than Mrs Gray and refused Eleanor her daughter believing her incapable of looking after it.115 Mothers made up 57 per cent, fathers 16 per cent, friends 19 per cent and other family and acquaintances made up the rest of those that petitioned to reclaim children placed into the hospital. The circumstances surrounding the reclaiming of children were linked to those that led to

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the admission of children to the hospital.116 The occupations given and the circumstances recorded in the petitions for admission were similar to those in the petitions for reclaiming. People came to reclaim their children when they could afford to take care of them. In 1756, Catherine Smith gave birth to her daughter at the Lying-in Hospital in Duke Street, Westminster. She delivered her to the Foundling Hospital, because she had no resources to care for her, with a note stating This Child was born of good parents, but can’t at present take care of it but may hereafter therefore beg it may be taken care of Ten years later Catherine was managing the Coach and Horses pub, only yards from where she gave birth, in Duke Street and could afford to reclaim her child.117 It is possible that parents who returned to claim older children recognised the useful contribution such children could make to their household economy by working and earning. Samuel and Margaret Hyde admitted their child in October 1757 with a note stating This is to satisfi whome it may concarn that unexpect troubles is Befell us or other wee shoulde not appartided with her I beg you would takeer particular care of hur I hope it will Bee Seane in our power to fetch hir Back again . . . Four years later they did just that.118 Many years could pass before a parent felt secure enough to reclaim a child. In 1766, Charlotte Burton requested admission for her child while ‘labouring under great difficulties and destress’. She attempted to reclaim her child thirty years later. But the child had long since left the hospital and could not be located.119 John White from Westham in Essex also returned too late – twenty-three years after his child was admitted.120 Some women found that marriage provided them with the economic security to reclaim infants placed into the hospital.121 Of the women reclaiming children, 29 per cent were married. Elizabeth Sheakins delivered her child to the hospital after she was widowed in 1764. By 1772, she had remarried and kept a cellar in Seven Dials from which she sold old clothes and felt able to reclaim and maintain her daughter Virtue.122 Other women who had illegitimate children admitted into the hospital returned several years later when married with the support of new husbands to collect their children. It is also important to appreciate that such children were economic resources for their parents once they had reached a certain age, usually upwards of seven. In August 1764,

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John Banner, a grocer from St Martin’s in the Fields supported his wife’s application to reclaim her son placed into the hospital seven years before. Mary had given birth to her son before meeting and marrying John. The steward sent to investigate whether John and Mary could be trusted to maintain the child stated on her petition, ‘The child was born previous to their marriage, Mr Banner is not the father, but is willing to support it, he bean a good character.’123 William Cooke helped his new wife reclaim her child. He kept an alehouse in Swallowfield in Berkshire and she had recently inherited some money that provided her with the means to claim and maintain her child.124 But marriage was not a condition of reclamation. Another 29 per cent of the women who reclaimed were described as spinsters on their petitions, 10 per cent were widows and another 32 per cent did not mention their marital status suggesting that it was not instrumental to their success. Reclaimers lived within the same shifting relationships and family ties as other petitioners. Hannah Tatoo’s husband, Peter, a weaver at Bethnal Green, also agreed to maintain her daughter from a previous relationship. A note accompanied Hannah’s petition from the child’s grandfather confirming that the child was born to his daughter and his late son-in-law Matthew Tankard. Also enclosed with the Petition was a letter from the child’s natural father to his sister May 21st 1764 Dear Sister, I rec’d them few lines that you sent me concerning my Child, which was in the Foundling Hospital which Gives me great Uneasiness, that you know well if the Mother of the Child know where I was I am Lyable to be Troubled by Her, But since it’s the Mothers Desire to have the Child and Likewise her Spouse, which I hear they are in Circumstance to support it, You may Lett them know I am not against it If the Worthy Gentlemen think proper of it . . . if she Recovers her child I hope that she would do a mother part by it, as for my part its out of my power, and I hope you’ll be so good not to Lett her now where I am that I may Rest Safe . . . From your every loving brother till Death P.S. Pray send me word by the Bearer, that she will promise Not to hurt me nor put one to any Expense . . .125 Following the breakdown of Matthew and Hannah’s marriage, the couple continued to know each other’s circumstances despite Matthew’s determination to keep his whereabouts secret from his wife to avoid contributing

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any costs to the maintenance of his child. After finding security with Peter, Hannah used her grandfather’s good name and her ex-husband’s sister as an intermediary to prove that she could support her child to the Foundling authorities. A range of people provided character references, securities, help with the deposit and the £80 Bond (before 1764) to enable individuals to reclaim a child. Almost 20 per cent of reclaimers described their relationship to the child as ‘friend’. Neighbours, family and friends pooled economic resources and reputation to enable the reclamation of a child. Martha Cuthbert delivered her son into the hospital in January 1758. Six years later she returned to the hospital requesting to have her child returned to her. Martha was employed as a servant at the time. She was still single and unable to maintain him by herself. Her widowed sister Elizabeth Griffin who worked in silk manufacturing agreed to keep the child for her.126 Friends and family helped single women to support their children. Catherine Onions’ housekeeper Mrs Dove, who kept a chandlers shop in John Street, agreed to look after her four-year-old child while Catherine worked.127 Mary Jones had not earned a settlement working as a washerwoman but the Foundling Hospital agreed to deliver her daughter to a friend who had a settlement to prevent any problems over chargeablity.128 William Griffin, a haberdasher in St James’ Market, John Derby, a Quaker of the same place and James Wheedon, a chairman in Leicester Fields, all assured the governors that Catherine McDonough is a sober industrious woman And I believe in Circumstances Sufficient to maintain her own Children.129 Even parish officers provided references for parents that could be trusted to maintain their children on the Seventh day of August last past Samuel Spicer then aged about two years and William Spicer then aged about five Months two poor Children of the said Hamlet of Ratcliff were admitted into the said Hospital . . . the Parents of the said Children are going to reside in the Country where they have a Probable means of maintaining them at their own expense and are Desirous to take them with them . . . [signed by] Jn Lungley [Churchwarden of the Hamlet of Ratcliffe] Jn Wild Thos Partridge Overseers of the same place.130

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Another strategy used to reclaim a child was for a parent to take their child as an apprentice. Ann Horsley took her daughter as an apprentice to offset accusations that the child was potentially chargeable to the parish or to the hospital.131 Elizabeth Vincent’s husband agreed to take her child as an apprentice pastry cook.132 Mary Pilkington, a widow in Cock Lane, St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, had no husband to contribute to the future maintenance of her child; but she arranged for Thomas Pickering a ribbon weaver, and close neighbour, at No. 22 Cock Lane to take her daughter as an apprentice. At the time, Catherine was twelve years old and placed out to William Hanes a beadle in Tooley Street but was allowed to be transferred to Thomas on payment of a fee of £4.133 John Priddin a bookseller in Fleet Street reclaimed his grandson by taking him as an apprentice. John told the steward that his daughter had been married to a very dissipated young Man who after Spending her Fortune and involving himself in difficulties deserted her and is now somewhere abroad, but where She cannot tell. She was left by him in the greatest distress when She obtained admission for her Child into this Hospital. The steward described Mr Pridden as a man ‘in good circumstances and of unblemished Reputation, he has been resident in the House where he now lives between 30 and 40 years’.134 John’s reputation and economic security ensured that his grandson could be delivered to him.

Conclusion The individuals who constituted the communities of eighteenthcentury London, communities which were accommodating newcomers every day, created their own working definitions of family and friends. Men and women of all classes incessantly interacted in the private as well as the public spaces of the eighteenth-century city. Lone mothers were part-and-parcel of the hustle and bustle of metropolitan life. They were not distinguishable from other plebeians and they were not always ostracised as a result of their plight. Relationships with employers, neighbours, family, kin and midwives might have been short term and often transient, particularly for new migrants, mobile and seasonal workers; nevertheless, they involved responsibilities and reciprocity. The contacts these women made enabled them to rely on help in times of crisis. Almost all lone mothers had at least one friend that they could turn to. Few women were entirely

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friendless even if they described themselves as such in their petitions. Most unmarried mothers could rely on a good character reference to enable the admission of their child. For women and men who lived on the margins, reliance on networks of formal and informal support was vital for survival. Families, neighbours and friends provided needy unwed mothers with aid directly and by helping them to obtain institutional support when required. Reciprocity had always been important amongst poor communities but servants might also have expected kindness and compassion from employers outside their class. Elite employers, friends and acquaintances sometimes had more sway, greater resources as well as influence, in facilitating the successful passage of petitions. Individuals were motivated by a sense of duty, responsibility, compassion, religion and some by self-interest. Appeals to charity were often formed in the social and economic relations of the household and they were written using the language of both employers and employees. As we saw in Chapter 5, phrases and vocabulary learned from popular as well as elite sources were articulated in life-stories related to charitable authorities. Poor women accessed oral and print cultures through work and neighbourhood relations. They read the books that belonged to their employers and heard stories that reflected their everyday lives being read aloud within households and on the streets. They shared their family history with relatives, employers, friends and acquaintances. Servants were vital to the successful function of most households – poor as well as rich. The Foundling Hospital enabled servants to return to their employers after the births of their infants. The trouble that some employers went to to help their unmarried servants demonstrate that many were not only motivated by self-interest. Some employers treated their servants like members of their family, especially if they had known them for many years. In poorer households, master and servant were sometimes related. Actual family members, including parents, siblings, cousins as well as neighbours might have been driven more by compassion. London’s plebeian communities sustained, when they could, the unmarried mothers who were in their midst. Meanings of female reputation were complicated by the sheer numbers of young, single women who flocked to the metropolis in thousands and who participated in relationships that put them at risk of pre-marital pregnancy. Thousands of mothers produced illegitimate children in late eighteenth-century London. As a result, meanings of marriage and illegitimacy were necessarily much more mutable for London’s plebeian community as well as their employers than has been suggested. Empathy towards unmarried mothers was often expressed in the character references

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provided by elite as well as poor men and women. Unmarried pregnant servants were not always rejected as morally abhorrent. The petitions provide evidence of the endurability of compassion as well as duties of responsibility towards such women. The evidence of parents attempting to reclaim their children further demonstrates that the Foundling Hospital was used for more than the mere abandonment of children. The reasons for children’s admission to the hospital were linked to the factors that surrounded their reclamation. Parents returned to reclaim their children when their economic circumstances had improved, when savings had been accumulated through hard work, inheritance passed down, or when women had found economic security in marriage, and they could afford to maintain their family. The hospital was part of many parents’ means of survival as they hoped to be ‘favoured by Fortune’ to maintain their own children.

Conclusion

This book has shown that hundreds of unmarried mothers in eighteenth-century London were neither abandoned and alone nor ostracised and infanticidal. London at this time was the site of spectacular economic, social and cultural change, which had volatile effects on the experience and meanings of lone motherhood. When men, money, resources and employment let women down, instead of rejecting unmarried mothers, the parish, metropolitan charities, family, friends, employers and acquaintances helped many through their pregnancies and beyond. The improvised communities of London, regenerated every day with migrants from all across the country and abroad, rarely distinguished between married and unmarried mothers. People demonstrated remarkable empathy and compassion towards these women and their children. The life-stories narrated in bastardy, settlement examinations and Foundling petitions provide us with accounts of poor women and men living through the transformations of eighteenth-century London life. Using a blend of oral and print culture, hearsay and gossip, the material discussed reveals the autobiographies of plebeians on the brink of literacy. These documents enable us to explore the lives of the poor in the eighteenth century as well as the meanings of motherhood, friendship, poverty and love. Poor women in their late teens and early twenties flocked to London in search of work as domestic servants during the eighteenth century. They formed relationships with their employers, neighbours and colleagues. In the course of their everyday lives, they met the men who were to father their children. There was no simple path to unmarried motherhood and women remained vulnerable to illegitimate pregnancy throughout their reproductive life. Marriage did not protect women from abandonment and lone motherhood. The characteristics of London life, of work, housing 203

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and personal relationships fostered a culture of informal, insecure, and often transient personal relationships that left women at risk of single motherhood. Fathers and husbands were prone to disappear in the eighteenth-century metropolis. Men could seek opportunities outside London and abroad much more easily than women could because their work and personal responsibilities allowed them more mobility. Many simply abandoned their obligations as fathers. Young, as well as old men, deserted their dependants. However, a significant proportion of fathers was unable to support their children because they had died or because the obligations of their work took them abroad – common occurrences throughout, but particularly at the end, of the century. The effects of such deaths and desertions were disastrous for women, whatever their marital status, and the families left behind. Other men were unable to provide adequately for a family because they were constrained by the conditions of their employment. A domestic servant who found herself pregnant had a number of options at her disposal. She could leave her service, find lodgings of her own or with her family or ‘friends’ and prepare for her childbirth there. She might try to obtain admission to one of London’s lying-in hospitals where she could give birth and lie in for free. She might ask her employer to help her through her pregnancy, she may even have laid in under their roof, or used their contacts to obtain admission into a lying-in hospital. After the child’s birth, work was almost impossible for women with young children to nurse but many tried to survive with help from a variety of sources and hundreds of employers helped their servants to obtain admission for their children to the Foundling Hospital. Economic need rather than shame was given priority in the accounts of unmarried mothers when describing their circumstances to the parish, lying-in hospitals and the Foundling Hospital. Misfortune, illegitimate pregnancy, poverty, death and desertion led most of these women to the doors of the workhouse, the gates of the lying-in hospital and the Foundling charity. When women had no or little control over their reproduction, the result of sexual relationships outside marriage was often the misfortune of illegitimate pregnancy. Misfortune represented the profound economic and emotional insecurity of plebeian women but it also allowed for the possibility of hope. If these petitioners had nothing else, they could hope that they would marry the men they slept with, that they could support themselves through pregnancy and birth, that they could try to bring up their children using wages saved and with the help of friends and family. They hoped that they could gain

Conclusion 205

admission into a lying-in hospital or the workhouse to give birth, others hoped that the Foundling Hospital would take their child providing him or her with the chance of survival and some even hoped that they might reclaim them in the future. Misfortune captured the moral ambiguity of unmarried motherhood in eighteenth-century London. Petitioners, employers and referees used the concept alike. Many women were seduced and abandoned by the fathers of their babies but they used an alternative language of seduction and sexual relations than that to be found in sermons and accounts of the Foundling Hospital as well as contemporary literature to describe their circumstances. Poor women, despite being seduced, abandoned, poor and desperate, were not victims – either of men or society. In their life-stories, women described their emotions and actions as lovers and mothers. Many loved the fathers of their babies and actively participated in the courtships that resulted in the births of their children. Many hoped to marry their partners. Different and contrasting languages of the shame and secrecy of unmarried motherhood coexisted with the ones presented here. Some parish officers and hospital authorities might have sympathised with the plight of the unmarried mother in the mid-eighteenth century but we have to set the examples discussed here against the extraordinary stories of parish officers kidnapping bastards chargeable to their parish and then conveying them to the Foundling Hospital during the General Reception. However, it is interesting to note that many of these stories were of bastards that hailed from rural rather than urban parishes. Not all metropolitan women could expect compassion in response to their crises. Despite the extent of the provision available to unmarried mothers discussed here, it seems clear that parish officers were always predominately concerned with the cost rather than the care of bastard infants. The disputes over settlement after the establishment of the lying-in and the Foundling hospitals attest to the strength of this concern. This serves to remind us that plebeian culture was not homogenous and suggests that maybe the moral ambiguity that framed unmarried motherhood during the eighteenth century was not shared by all and that it could coexist with more stringent attitudes towards such women. Moreover, many unmarried mothers hoped to keep their pregnancies secret and described feelings of shame and the experience of dismissal in their petitions. Some women were shunned by their family, friends and employers, and their histories should not be ignored. Nevertheless, the evidence presented here suggests that this was far from a universal experience. The insecurity that characterised the lives of London’s poorest meant that legitimate as well as illegitimate children were at risk of

206 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

abandonment. We have seen that the extraordinary numbers of children brought to the Foundling Hospital during the General Reception period can be largely attributed to legitimate children. This finding should encourage historians to question the automatic link made between abandonment and illegitimacy as well as between the Foundling Hospital and illegitimacy. Parish, lying-in hospital examinants and petitioners to the Foundling Hospital demonstrated the multiple causes of illegitimacy as well as of poverty during the eighteenth century. This book has emphasised the diversity of the lives of lone mothers and tried to show that other mothers shared the conditions of their lives. The extent of the help given to unmarried mothers by employers, neighbours, friends and acquaintances was striking. Plebeian communities had long recognised the need for reciprocity to survive. Unmarried mothers were not excluded from those networks. Almost all lone mothers had at least one friend who could help them. That friend was usually an employer for young migrant women far from traditional support structures. Such relationships continued to be significant throughout the century. Cross-class relations in these networks of charitable aid were particularly crucial in the lives of unmarried mothers. Many employers, elite as well as poor, were deeply involved in the everyday lives of their employees. They helped unmarried mothers through their pregnancies, guaranteed them work if their child was admitted, pointed out adverts for admission days and accompanied them to the Foundling Hospital to support their case and verify their need. Employers also used their influence as governors and subscribers on charitable boards to aid their servants. The staff of such institutions helped women obtain employment after relinquishing their child to the Foundling Hospital. The evidence from the sources discussed here suggests that the meanings of female reputation were more mutable than some historians have suggested. Poor women were not judged on their sexual behaviour alone. Employers were obviously motivated by a number of factors, not least with the attempt to keep loyal servants within their household, in helping their servants obtain charitable relief. Poorer employers might, if related to the unmarried mother in their household, have felt a greater obligation to care for them. Mistresses sometimes attended the General Committees to support their servant’s application. Masters used work contacts to find their servants jobs and to get their petitions to the top of the General Committee’s pile. Unmarried mothers relied on helpful neighbours and friends to be found in the houses, shared tenancies, streets and shops of mid- to late eighteenth-century London. The visibility of their plight could not be ignored. Despite the novelty of such communities, women

Conclusion 207

could still expect to find compassion from many sources. The same people that helped women to gain admission for their children into the Foundling Hospital also enabled women to reclaim their children. Despite their desperation, unmarried mothers chose their options carefully. The poor knew and utilised their rights in their interactions with parish and hospital authorities. Many resorted to the Foundling Hospital instead of the parish in the attempt to negotiate the publicity of their pregnancy and because they feared for the life of their infant in the workhouse. Women and men used charitable institutions for their own ends – obtaining entry into lying-in hospitals that supposedly excluded them by lying and borrowing marriage certificates off friends. Some used the Foundling Hospital as a foster home for their children. Others struggled for a long time after the births of their children before bringing them for admission. Not all unmarried mothers brought their infants to the Foundling as soon as possible after they were born. Some used family and friends to care for their children while they continued to work. Many parents believed that they were too poor to fulfil their duties as parents and knew that the Foundling Hospital had more resources than them to care for their children, to educate and to train them for future work. The love of many mothers for their babies was unquestionable. In their petitions for admission, their visits to the hospital, to nurses and masters to catch glimpses of their children, in their tokens and in their attempts at reclamation, mothers proved that they were not simply abandoning their children. Other parents tried to gain admission for their youngest children so that the rest of the family might have some chance of survival. The core conditions of poor women’s lives remained much the same throughout the century and the evidence of maternal love, responsibility and obligation also remained largely unchanged. Women were much more likely to care for their children than to reject or murder them. The extraordinary and short-lived philanthropic culture of mideighteenth-century London embraced the unmarried mother for the sake of the national good. Coram, Hanway and the other middling men that made up the active governors of the Foundling Hospital, as well as the lying-in hospitals, were key to this culture but their contribution waned as the century turned and they retired or died. Throughout the eighteenth century, governors of the Foundling Hospital were remarkably indiscriminate in the petitions that they passed. For them unmarried mothers were the victims of predatory men and their babies should have been saved. Women did not have to be ‘respectably illegitimate’ in order to gain admission for their infants into the hospital. The rules embraced

208 ‘Unfortunate Objects’

all types of ‘unfortunate objects’. Close attention to the material generated by the General Committees of all the city’s hospitals suggests that in many cases rules and regulations could be bent. The influence of individual governors was key to the successful passage of many petitions and to the admission of women into lying-in hospitals. Governors actively involved themselves in the lives of lone mothers. The turn of the nineteenth century witnessed a transformation in attitudes towards poverty and the poor. Unmarried mothers became a drain on the parish poor rates as well as charitable funds. All paupers were slowly losing their grip on the rights to relief that many had enjoyed for the past two hundred years. The extraordinary circumstances of mid- to late eighteenth-century London that allowed for unmarried mothers to be defined as morally ambiguous had changed by 1800. The transformation in lying-in hospital provision was crucial to the experiences of poor women at the turn of the century. The attention of the philanthropic community was drawn away from establishing and supporting such institutions and re-focussed on the homes of the poor. In their attempts to cut costs, benefactors were obliged to be stricter when defining who was deserving of relief. Unmarried mothers were, for the most part, being excluded from this category. A new generation of benefactors brought different concerns and agendas to their involvement in charities than that of the mid-eighteenth century. During the 1790s, with fewer funds and places to offer, the General Committee of the Foundling Hospital was becoming much stricter about the petitions that they passed. Although London’s eighteenth-century Poor Laws could be effectively negotiated by unmarried mothers, as the city and the demands made upon individual parishes continued to expand, unmarried mothers found it harder to claim relief just when they were becoming increasingly dependent upon it. Only in the 1790s, when in the midst of the shortages of the Napoleonic wars, the demands made upon the parish funds markedly increased did the payers of parish rates start to question the sums that they contributed and the structure of the welfare system itself. By the 1820s, ratepayers believed that it was no longer their duty to care for the poor within their community.1 Parish life changed substantially between 1739 and 1801 and the system was reformed to reflect those changes in 1834. Migration ensured that the face-to-face relationships enjoyed between paupers and parish officers during the early modern period declined. Parish officers were less likely to aid parishioners who were largely anonymous to them. As the criteria for poor relief changed and restrictions were implemented in the nineteenth century, the unmarried mother found it much harder to claim support. The ambiguity that

Conclusion 209

had characterised the status of pauper, unmarried mothers in eighteenthcentury London broke down in the nineteenth century as the division between the deserving and the undeserving poor was sharpened and the pauper became penalised. Increased migration and urbanisation allowed the poor to become at once more visible as a group but more anonymous as individuals. Commentators such as Richard Burn, Colquhoun, William Cobbett and Harriet Martineau were deriding the dependent poor, and parish officers were increasingly encouraged to compel their charges to become more selfreliant. It is possible that the influence of Evangelicalism, the increasing popularity of Malthusianism, the fear of the rising criminal class, the impact of the French Revolution and the belief in the increasing dependence of the poor served to exclude unmarried mothers who could so easily be defined as morally responsible for their poverty.2 Institutional changes had important effects on plebeian women’s lives. As unmarried mothers became redefined as part of the undeserving poor in the nineteenth century, they found themselves rejected in the rhetoric of both the parish and the metropolitan charities. Bastardy became a central policy concern in the debates on the Poor Laws in the 1820s. In the nineteenth century, the moral rather than the economic status of the unmarried mother became the point of public concern. During the 1830s, unmarried mothers were re-configured in the popular and political imagination as aggressors rather than victims. Unmarried mothers took centre stage with the able-bodied poor in the reform of the Poor Laws in 1834. Women rather than their male seducers were now blamed for the births of bastard babies. The unmarried mother and her child embraced by the philanthropic culture of the mid-century were rejected at its end. They were no longer the ‘unfortunate objects’ of charity.

Notes

1 Introduction 1. Foundling Hospital (hereafter FH) Petition for Admission, 1.7.1769, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), LMA/A/FH/1/1/1. 2. 8.2.1775, LMA/A/FH/1/1/6. 3. E.A. Wrigley, ‘Marriage, Fertility and Population Growth in EighteenthCentury England’, in B. Outhwaite (ed.), Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (London, 1981). 4. 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. 5. L. Tilly, J.W. Scott and M. Cohen, ‘Women’s Work and European Family Patterns’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VI, 3, Winter 1976, pp. 447–476, p. 464; L. Tilly and J. Scott, Women, Work and Family (London, 1987), p. 98; L. Berlanstein, ‘Illegitimacy, Concubinage and Proletarianisation in a French Town, 1760–1914’, Journal of Family History, 5, 1980, pp. 360–373; and C. Fairchilds, ‘Female Sexual Attitudes and the Rise of Illegitimacy: A Case Study’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VII, 1978, pp. 627–667. 6. R. Adair, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1996), pp. 222–223. Historians have argued that illegitimacy was always higher in rural rather than in urban parishes. In the eighteenth century, the bastardy rate was about 4 per cent of all births. See P. Laslett, The World We Have Lost Further Explored (Cambridge, 1983), p. 155. The extent of London illegitimacy is almost impossible to establish because of widespread unregistration. However, Levene has suggested that London’s illegitimacy ratio was about 7 per cent. See A. Levene, ‘The Origins of the Children of the London Foundling Hospital, 1741–1760: A Reconsideration’, Continuity and Change, 18, 2, 2003, pp. 201–235. See Chapter 6 for further discussion of this issue. 7. See also J. Black, ‘Illegitimacy and the Urban Poor in London, 1740–1830’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1999), pp. 340–347 and T. Hitchcock and J. Black (eds), Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations, 1733–1766 (London, 1999), pp. xvii–xx. 8. See Chapter 2, N. Rogers, ‘Carnal Knowledge: Illegitimacy in EighteenthCentury Westminster’, Journal of Social History, 23, 1989, pp. 355–375 and D. Kent, ‘Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid-Eighteenth Century London’, History Workshop Journal, 28, 1989, pp. 111–129. 9. On the increasing difficulties the poor had in achieving marriage in the late seventeenth century, see K. Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 (London, 1982), p. 70 and S. Hindle, ‘The Problem of Pauper Marriage in SeventeenthCentury England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 71–89, p. 73. 210

Notes 211 10. J. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages from 1600 to the Present (Oxford, 1985), pp. 5, 110, 114, 163–169, 170, 173. 11. L. Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996), p. 17 and M. Hunt, ‘Wife Beating, Domesticity and Women’s Independence in Eighteenth-Century London’, Gender and History, 4, 1, 1992, pp. 10–29. 12. See Adair, Courtship, Illegitimacy, p. 8. On the concept, see P. Laslett, K. Osterveen and R. Smith (eds), Bastardy and its Comparative History (London, 1980). 13. G.N. Gandy, ‘Illegitimacy in a Handloom-Weaving Community: Fertility Patterns in Culcheth Lancashire, 1781–1860’ (DPhil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1978); A. Blaikie, Illegitimacy, Sex and Society, Northeast Scotland, 1750–1900 (Oxford, 1993) and Adair, Courtship, Illegitimacy. 14. 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 and A. Gunn, ‘Maternity Hospitals’, in F.N.L. Poynter (ed.), The Evolution of Hospitals in Britain (London, 1964), p. 96. 15. L. Gowing, ‘Gender and the Language of Insult in Early Modern London’, History Workshop Journal, 35, 1993, pp. 1–21, p. 13. 16. L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800, 1990, p. 401. 17. See R.W. Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide in the Eighteenth Century’, in J.S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England 1550–1800 (London, 1977); J. Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe in Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (London, 1988); P.C. Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull, Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England, 1558–1805 (London, 1981); L. Rose, The Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Britain, 1800–1939 (London, 1986); R. Sauer, ‘Infanticide and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, Population Studies, 32, 1978, pp. 81–93, p. 85 and K. Wrightson, ‘Infanticide in European History’, Criminal Justice History, 3, 1992, pp. 1–16. 18. M. Jackson, New-Born Child Murder: Women, Illegitimacy and the Courts in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester, 1996), pp. 51, 128; and Hoffer and Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 65. 19. T. Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 (Harlow, 1999), p. 189. 20. L. Gowing, ‘Gender and the Language of Insult in Early Modern London’, History Workshop Journal, 35, 1993, pp. 1–21; T. Meldrum, ‘A Woman’s Court in London: Defamation at the Bishop of London’s Consistory Court, 1700–1745’, The London Journal, XIX, 1, 1994, pp. 1–20. 21. P. Slack, Poverty and Policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1988), p. 182. 22. L.H. Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 56–60 and T. Hitchcock and J. Black (eds), Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations, 1733–1766 (London, 1999), p. xx. 23. See R. Connors, ‘Poor Women, the Parish and the Politics of Poverty’, in H. Barker and E. Chalus (eds), Gender in Eighteenth-Century England, Roles, Representations and Responsibilities (Harlow, 1997), p. 140 and Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers, p. 209. 24. 14 Cha.II, c.12.

212 Notes 25. D. Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Social and Administrative History (London, 1926), p. 11. For a comprehensive discussion of the Settlement Law see B. Webb and S. Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History. Part 1. The Old Poor Law (London, 1927), pp. 314–350. 26. N. Landau, ‘The Laws of Settlement and the Surveillance of Immigration in Eighteenth-Century Kent’, Continuity and Change, 3, 3, 1988, pp. 391–420, p. 399. 27. J.S. Taylor, ‘The Impact of Pauper Settlement, 1691–1834’, Past and Present, 73, 1976, pp. 42–74, p. 51. 28. R. Paley, Justice in Eighteenth-Century Hackney: The Justicing Notebook of Henry Norris and the Hackney Petty Sessions (London, 1991), p. xvi. 29. Hitchcock and Black, Chelsea Settlement, p. xi. 30. 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 and note 22. See also S. Macfarlane, ‘Social Policy and the Poor in the Later Seventeenth Century’, in A.L. Beier and R. Finlay (eds), London 1500–1700: The Making of the Metropolis (Harlow, 1986), pp. 255, 272. 31. Hitchcock and Black, Chelsea Settlement, p. xii. See also Paley, Justice in Eighteenth Century Hackney, p. xxiii. 32. See Hitchcock and Black, Chelsea Settlement, p. viii. 33. For a discussion of the legal context of the exams, see Hitchcock and Black (eds), Chelsea Settlement, pp. ix–x. 34. 1.1.1767, Guildhall Library (hereafter GL), GL/MS2676/4. 35. Black, ‘Illegitimacy and the Urban Poor in London’, pp. 43–48. 36. D. Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 10, 27. 37. J. Fielding, A Brief Description of the Cities of London and Westminster (London, 1776), p. xxiii. 38. In the course of his research on numbers able to sign in London, Cressy discovered that there was a high correlation between people able to sign their name and wealthy households. D. Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 28, 72–73, 149. 39. G. Rude, Hanoverian London 1714–1808 (London, 1971), p. 116. 40. V. Neuburg, Popular Education in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1971), pp. 53–55, 95–107, 121. 41. Cressy, Literacy, p. 124. 42. Neuburg, Popular Education, p. 107. 43. Cressy, Literacy, p. 128. 44. D. Simonton, ‘The Education and Training of Eighteenth-Century English Girls, with Special Reference to the Working Classes’ (PhD thesis, University of Essex, 1988), pp. 12, 146. 45. Cressy, Literacy, pp. 147–149. The reasons for this improvement Earle suggested were the result of a combination of the changes discussed above, ‘The Female Labour Market in London in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, XLII, 3, 1989, p. 129, pp. 328–353. 46. B. Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1996), p. 212.

Notes 213 47. 11.5.1796, GL/MS2676/21. 48. 25.5.1776, GL/MS2676/10. 49. See T. Sokoll, ‘Old Age in Poverty: The Record of Essex Pauper Letters, 1780–1834’, in T. Hitchcock et al. (eds), Chronicling Poverty, p. 133. See Chapter 5. 50. A. Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (London, 1995), p. 67 and J.A. Sharpe, ‘Plebeian Marriage in Stuart England: Some Evidence from Popular Literature’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 36 (London, 1986), p. 73. 51. N. Wurzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballads, 1550–1650 (Cambridge, 1990), p. xi. 52. J. Brownlow, The History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1865), p. 1. 53. R. McClure, Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1981), p. 141. 54. My research was based on the bound volumes of petitions from 1768 to 1778, every fifth year up until and including 1799, 1800 and 1801, LMA/A/ FH/A8/1/1/1–25. I also included the petitions not bound but tied in bundles and then boxed, see LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/1–10. Most of the petitions belonged to children admitted into ballot but there is some confusion regarding petitions that were rejected. See LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/1–9, for 152 petitions that can easily be identified as rejected but others are not clearly rejected or accepted. See the catalogue referring to the petitions in the LMA. 1138 petitions were accepted and 152 rejected. 55. As suggested by Adrian Wilson, ‘Illegitimacy and its Implications in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London: The Evidence of the Foundling Hospital’, Continuity and Change, 4, 1, 1989, pp. 103–164 and R. McClure, Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1981). 56. 13.George III, c.82. 57. McClure, Coram’s Children, p. 124 and Wilson, ‘Illegitimacy’, p. 109.

2 ‘The insecurities of life and trade’: Work, community and personal life in eighteenth-century London 1. Bastardy Exam of Mary Vokes, 4.7.1776, LMA/P83/MRY/868. 2. J. Archenholz, A View of the British Constitution and of the Manners and Customs of the People of England (London, 1794), p. 119. 3. T. Hitchcock and J. Black, Chelsea Settlement and Bastardy Examinations, 1733–1766 (London, 1999); J. Black, ‘Illegitimacy and the Urban Poor in London, 1740–1830’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1999); N. Rogers, ‘Carnal Knowledge: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Westminster’, Journal of Social History, 23, 2, Winter 1989, pp. 355–375 and D. Kent, ‘Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid-Eighteenth Century London’, History Workshop Journal, 28, 1989, pp. 111–129. 4. A.L. Beier and R. Finlay, ‘The Significance of the Metropolis’, and 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, 1986), pp. 4, 38. See also, E.A. Wrigley, ‘A Simple Model of London’s Importance,

214 Notes

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

1650–1750’, Past and Present, 37, 1967, p. 44; R. Porter, London: A Social History (London, 1994), p. 131; P. Earle, A City Full of People: Men and Women of London, 1650–1750 (London, 1994), p. 16 and M.D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 39. Beier and Finlay, ‘The Significance of the Metropolis’, p. 10; R. Finlay, Population and Metropolis: The Demography of London, 1580–1650 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 10; M.J. Power, ‘The East and West in Early Modern London’, Wealth and Power in Tudor England, Essays presented to S.T. Bindoff (London, 1978), p. 167; G. Rude, Hanoverian London 1714–1808 (London, 1971), p. 5; E.A. Wrigley, ‘A Simple Model of London’s Importance in Changing English Society and Economy, 1650–1750’, in P. Abrams and E.A. Wrigley (eds), Towns in Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1978), p. 237 and George, London, p. 116. L. Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation: Entrepreneurs, Labour Force and Living Conditions, 1700–1850 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 150. Finlay and Shearer, ‘Population Growth’, p. 38. Beier and Finlay, ‘The Significance of the Metropolis’, p. 2. Peep at Life in London (n.d.), New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL) KVB (Ballads) p.v.1. Rogers, ‘Carnal Knowledge’, p. 355. P. Clark, ‘Migration in England during the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries’, in P. Clark and D. Souden (eds), Migration and Society in Early Modern England (London, 1987), p. 228 and P. Earle, ‘The Female Labour Market in London in the Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Economic History Review, 42, 1989, pp. 328–353, p. 333. Earle, A City Full of People, p. 44. P. Corfield, The Impact of English Towns, 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 71–72. For the earlier period, see Beier and Finlay (eds), London 1500–1700, pp. 5–10. It is much harder to identify the specific patterns of migration after 1700 due to the increase in population, the enormous differences in the sizes of London’s parishes and the problems of the survival of evidence. George, London, p. 79. Earle, ‘The Female Labour Market’, pp. 126–127. B. Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1994), p. 129. T. Hitchcock, P. Sharpe, and P. King (eds), Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 12 and Finlay and Shearer, ‘Population Growth’, p. 52. Finlay and Shearer, ‘Population Growth’, p. 46. S. Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (1755). Finlay and Shearer, ‘Population Growth’, p. 51. George, London, pp. 78–82. Beier, ‘Engine of Manufacture’, in Beier and Finlay (eds), London 1500–1700, p. 155. Finlay and Shearer, ‘Population Growth’, p. 52. D. Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (Harmondsworth, 1986 [1724]), p. 286. M.C. Buer, Health, Wealth, and Population in the Early Days of the Industrial Revolution (London, 1926), p. 80.

Notes 215 27. George, London Life, p. 74. 28. J.W. Archenholz, A Picture of England: Containing a Description of the Laws, Manners and Customs of England (London, 1789), pp. 121–122. 29. J. Fielding, A Brief Description of the Cities of London and Westminster (London, 1776), p. xxviii. 30. M. Girouard, The English Town (London, 1990), p. 157. 31. Rude, Hanoverian, pp. 13, 45. 32. George, London, pp. 82, 92. 33. Earle, A City Full of People, p. 11. 34. Beier, ‘Engine of Manufacture’, p. 156. 35. Power, ‘The Social Topography of Restoration London’, in Beier and Finlay (eds), London 1500–1700, p. 209. 36. For descriptions of townhouses, see D. Cruickshank and N. Burton, Life in the Georgian City (London, 1990), pp. 51–73. 37. Cruickshank and Burton, Life, pp. 52, 60. 38. Girouard, The English Town, p. 72. 39. I. Ware, A Complete Body of Architecture (London, 1756), p. 354. 40. J. Archenholz, A Picture of England: Containing a Description of the Laws, Manners and Customes of England (London, 1789), p. 265. 41. George, London Life, pp. 74, 77, 97 and Earle, A City Full of People, p. 171. 42. Earle, A City Full of People, pp. 14–15. 43. Schwarz, London in the Age, pp. 9, 23. 44. Ibid., p. 15 and Porter, London, p. 140. 45. Earle, A City Full of People, p. 15 and L.D. Schwarz, ‘Occupations and Incomes in Late Eighteenth-Century East London’, East London Papers, 14, 2, December 1972, pp. 87–99, p. 88. 46. Schwarz, ‘Occupations and Incomes’, p. 88. 47. Fielding, A Brief Description, p. xv. 48. George, London, p. 78. 49. Fielding, A Brief Description, p. x. 50. Cited in D. Cruickshank and N. Burton, Life in the Georgian City (London, 1990), p. 24. 51. Defoe, A Tour, p. 306. 52. Buer, Health, Wealth, p. 49. 53. C. Harvey, E.M. Green and P.J. Corfield, ‘Continuity, Change, and Specialisation within Metropolitan London: The Economy of Westminster, 1750–1820’, Economic History Review, LII, 3, 1999, pp. 469–493, p. 490. 54. Ibid., p. 473. 55. Rogers, ‘Carnal Knowledge’, p. 357. 56. Schwarz, London, p. 105. 57. Earle, A City Full of People, p. 12. 58. Harvey et al., ‘Continuity, Change’, p. 475. 59. Cited in George, London, p. 263. 60. Earle, A City Full of People, p. 13. 61. P. D’Sena, ‘Perquisites and Casual Labour on the London Wharfside in the Eighteenth Century’, London Journal, 14, 2, 1989, pp. 130–143, p. 132. 62. Schwarz, London, pp. 5, 109. 63. Cited in M.J. Power, ‘The Social Topography’, p. 199. 64. George, London, pp. 77, 94.

216 Notes 65. See T. Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 (Harlow, 1999), p. 58; George, London, p. 93. 66. George, London, p. 100. 67. For a discussion of the variety of men’s and women’s wages, see George, London, pp. 166–212. 68. George, London, pp. 98, 100–103. 69. Girouard, The English Town, p. 280. 70. Porter, London, p. 122. 71. P. Zwart, Islington: A History and Guide (London, 1973), p. 21. 72. Rude, Hanoverian London, p. 3. 73. W. Maitland, The History and Survey of London (London, 1760), p. 682. 74. Rude, Hanoverian London, p. 10 and Schwarz, London in an Age, p. 32. 75. George, London, p. 111. 76. J. Strype, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster (London, Churchill, 1720), p. 1. 77. D. Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Social and Administrative History (London, 1926), p. 11. See also the introduction pp. 6–9 and B. Webb and S. Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History. Part 1. The Old Poor Law (London, 1927), pp. 314–350. 78. G. Oxley, Poor Relief in England and Wales, 1601–1834 (London, 1974), p. 52 and L.H. Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 33. 79. Marshall, The English Poor, p. 213. See also Black, ‘Illegitimacy and the Urban Poor’, p. 45. 80. See R. Connors, ‘Poor Women, the Parish and the Politics of Poverty’, in H. Barker and E. Chalus (eds), Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities (Harlow, 1997). 81. Tate, The Parish Chest, p. 219. 82. Taylor, ‘The Impact of Pauper Settlement’, p. 61. 83. George, London, p. 154; Hitchcock and Black, Chelsea Settlement, p. xii; Taylor, ‘The Impact of Pauper Settlement, 1691–1834’, Past and Present, 73, 1976, pp. 42–73, p. 62 and Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers, p. 51. 84. 10.12.1795, LMA/P85/MRY1/280; 10.12.1795, 21.1.1796, 11.2.1796, 25.2.1796, LMA/P85/MRY1/117; 11.12.1795, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 85. 18.2.1796, LMA/P85/MRY1/117; 20.2.1796, LMA/P85/MRY1/239; 20.2.1796, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 86. See Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers, p. 51. 87. 28.1.1796–10.12.1797; 12.2.1796, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 88. 30.11.1791, LMA/P85/MRY1/232. 89. 8.12.1791–29.11.1792, LMA/P85/MRY1/116. She may have received support for a longer period than this but the records become much more confusing and I cannot be sure of the nominal link. There are at least three Mary Evans on the workhouse books by the end of the period, our Mary, an elderly Mary and a married Mary with four legitimate children. Up until then I can be sure Mary Evans and her bastard child are receiving regular payments. 90. 5.11.1795–30.4.1801, 15.10.1795, 29.10.1795; 23.10.1795, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 91. Admission to a workhouse did not mean imprisonment within it. Tim Hitchcock found that children admitted into Clerkenwell workhouse were allowed out

Notes 217

92.

93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

100. 101. 102.

103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

113.

114. 115. 116. 117.

on holidays to visit their parents or friends several times a year. Parents were also allowed to visit their children regularly after being admitted. See his, ‘The English Workhouse: A Study in Institutional Poor Relief in Selected Counties, 1696–1750’ (PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 1985), pp. 78–80. St Mary’s, Lambeth, Admission and Discharge Register, 10.9.1795; Workhouse Minutes, 4.6.1795–10.12.1796, LMA/P85/MRY1/117. D. Marshall states that in London the majority of pensions ranged from 1 and 6 to 2 shillings per week. See her, English Poor in the Eighteenth Century, p. 100. Children admitted into and discharged from workhouse, 20.11.1800, LMA/ P85/MRY1/280. See also T. Hitchcock, ‘ Unlawfully Begotten’, p. 75. 30.10.1798, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 18.9.1797, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 11.12.1795, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 19.12.1795, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers, p. 15 and Taylor, ‘The Impact of Pauper Settlement’, p. 55. K. Snell, ‘Pauper Settlement and the Right to Poor Relief in England and Wales’, Continuity and Change, 6, 3, 1991, pp. 375–415, pp. 400–401. See also Lees, The Solidarities, p. 11. E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London, 1991), passim and Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers, pp. 36, 39. Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers, p. 37. On the poor’s right to relief in the context of settlement, see P. Slack, The English Poor Law, 1531–1782 (Basingstoke, 1990), p. 35; Connors, ‘Poor Women, p. 146 and Taylor, ‘The Impact of Pauper Settlement’, p. 59. 22.1.1793, LMA/P85/MRY1/198. 3.8.1793, LMA/P85/MRY1/198. 29.9.1794, LMA/P85/MRY1/198. 4.1.1796, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 17.6.1797, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 28.10.1775, Guildhall Library (hereafter GL), GL/MS2676/9. 3.12.1783, GL/MS2676/14. Earle, ‘The Female Labour Market’, p. 339. Schwarz, London, pp. 14, 46. See L. Tilly and J.W. Scott, Women, Work and Family (London, 1987); M. Berg, ‘What Difference did Women’s Work make to the Industrial Revolution?’, History Workshop Journal, 35, 1993, pp. 22–44; B. Hill, Women, Work, and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1994); P. Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy, 1700–1850 (Basingstoke, 1996) and P. Sharpe, Women’s Work: The English Experience 1650–1914 (London, 1998). T. Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service in London, 1660–1750: Gender, LifeCycle, Work and Household Relations’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1996), p. 21. Hill, Women, Work, pp. 94–95. Earle, A City, p. 140. Schwarz, London, p. 46 and Earle, ‘The Female Labour Market’, p. 343. Earle, ‘The Female Labour Market’, p. 338.

218 Notes 118. Schwarz, London, pp. 49–50. 119. Schwarz, London, p. 14. 120. O. Hufton, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, volume one 1500–1800 (London, 1997), p. 497 and Earle, ‘The Female Labour Market’, p. 341. See the collection of essays in Sharpe, Women’s Work, for this dispute about the status of women’s work. 121. The term was first used by O. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth Century France (Oxford, 1984), Chapter 3. 122. Mitchell, ‘Moll Flanders’, p. 207. 123. T. Henderson, Disorderly Women, p. 44. See also, F. Dabhoiwala, ‘The Pattern of Sexual Immorality in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century London’, in P. Griffiths and M. Jenner (eds), Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London (Manchester, 2000), p. 94. 124. See pp. 103–104, 110–111, 153 for further discussion of prostitution. 125. P. King, ‘Female Offenders, Work and Life-Cycle Change in Late EighteenthCentury London’, Continuity and Change, 11, 1, 1996, pp. 61–90, pp. 71, 72, 74 and Henderson, Disorderly Women, p. 27. 126. Henderson, Disorderly Women, p. 77. There was however no admissions of prostitution in the exams studied here. John Black in his research on bastardy exams suggests that prostitution is hinted at when some casual sexual relationships are described, see his ‘Illegitimacy’, p. 114. 127. B. Hill, Women, Work, p. 129 and J. Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1956), p. 1. See above pp. 22–23. 128. P. Colquhoun, A Treatise on Indigence (London, 1806), p. 253. 129. Hill, Women, Work, p. 69. 130. Hill, Women, Work, p. 134. 131. Earle, ‘The Female Labour Market’, p. 339. 132. Hill, Women, Work, p. 136 and Hecht, The Domestic Servant, p. 82. 133. Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service’, p. 30. 134. 13.11.1767, GL/MS2676/4. 135. Earle, A City Full, p. 83. 136. D. Marshall, The English Domestic Servant in History (London, 1949), p. 7; Hill, Servants, pp. 9, 253 and Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service’, p. 12. 137. Hill, Women, Work, p. 99. 138. See also R. Connors, ‘Poor Women’, pp. 136–137 and Lees, Solidarities of Strangers, p. 59. 139. For St Botolph’s, Aldgate, see GL/MS2676/1–22; St Mary’s, Islington, LMA/P83/MRY1/867–870; and St Mary’s, Lambeth, LMA/P85/MRY1/ 198–199. The bastardy exams that survive for St Mary’s, Lambeth, only cover a period of eight years and the information is much sparser than for the parishes already discussed so any conclusions must be stated with caution. Nevertheless, these exams can be used in conjunction with other material belonging to the parish to build a more composite picture of the experience of unmarried motherhood in the area. Where it has been possible individual woman have been traced nominally between the bastardy exams, the records belonging to the workhouse of St Mary’s, Lambeth, and the manuscripts of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital.

Notes 219 140. For further discussion of contraception and courtship relations, see pp. 51–59, 111–117. 141. 3.4.1760, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 142. 30.5.1767, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 143. W. Maitland, The History and Survey of London (London, 1760), p. 1371. 144. 19.10.1771, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 145. 20.11.1782, LMA/P83/MRY1/868. 146. 1.5.1785, LMA/MRY/P83/MRY1/868. 147. Rude, Hanoverian, pp. 72–73, 92. 148. Henderson, Disorderly Women, p. 33 and P. Clarke, The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200–1830 (Harlow, 1983), pp. 235–236. 149. P. Colquhoun, Observations and Facts Relative to Public Houses in the City of London and its Environs (London, 1794), p. 17. 150. George, London, p. 266. 151. 12.9.1767, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 152. 14.9.1773, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 153. 14.9.1773, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 154. 28.6.1770, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 155. 2.11.1770, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 156. 26.3.1767, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 157. Zwart, Islington, p. 22. 158. 30.6.1761, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 159. Rude, Hanoverian London, p. 27 and Defoe, A Tour, p. 290. 160. 30.8.1783, LMA/P83/MRY1/868. 161. 25.6.1767, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 162. 28.2.1750, GL/MS2676/2. 163. 2.10.1787, GL/MS2676/17. For further discussion on childbirth, see Chapter 7. 164. For further discussion of the difficulty of combining work and motherhood, see Chapter 6. 165. Schwarz, London, pp. 22, 40, 42. 166. Beier, ‘Engine of Manufacture’, p. 153. 167. Earle, A City, pp. 96–98. 168. L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London, 1996), pp. 231, 300. 169. M.J. Power, ‘The East London Working Community in the Seventeenth Century’, in P. Corfield and D. Keene (eds), Work in Towns 850–1850 (Leicester, 1990), p. 109. For further discussion, see pp. 53–56. 170. 1.1.1767, GL/MS2676/4. This case is also discussed pp. 8–9. 171. 7.12.1765, GL/MS2676/4. 172. See also Black, ‘Illegitimacy’, pp. 259–293 and R. Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London, volume one (London, 1998), pp. 265–269. 173. 6.3.1771, GL/MS2676/5. 174. 5.11.1773, GL/MS2676/8. 175. Earle, A City Full, p. 157. 176. Couples were identified as participating in such relationships if there was evidence of more than one or a handful of sexual encounters, if they lived together and if they parented more than one child together. 177. 5.7.1773; 12.8.1773; 9.7.1774, GL/MS2676/8.

220 Notes 178. 16.3.1771, GL/MS2676/6. 179. D. Kent, ‘Gone for a Soldier: Family Breakdown and the Demography of Desertion in a London Parish, 1750–91’, Local Population Studies, 45, 1990, pp. 27–42, p. 40. 180. 19.11.1772, GL/MS2676/6. 181. 6.10.1769, GL/MS2676/5. 182. Trumbach claimed that only 3 per cent were servants, ‘Male servants were always a distinguishing mark of West End parishes’, see his Sex and the Gender Revolution, p. 261. 183. 1.9.1776, GL/MS2676/10. 184. 15.6.1798, GL/MS2676/22; 25.6.1798, GL/MS2676/22. 185. 11.5.1796, GL/MS2676/21. 186. Defoe, Moll Flanders, p. 180. 187. George, London, p. 121. 188. 15.2.1773, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 189. 22.11.1770, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 190. 22.6.1775, LMA/P83/MRY1/868. 191. 11.6.1772, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 192. Earle, A City, p. 71. 193. 16.1.1773, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 194. 28.11.1766, LMA/P83/MRY1/868. 195. 11.7.1771, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 196. 29.10.1795, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 197. 7.6.1766, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 198. 4.7.1776, LMA/P83/MRY1/868. 199. 13.12.1783, GL/MS2676/14. 200. Peter King has discovered that many older married women with large families to support were brought before the Old Bailey for stealing during the 1790s, see his ‘Female Offenders’, p. 82. 201. For further information on wife sales, see E.P. Thompson (ed.), ‘The Sale of Wives’, in Customs in Common (Harmondsworth, 1993). It is not thought that the practice was widespread. In his extensive study of wife sales in British history, S.P. Menefee found evidence of 400, see his Wives for Sale: An Ethnographic Study of British Popular Divorce (Oxford, 1981) and for ballad references to the practice, see J. Ashton, Modern Street Ballads (London, 1888), pp. 1–4. 202. 16.12.1771, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 203. 21.10.1773, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 204. 12.9.1775, LMA/P83/MRY1/868. 205. 9.11.1775, GL/MS2676/9. 206. 1.8.1774, LMA/P83/MRY1/867. 207. 13.10.1777, GL/MS2676/12. 208. Moll Flanders when matchmaking for a friend rejected a man of whom she had heard rumoured, ‘had a Wife alive at Plymouth, and another in the West Indies, a thing which they all knew was not very uncommon for such kind of Gentlemen’. Defoe, Moll Flanders, p. 115. 209. 5.1794, GL/MS2676/20. 210. Hill, Women, Work, p. 214. 211. 23.10.1795, LMA/P85/MRY1/199.

Notes 221 212. 213. 214. 215. 216. 217. 218. 219. 220. 221.

17.3.1797, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 24.2.1780, GL/MS2676/13. 24.11.1780, LMA/P83/MRY1/868. 21.7.1795, LMA/P85/MRY1/199. 9.7.1783, GL/MS2676/14. 25.7.1783, GL/MS2676/14. 6.4.1784, GL/MS2676/14. 14.10.1795, GL/MS2676/20. Schwarz, London, p. 22. Ibid., pp. 49–50.

3 Courtship, sex and marriage in eighteenth-century popular literature 1. R.B. Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage in England, 1500–1850 (London, 1995), p. xxi. 2. Ibid., p. 14. The Act of 1696 imposed £100 fine on each irregular marriage performed, £10 fine on any man marrying without banns or licence, £5 fine on sextons and parish clerks who helped. 3. Ibid., p. 29. However, it was acknowledged that they were working from ‘Sham Books’ and that the real number was, almost certainly, much higher. 4. R.L. Brown, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Fleet Marriages’, in R.B. Outhwaite (ed.), Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage (London, 1981), p. 123. 5. Ibid., p. 117. 6. J. Boulton, ‘Itching After Private Marryings? Marriage Customs in SeventeenthCentury London’, London Journal, 16, 1, 1991, pp. 15–34, p. 28; V.B. Elliott, ‘Mobility and Marriage in Pre-Industrial England’ (PhD thesis, Cambridge, 1978); P. Earle, A City Full of People: Men and Women of London, 1650–1750 (London, 1994), p. 158 and M.D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1965), p. 305. 7. B. Hill, Women, Work, and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1994), p. 204. 8. Ibid., p. 124. 9. Boulton, ‘Itching’, pp. 16–17; J. Gillis, ‘Conjugal Settlements: Resort to Clandestine and Common Law Marriage in England and Wales, 1650–1850’, in J. Bossy (ed.), Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West (Cambridge, 1983), p. 266. 10. Brown, ‘Rise and Fall’, p. 124. 11. Gillis, ‘Conjugal’, p. 264. 12. Boulton, ‘Itching’, p. 15. 13. Outhwaite, Clandestine, pp. 125–131. 14. Ibid., p. 85. 15. 18.5.1789, Guildhall Library (hereafter GL) MS2676/18. 16. Hill, Women, Work, p. 206; Gillis, ‘Conjugal’, p. 273 and his For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (Oxford, 1988), p. 140 and Outhwaite, Clandestine, p. 139.

222 Notes 17. Love and Murder (North Shields, n.d.) Thomas Bell’s collection of ballads (hereafter TB), British Library (hereafter BL) 11621.i.12. For other versions, see Hailston, English Nineteenth-Century Broadsides, Box A, Houghton Library (hereafter HL), Harvard University. 18. Findings here are based on the research of about 6000 eighteenth-century British ballads and chapbooks in TB; A Collection of English Ballads and Chapbooks Published at Various Places Between the Years 1733–1832 (BL); and all those in the New York Public Library (hereafter NYPL) and the HL, Harvard University. 19. See J.A. Sharpe, ‘Plebeian Marriage in Stuart England: Some Evidence from Popular Literature’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 36 (London, 1986) for a discussion of the representation of plebeian marriage in seventeenth-century ballad literature. 20. S. Pederson, ‘Hannah More Meets Simple Simon: Tracts, Chapbooks, and Popular Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of British Studies, 1986, 25 (1986), pp. 84–113, p. 105 and R. Darnton, ‘Peasants Tell Tales: The Meanings of Mother Goose’, in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (London, 1984), pp. 34, 64. 21. See also R. Darnton, ‘Peasants Tell Tales: The Meanings of Mother Goose’, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (London, 1984), pp. 34, 64. 22. For further discussion of literacy, see pp. 9–12, 100, 108, 140–143, 176. 23. J. Mullan and C. Reid (eds), Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection (Oxford, 2000), p. 7. 24. M. Saxby, Memoirs of a Female Vagrant Written by Herself (London, 1806), pp. 8, 15, 17. 25. R. Palmer, A Ballad History of England from 1588 to the Present Day (London, 1979), pp. 6–7. 26. Beggars and Ballads Singers (Dublin) NYPL Pamphlets *KVD. The Little Gipsey sang ballads as well as told fortunes at Vauxhall to earn her bread, HL 25274.2v.4. 27. D. Symonds, Weep Not for Me; Women, Ballads, and Infanticide in Early Modern Scotland (Pennsylvania, 1997), p. 24. 28. For the popularity of singing while at work and leisure, see A. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 27–30. 29. V. Neuberg, Chapbooks; A Bibliography of References to English and American Chapbook Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1964), p. 1. 30. R. Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1990). 31. Over 250 printers in London were producing chapbooks during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See Neuberg, Chapbooks, pp. 15–30. 32. On the problems of how to interpret popular literature, see A. Fox, ‘Ballads, Libels and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England’, Past and Present, 145, 1994, pp. 47–83, pp. 47–49; B. Scribner, ‘Is a History of Popular Culture Possible?’, Journal of European Ideas, 10, 2, 1989, pp. 175–191, p. 176, and Mullan and Reid (eds), Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture, p. 11. See also Chapter 5. 33. M. Spufford has calculated that 7 per cent of the whole of Pepy’s chapbook collection and a fifth of the ‘popular culture’ section were on courtship (Pepys collected between 1661 and 1688). See her Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. xix, 157, 158.

Notes 223 34. The Unco Bit Want in NYPL *KVD p.v.5 and in TB, BL11621.i.12; When I was Young, NYPL *KVD p.v.20; The Maiden’s Complaint, HL 25252.6 Penny Garlands; Delightful Thomas: or Weeping Kate’s Lamentation, HL Alph. Broadsides Boxes C–D and The Cottage Lays Distant a Mile, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 2. On a widow’s desire for a young man, see Charming Widow, NYPL *KVD p.v.20. See also Spufford, Small Books, p. 63. J. Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England and Germany (Charlottesville, 1992), p. 68. On the nineteenth century, see A. Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (London, 1995), p. 47. 35. The Longing Maid’s Garland, HL 25252.6*Penny Garlands. See also Nobody Coming to Marry Me, BL. 36. Onagh’s Lock, BL Cup.402.i.31, vol. II. 37. Spufford, Small Books, p. 68. 38. The Cries of London, HL, PEB75.P4128C. See also The London Sights, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 5. 39. NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1. 40. See also Chapter 1. K. Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 (London, 1982), p. 70 and S. Hindle, ‘The Problem of Pauper Marriage in Seventeenth-Century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 71–89, p. 73. 41. D. Kent, ‘Gone for a Soldier: Family Breakdown and the Demography of Desertion in a London Parish 1750–91’, Local Population Studies, 45, 1990, pp. 27–42, p. 30. See also O. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750–1789 (Oxford, 1974), p. 115; A. Levene, ‘Health and Survival Chances at the London Foundling Hospital and the Spedale Degli Innocenti of Florence, 1741–99’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002), p. 86; P. Sharpe, ‘Marital Separation in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century’, Local Population Studies, 45, 1990, pp. 69–70. On the widespread abandonment of mothers in nineteenth-century London, see J. Gillis, ‘Servants, Sexual Relations, and the Risks of Illegitimacy in London, 1801–1900’, Feminist Studies, 5, 1979, pp. 140–173, pp. 140–145. 42. For similar conclusions on eighteenth-century rural Scotland, see Symonds, Weep Not for Me, p. 92. On nineteenth-century London, see Gillis, ‘Servants’, pp. 161–163. 43. See Chapter 2 and R. Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London, volume one (London, 1998), pp. 265–269. 44. HL 25276.2*v.3. 45. Sally’s Love for a Sailor, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 7. See also The Commical Wedding (Belfast), HL 25276.2*v.3. In The Longing Maid’s Garland, HL 25252.6*Penny Garlands, the woman’s mother hoped that she would marry a farmer, rooted to the land and therefore less mobile, instead of a sailor. The story is the same in The Farmer Man, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 2. 46. For similar conclusions on seventeenth-century literature, see Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, p. 48. 47. (Gateshead) TB, BL11621.i.12. Another Blue Eyed Mary in the same collection (and in NYPL) is not so lucky, she also participates in pre-marital sex but becomes a prostitute and eventually dies.

224 Notes 48. (Newcastle) TB, BL11621.i.12. See also Black Eyed Susan’s Garland, HL 25276.2*v.3; The Bold Privateer, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1 and William of the Ferry, HL 25276.21*v.1. 49. J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power, pp. 29–36. 50. The Wife’s Lamentation, HL 25274.2*v.7. See also Jenny’s Complaint, HL 25274.2*v.1 and Answer to Oh! Cruel, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1. 51. C. Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 1793–1815 (London, 1979), pp. 39–40. 52. The Dear Irish Boy NYPL *KVD pamphlet; Sweet Poll of Plymouth, NYPL *KVD p.v.5; Polly of Plymouth, HL 25274.2 v.4. 53. The Story of Sarah Durin, HL 25274.2*v.2. 54. Angels Whisper, NYPL *KVD p.v.20 and The Soldier’s Wife’s Lamentation, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1. 55. (Gateshead) TB, BL11621.i.12; Fair Sally: Or the Bonny Seaman Jamie is Slain in the Wars and Nancy’s Complaint for the Loss of her Sailor, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Boxes 3 and 6. See also Mary’s Dream and Mary’s Death at Sandy’s Tomb, HL 25274.2*v. 4. (Mary is haunted by her dead lover’s ghost and dies of a broken heart so that she can join him.) 56. The Hardy Sailor, HL 25274.2*v.4. 57. HL 25276.44* and PEB75.P4128C, v.2. 58. Here are just a small selection: The British Soldier’s Garland, HL 25274.2*v.1; The Sailor’s Whim, HL 25274.2*v.9; Nelson’s Wreath, HL 25274.2*v.25; Great Nelson’s Laurels; Dibden’s Budget of Sea Songs, HL 25276.21*v.1. 59. G. Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770–1870 (Leicester, 1982), p. 147. 60. NYPL *KVD p.v.1, 2 and 3. 61. The Shannon Side, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 7. 62. The Banks of the Clyde (Kendal), TB, BL1162.i.12. 63. See The Banks of Band, The Banks of the Claudy, The Banks of the Doun, The Banks of the Inverary, The Banks of the Nile, The Banks of the Shannon, and The Shannon Side, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Boxes 1 and 7. 64. See I Wish I had Never Loved No One at All and Blooming Virgins, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Boxes 4 and 1 respectively. 65. Innocence Betrayed; or, the Perjured Lover (London), HL 25274.2*v.14. For other suicides, see Susan’s Garland, HL 25252.6*v.1. 66. Lass of Ocram, HL 25274.2*v.4; The Lamenting Maid, HL 25274.2*v.4; The Oxfordshire Tragedy and The Maiden’s Bloody Garland, HL, PEB75.P4128C, v.3. 67. Poor Mad Margery, HL 25276.21*v.1. 68. The Lamentation of Charlotte Jane Gribben, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 4 (she is transported for her crime) and The Norfolk Tragedy, HL 25274.2*v.26; The Undutiful Daughter, HL 25274.2*v.26. This was also true of non-fictional unmarried mothers. Only a very small minority of women chose to kill their illegitimate babies. See R.W. Malcolmson, ‘Infanticide in the Eighteenth Century’, in J.S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England, 1550–1800 (London, 1977), p. 205. In eighteenth-century popular literature, unmarried mothers had a wide range of options open to them. This contrasts with the limited range of alternatives that nineteenth-century literary heroines dealing with illegitimate childbirth could chose from. The unmarried mother remained a popular, if more controversial heroine, in the nineteenth-century novels

Notes 225

69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

86.

87.

88.

89.

90.

that were to replace ballads and chapbooks as popular literature. See A.R. Higginbotham, ‘The Unmarried Mother and her Child in Victorian London 1832–1914’ (PhD thesis, Indiana University, 1985), p. xii. Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, p. 7. See also D. Dugaw, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650–1850 (Cambridge, 1989). The Female Tar, HL 25274.2*v.4 and NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 2; The Female Sea Captain and Molly the Rover, HL 25252.6* Penny Garlands; The Bristol Bridegroom, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1; Susan’s Adventures in a British Man of War, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 7 and The Female Lieutenant and the Female Cabin Boy, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 2. See Dugaw, Warrior Women, p. 122. (London and Coventry) HL 25276.2*v.3; HL, PEB75.P4128C, v.2 and HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes E–K. See also The Tragical Ballad, HL, PEB75.P4128C, v.3. Dugaw, Warrior Women, p. 144. The Beautiful Shepherdess, PEB75.P4128C, v.1; The Beautiful Shepherdess of Arcadia, HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes A and B and The Baffled Knight, HL, PEB75.P4128C, v.1. (North Shields) TB, BL11621.i.12. The Shepherdess of Chamony (London), NYPL *KVD pamphlet. The Politik Maid of Suffolk, HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes L–Q. K. Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 (London, 1982), p. 80. See also T. Evans, ‘Marriage and the Family’, in E. Chalus and H. Barker (eds), Women’s History; Britain 1700–1850 (London, 2005). The Story of Amanda (Penrith), NYPL *KVD p.v.14. See also The Happy Bride, or Virtuous Country Maid Rewarded, HL 25274.2*v.4. TB, BL11621.i.12. The Roving Maid’s Garland, HL 25252.6*v.1; The Forsaken Maid’s Frolic and The Gallant Lady’s Fall, HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes E–K. The Broken Contract, HL, PEB75.P4128C, v.1; The Lamentable Ballad, HL, PEB75.P4128C, v.3. See pp. 137–139. On the seventeenth century, see Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women pp. 142, 174–177. T. Nutt, ‘The Paradox and Problems of Illegitimate Paternity in Old Poor Law Essex’, in A. Levene, T. Nutt and S. Williams (eds), Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700–1920 (London, 2005). The Country Girl’s Policy; or, the Cockney Outwitted, HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes A and B and The Countryman’s Garland, HL, PEB75.P4128C. See also The Royal Wedding Garland, HL 25252.6*v.1. HL 25274.2*v.8, v.9, v.29, v.34. See also The Northern Ditty, HL Alph Broadsides, Boxes A and B and The Butcher and Chamber Maid and The Northern Ditty, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Boxes 1 and 6. The Cunnie’s Garland, HL 25274.2*v.28; The Butcher’s Daughter’s Policy, or Lustful Lord Well Fitted; Miser Outwitted, HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes A and B and The Butcher’s Daughter’s Policy and The Miser Outwitted, NYPL *KVB Ballads, Boxes 1 and 5; and Bite Upon Bite, PEB75.P4128C, v.1. The Trials of All the Felon Prisoners, Tried, Cast, and Condemned, at Justice Hall, in the Old Bailey (Printed and Sold in London), HL HRR Film 3, Reel 1. The Staffordshire Tragedy, HL 25274.2*v.28, No. 44.

226 Notes 91. See also the chapbook, The Servant Maid’s Tragedy, or, a dreadful warning to all wild and thoughtless Young Women (London), HL 25274.2*v.33, No. 1. 92. Cruel Miller, or Love and Murder (London), NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1. See also the last verse of The Gosport Tragedy, p. 9. 93. HL Alph. Broadsides Boxes A and B, PEB75.P4128C v.1 and NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1. See also The Scarborough Tragedy, HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes R–T, The Cruel Lover, HL, PEB75.P4128C and The Wandering Shepherdess, HL 25252.6* Penny Garlands. 94. The Life, Trial, etc of Robert Hallam, convicted at the Hampshire Assizes, for the Wilful Murder of his Wife, who was big with Child, By inhumanely, barbarously and cruelly Beating her, and Throwing her out of a One Pair of Stairs Window (J. Davenport, West Smithfield, 1d), HL, Boswell’s Chapbooks, 25274.2*v.20 and 25. See also The Cruel Husband, 25274.2*v.10 and Murder Found Out and Cruelty Rewarded, 25274.2*v.12. 95. This was one of the most common folk traditions concerning ghosts in the early nineteenth century; see N. Wilson, Shadows in the Attic: A Guide to British Supernatural Fiction 1820–1950 (Boston Spa, 2000), p. 7. 96. (Glasgow) HL 25263.23*v.1; HL, PEB75.P4128C v.3; Alph. Broadsides, Boxes L–Q and NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 6. 97. K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (London, 1991 (1971)), Chapter 19 and B. Gordon and P. Marshall (eds), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (CUP, 2000), Introduction, p. 10. 98. See also L.Gowing, ‘The Haunting of Susan Lay: Servants and Mistresses in Seventeenth-Century England’, Gender and History, 14, 2, August 2002, pp. 183–201, p. 185. Life after Death, Or Wonderful Relations, etc Being an Inquiry concerning The State, Order, and Operations of departed Souls, and unembodied Spirits In a Separate State. Shewing Their Power and Abilities to re-visit Mankind on any Particular Occasion, if God permit, by giving Warnings against Death, threatened Danger, and by the Discoveries of Murder, etc By Apparitions, or by Visionary Dreams (London), HL 25274.2*vol.1. 99. K. Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language (London, 1970), volume B, I, VI Ghosts. 100. Thomas, Religion and the Decline, pp. 714, 719. 101. NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1. 102. B. Gordon, ‘Malevolent ghosts and ministering angels: apparition and pastoral care in the Swiss Reformation’, in Gordon and Marshall (eds), The Place of the Dead, p. 93. 103. For a brief discussion, see Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, p. 175. 104. The Ghost of Maria (London), NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 2. For similar stories, see The Effects of Love (Gateshead); Miss Bailey’s Ghost, Thomas Bell, BL 11621.i.12; The Broken Contract, HL, PEB75.P4128C v.1; NYPL *KVB Ballads Box 1 and HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes A and B. 105. NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 3; HL, Percy’s Broadsides, PEB75.P4128C.v.2; HL, Boswell’s Chapbooks, 25275.2*v.8, v.28, and v.29. 106. The Unfaithful Lover (Durham) TB, BL 11621.i.12. See also The Sailor’s Tragedy (Stirling), NYPL *KVD p.v.20. 107. The Tragical History of Crazy Jane, and Young Henry. Giving an Account of their Birth, Parentage, Courtship, and Melancholy End (Stirling), NYPL *KVD p.v.13

Notes 227

108. 109.

110. 111.

112. 113.

114.

115. 116. 117. 118. 119.

and for another chapbook version see HL, Boswell’s Chapbooks, 25274.2*v.25 and for several songs based on the story see 25275.2*v.9. For a ballad version, see HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes C and D and NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 2. For a similar story based on Crazy Jane, see The Vision, NYPL *KVB p.v.1. (Belfast, 1767) HL, Boswell’s Chapbooks, 25276.2 v.3. See also The Lover’s Tragedy, HL, PEB75.P4128C v.3. (London) NYPL *KVB Ballads, Boxes 1 and 4. For other versions, see HL 25276.6.5 v.1 Penny Histories; HL Alph. Broadsides, Box 4; and HL, Percy’s Broadsides, PEB75.P4128C.v.2. Wrightson, English Society, p. 101 and Evans, ‘Marriage and the Family’. NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1; For other versions, see HL, Percy’s Broadsides, PEB75.P4128C v.3; The Esquire and Susan’s Garland, HL, Percy’s Chapbooks, 25276.44*; HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes R–T and HL, Boswell’s Chapbooks, 25274.2*v.37 for several other versions. NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 8. (London) NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 6; HL 25252.6*Penny Garlands and HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes L–Q (this last file contains versions published in Bradford, London and Coventry). HL, PEB75.P4128C v.1 and HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes A and B. See also, NYPL *KVD p.v.18 and NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1. For similar stories, see Jemmy and Nancy of Yarmouth (Newcastle) NYPL *KVD p.v.16; The Cornwall Tragedy, HL, PEB75.P4128C v.1 and The Bonnie Lass of Benachie, NYPL *KVD p.v.19. The Two Loyal Lovers of Exeter, HL, PEB75.P4128C v.2. Bedlam City (Gateshead), TB, BL 11621.i.2; NYPL *KVB Ballads, Box 1 and The Fair Maid in Bedlam, BL Cup.402.i.31, vol. II. The Bowes Tragedy (Newcastle) HL Alph. Broadsides, Boxes A and B. Bite upon Bite; or the Miser Outwitted, HL 25274.2*v.8, v.29. See also Pederson, ‘Hannah More’, p. 107.

4 ‘Craving charity’: Poor mothers and the public philanthropic imagination 1. General Committee (hereafter GC) Minutes of the Foundling Hospital (hereafter FH), 13.12.1739, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), LMA/A/FH/K02/1. 2. P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, England 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1989), p. 142. 3. According to the General Register of the Foundling Hospital between 1741 and 1801, 18,680 children were admitted, LMA/A/FH/A09/001–005. 4. R.H. Nichols and F.A. Wray, The History of the Foundling Hospital (Oxford, 1935), p. 1. See also F. Barret-Ducrocq, Love in the Time of Victoria: Sexuality and Desire among Working-Class Men and Women in Nineteenth-Century London (Harmondsworth, 1992), p. 40; M. Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 55; J. Brownlow, Memoranda; or, Chronicles of the Foundling Hospital Including Memoirs of Captain Coram (London, 1847), p. 182; An Account of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children (London, 1749), p. iii.

228 Notes 5. D. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1989), pp. 54–65, 98–102; O. Ulbricht, ‘The Debates on Foundling Hospitals in Enlightenment Germany’, Central European History, 18, 1985, pp. 211–256, p. 223. 6. T. Addison, The Guardian, 1713, No. 105, cited in An Account of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children (London, 1796). 7. George, London, p. 55. 8. An Account of the Hospital (London, 1749), p. ii. 9. J. Brownlow, The History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1865), p. 1. 10. The phrase is Ruth McClure’s, see her Coram’s Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1981), p. 23. 11. Ibid., p. 34. 12. McClure, Coram’s Children, p. 22; George, London, p. 56. The petition came before the King in council on 21 July 1737. It was signed by the King on 14 August 1739 and sealed on 17 October. A copy of the petition can be found in Nichols and Wray, The History of the Foundling Hospital, pp. 11–12. 13. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, p. 58. 14. J. Brownlow, The History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1865), pp. 1–2. 15. Ibid., p. 3. 16. GC Minutes, LMA/A/FH/K02/001. 17. The Secretary’s notes on the admission of legitimate children, c.1840–1850, LMA/A/FH/A6/11/2. 18. Hanway was perhaps the most active governor of the Foundling Hospital who tirelessly campaigned for the charity; see J.S. Taylor, ‘Philanthropy and Empire: Jonas Hanway and the Infant Poor of London’, EighteenthCentury Studies, 12, 1979, pp. 285–305 and his Jonas Hanway: Foundation of the Marine Society, Charity and Policy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 1985). 19. J. Hanway, A Candid Historical Account of the Hospital for the Reception of Exposed and Deserted Young Children (London, 1760), p. 54. 20. Observations on the Foundling Hospital (London, 1849), passim. See also A. Levene, ‘Health and Survival Chances at the London Foundling Hospital and the Spedale Degli Innocenti of Florence, 1741–99’ (University of Cambridge, PhD thesis, 2002), pp. 85–94 and her ‘The Origins of the Children of the London Foundling Hospital, 1744–1760: A Reconsideration’, Continuity and Change, 18, 2, 2003, pp. 201–235. 21. It should be noted that few of these fifty men turned up to these meetings regularly. Only a handful of men were regular attendees, for example Jonas Hanway, George Whatley, Earl of Dartmouth, Lord Vere Beauclerk, Taylor White and William Harrison in the 1760s, Harman Verelst and Thomas Collingwood. Most could be described as professional men rather than noblemen. 22. See Taylor, ‘Philanthropy and Empire’, pp. 288–289 and Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, pp. 54–60, 75–97 and pp. 149–150 for a discussion of the men involved in the management of the lying-in hospitals. 23. J. Summerson, Georgian London (London, 1962, 1988), p. 94.

Notes 229 24. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People, p. 461. Langford argues that the Magdalen was established to offer compassion and practical aid rather than persecution to prostitutes, p. 144. See also R. Porter, ‘Every Human Want’, The World of Eighteenth-Century Charity’, in R. Harris and R. Simon (eds), Enlightened Self-interest, The Foundling Hospital and Hogarth (London, 1997), p. 13. 25. General Court (hereafter G. Court) Minutes, 1.10.1740, LMA/Microfilm/ X041/10. 26. 13 Geo. II, C.29. An Act for Confirming and Enlarging the Powers Granted by His Majesty to the Governors and Guardians of the Hospital for Exposed and Deserted Young Children, 1740. Reproduced in Nichols and Wray, The History of the Foundling Hospital, pp. 337–344. 27. GC Minutes, 25.3.1740, LMA/A/FH/K02/1. 28. GC Minutes, 4.4.1741, 8.4.1741. Ibid. ‘Dropping’ was a contemporary term used to refer to abandonment. 29. See GC Minutes, 10.7.1754; 16.7.1755, LMA/A/FH/K02/4. 30. An Account of the Hospital (1749), p. 48. 31. LMA/A/FH/K02/6. 32. Daily Minutes cited in McClure, Coram’s Children, pp. 50–51. 33. For a much fuller discussion of this role of the Hospital, see Chapter 8. 34. GC Minutes, 14.11.1750, LMA/A/FH/K02/003. See B. Nicholson and J. Kerslake, The Treasures of the Foundling Hospital (Oxford, 1972). For further discussion of the tokens, see Chapter 6. 35. Ibid., 15.5.1751; See also Sub-Committee (hereafter SC) Minutes, 7.9.1757, LMA/A/FH/A3/5/2. 36. SC Minutes, 15.3.1758. See also the case of Elizabeth Bryant, SC Minutes, 24.5.1758, LMA/A/FH/A3/5/2. 37. McClure, Coram’s Children, pp. 63. 38. Summerson, Georgian London, pp. 152–153. 39. Nicholson and Kerslake, The Treasures, p. 34. 40. McClure, Coram’s Children, pp. 68–71. 41. GC Minutes, 13.7.1748, LMA/A/FH/K02/002. 42. Ibid., 26.7.1749, LMA/A/FH/K02/3. 43. For examples see, Ibid., 4.6.1755; 18.6.1755; 10.9.1755, LMA/A/FH/K02/4. 44. See J. Hutchins, Jonas Hanway, 1712–1786 (London, SPCK, 1940), p. 21. 45. GC Minutes, 24.2.1747, LMA/A/FH/K02/2. 46. For examples see, GC Minutes, 13.6.1764; 7.11.1764, LMA/A/FH/K02/9. 47. Ibid., 5.9.1770, LMA/A/FH/K02/013. 48. J. Uglow, Hogarth (London, 1997), pp. 338, 436. 49. E. Einberg, Manners and Morals: Hogarth and British Painting 1700–1760 (Tate Gallery, 1987), p. 16. See also L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (London, 1992), p. 63. 50. An Account of the Hospital (1749), pp. xiv-xvii. GC Minutes, 16.12.1747, LMA/A/FH/K02/2. 51. During the 1920s, the governors decided that the children should be moved to the healthier environs of the countryside and the hospital was largely destroyed. The Court Room, the Committee room and the Picture Gallery were then reconstructed in the headquarters of the Thomas Coram Foundation at No. 40 Brunswick Square. The Foundling Museum was opened to the public in June 2004 and all of these paintings can be viewed there.

230 Notes 52. All of the rooms containing the paintings were used for the balloting process. (Conversation with Rhian Harris, Director of the Foundling Hospital museum, 24.9.98.) See Chapter 5 for further discussion of the ballot. All the full-length portraits were moved to the girls dining room in November 1756, GC Minutes, LMA/A/FH/K02/5. 53. D. Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in EighteenthCentury England (London, 1993), pp. 160–161. 54. His surname is spelt Wale and Wade in a variety of sources. 55. J. Uglow, Hogarth (London, 1997), p. 331. 56. See Taylor White’s letter to Rev. Sellon on the admission of children, LMA/ A/FH/A6/1. 57. Rachel Fuchs has discovered stories of mothers leaving their babies in the Paris tour during the nineteenth century with identifying marks so that they could present themselves as wet nurses to the hospital in order to receive payment for nursing their own child, see her Abandoned Children, Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Albany, 1984), p. 41. 58. D. Bindman, Hogarth (London, 1981), p. 119. See also Uglow, Hogarth, p. 432. 59. GC Minutes, LMA/A/FH/K02/1/3. 60. Much of this reading is drawn from Jenny Uglow’s, Hogarth, pp. 419–425. 61. R. Paulson, The Art of Hogarth (London, 1975), p. 60. 62. Uglow, Hogarth, pp. ix, xi, 25, 46–65, 30, 198. 63. Ibid., p. 107, H. Omberg, William Hogarth’s Portrait of Captain Coram: Studies in Hogarth’s Method Around 1740 (Uppsala, 1974), p. 12. 64. Uglow, Hogarth, p. 278. Hogarth had also been on the Board of Governors of St Bartholomew’s Hospital since 1734. 65. Uglow, p. 326, Omberg, William Hogarth’s, p. 1. 66. M. Pointon, Hanging the Head: Portraiture and Social Formation in EighteenthCentury England (Princeton, 1993), p. 79. Uglow, Hogarth, p. 333. 67. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, pp. 61–63 and Solkin, Painting for Money, p. 2. 68. D. Bindman, Hogarth (Norwich, 1981), p. 167 and L. Gowing, Hogarth (London, 1971), p. 54. 69. See also Omberg, William Hogarth’s, pp. 67–71. 70. Brownlow, The History and Objects, pp. 7–8. 71. The central theme of fortune feeds through all of Wade’s works for the hospital. 72. GC Minutes, 27.10.1742, LMA/A/FH/K02/1. The ballot took place in all the rooms of the hospital but this particular description from the minutes is centred on the Court Room. 73. McClure, Coram’s Children, p. 76. 74. GC Minutes, 4.6.1746, LMA/A/FH/K02/2. 75. Ibid., 19.2.1755, LMA/A/FH/K02/4. 76. Ibid., 5.3.1755, LMA/A/FH/K02/4. 77. SC Minutes, 12.4.1749, LMA/A/FH/A3/5/1. 78. GC Minutes, 30.11.1748, LMA/A/FH/2. 79. Ibid., 25.1.1748. 80. Ibid., 12.5.1756, LMA/A/FH/K02/5. 81. Ibid., 27.6.1753; 8.5.1754; 1.10.1754; 31.3.1756, LMA/A/FH/K02/4 and /5 and G. Court Minutes, 31.3.1756, LMA/Microfilm/X041/010.

Notes 231 82. McClure, Coram’s Children, p. 79; Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, p. 58 and Nichols and Wray, The History of the Foundling Hospital, p. 33. 83. GC Minutes, 18.5.1756, LMA/A/FH/K02/5. 84. Ibid., 29.12.1756; 29.6.1757. 85. Ibid., 29.6.1757. 86. Ibid., 30.6.1756. 87. McClure, Coram’s Children, p. 86. 88. Account of the Foundling Hospital (1759), pp. 35–36. 89. GC Minutes, 30.6.1756; 13.4.1757; 6.4.1757; 5.10.1756; 20.10.1756; 25.5.1757; LMA/A/FH/K02/5. 90. The Genuine Sentiments of an English Country Gentleman, upon the Present Plan of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1760) and J. Hanway, A Candid Historical Account of the Hospital for the Reception of Exposed and Deserted Young Children (London, 1760), pp. 36–37. The practice has been fictionalised in an award-winning children’s novel, J. Gavin, Coram Boy (London, 2000). 91. GC Minutes, 25.1.1758; 8.5.1759, LMA/A/FH/K02/6 and /7. 92. Ibid., 16.8.1758; 25.10.1758; 22.11.1758; 28.2.1759; 27.3.1759; 6.6.1759; 13.6.1759; 1.8.1759; 28.11.1759; 5.12.1759; 19.12.1759; 16.1.1760; 23.1.1760; 6.2.1760; 13.2.1760; 2.4.1760; 30.7.1760; 7.4.1762, LMA/A/FH/ K02/6–8. 93. Ibid., 10.1.1759, LMA/A/FH/K02/6. 94. Ibid., 23.5.1759, LMA/A/FH/K02/7. 95. Ibid., 6.6.1759. 96. Ibid., 28.11.1759. 97. Ibid., 28.1.1760. It is not clear how the cost of maintenance was calculated. 98. Brownlow, History and Objects, pp. 14–15. 99. GC Minutes, 7.12.1757, LMA/A/FH/K02/6; SC Minutes, 20.12.1758, LMA/ A/FH/A3/5/3. 100. Cited in Nichols and Wray, The History, p. 61. See also, J. Hanway, Reasons for Supporting the Foundling Hospital (London, 1760), p. 77. 101. McClure, Coram’s Children, Appendix III. 102. Joyful News to Bachelors and Maids: Being a Song, In Praise of the Foundling Hospital, and the London Hospital Aldersgate Street (London, 1760). 103. Payne’s Universal Chronicle or Weekly Gazette, 18.11.1758, LMA/A/FH/A/6/ 23/3; London Chronicle, 17.5.1757; The Genuine Sentiments of an English Country Gentleman; Anon., Candid Remarks on Mr Hanway’s Candid Historical Account of the Foundling Hospital and a More Useful Plan Humbly Recommended, in a Letter to a Member of Parliament (London, 1760); J. Massie, Farther Observations Concerning the Foundling Hospital (London, 1759). 104. Hanway, A Candid Account, p. 36. 105. Ibid., pp. 77–95. 106. Ibid., p. 54. 107. J. Henderson and R. Wall (eds), Poor Women and Children in the European Past (London, 1994), p. 10. See also, Levene, ‘The Origins’, passim. 108. McClure, Coram’s Children, p. 113. 109. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, p. 58. 110. Ibid., p. 133. 111. Ibid., pp. 155–156. 112. G. Court Minutes, 9.2.1760, LMA/Microfilm/X04/010.

232 Notes 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119.

120. 121.

122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

GC Minutes, 1.7.1761, LMA/A/FH/K02/8. Ibid., 13.4.1763. Andrew, Philanthropy, p. 129, fn. 100. GC Minutes, 11.1766, LMA/A/FH/K02/10. Ibid., 24.2.1768, LMA/A/FH/K02/11. Ibid., 27.5.1768, LMA/A/FH/K02/11. For examples see, Ibid., 14.12.1763; 18.4.1764; 26.6.1764; 31.10.1764; 17.8.1768; 19.10.1768; 2.11.1768; 19.4.1769 (one recommended by Lady Vere); 4.5.1774; 13.5.1778; 17.7.1793; 20.4.1796; 15.3.1797, LMA/A/FH/ K02/9–22. Ibid., 21.3.1764, LMA/A/FH/K02/009. McClure argues that this was the first example of modern social casework, see her Coram’s Children, p. 144. G. Court Minutes, 1.7.1772, LMA/Microfilm/X041/010. The age limit rose to less than six months in 1772 and by 1795 the Hospital admitted children less than twelve months old. Ibid., 25.7.1775. Ibid., 29.12.1790, LMA/Microfilm/X041/010. Ibid., 29.1.1794. GC Minutes, 22.9.1797, LMA/A/FH/K02/021. Nichols and Wray, The History, p. 91. Ibid., 11.11.95, LMA/A/FH/K02/020. GC Minutes, 24.12.1800, LMA/A/FH/K02/024. Ibid., 3.6.1801. G. Court Minutes, 30.12.1801, LMA/Microfilm/X041/010. Brownlow, History and Objects, pp. 24–26. GC Minutes, 22.2.97, LMA/A/FH/K02/021. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, p. 76. Account of the Hospital (1796), p. 10.

5 ‘Unfortunate objects’: Petitioners to the Foundling Hospital 1. General Committee (hereafter GC) Minutes, 10.1.1770, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA) LMA/A/FH/K02/12. After 1776, due to the continuing problem of the crowds attending reception days, in order to cut down on numbers, people were admitted into the ballot to draw balls on a Wednesday unaccompanied by their children. If a white ball was drawn then they had to return with their child on the following Saturday, GC Minutes, 31.1.1776, LMA/A/FH/K02/015. 2. Those seeking admission for their children and spectators were not allowed to mingle, GC Minutes, 10.1.1770, LMA/A/FH/K02/12. For an account of a similar admission procedure to London’s Magdalen Hospital, see S. Lloyd, ‘ “Pleasure’s Golden Bait”: Prostitution, Poverty and the Magdalen Hospital in Eighteenth-Century London’, History Workshop Journal, 41, 1996, pp. 51–70, p. 56. 3. GC Minutes, 10.1.1770, LMA/A/FH/K02/012. See also pp. 85–87. 4. 8.7.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. See also, 7.10.1772 and 24.5.1775, LMA/A/ FH/A8/1/1/3 and /6.

Notes 233 5. T. Laqueur has been the most influential, see his ‘Orgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology’, Representations, 14, 1986, pp. 1–41, and his Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, 1990). See also R. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society, 1650–1850 (Harlow, 1998), p. 8; L. Jordanova, Sexual Visions (Hemel Hempstead, 1989), p. 20; M. Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth Century England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 158–162; J. Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature of Early Modern England (Charlottesville, 1992), p. 146. 6. T. Hitchcock, English Sexualities (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 100, 105, 107, 113. See also his ‘Unlawfully Begotten on her Body’, in T. Hitchcock, P. King and P. Sharpe (eds), Chronicling Poverty; The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840 (Basingstoke, 1997); ‘Demography and the Culture of Sex’, in J. Black (ed.), Culture and Society in Britain, 1660–1800 (Manchester, 1997) and ‘Redefining Sex in Eighteenth-Century England’, History Workshop Journal, 41, 1996, pp. 73–90. Even if he does acknowledge that women might have been telling the story that the authorities wanted to hear because he has not looked in any real detail at the petitions, he cannot appreciate the significance of the clamour of women’s voices in the petitions. His arguments are more measured in his excellent English Sexualities. Here he does acknowledge the inconsistencies in plebeian culture and argues that even if eighteenth-century discourse created and re-created ideas of female sexuality, plebeian experience remained much the same, p. 98. See also, H. Abelove, ‘Some Speculations on the History of Sexual Intercourse during the Long Eighteenth Century in England’, Genders, 6, Fall 1989, pp. 125–130, passim. In a similar vein, Randolph Trumbach has posited the creation of a three-gender system formed by an aggressive male heterosexual majority reacting to the emergence of a sodomitical minority and bolstered by using and abusing women. The main problem with his thesis is that there is no space in his new gender system for an exclusive heterosexual identity for women. In a chapter entitled ‘Shame and Rape’, he used the Foundling petitions to argue that poor women were the victims of his new sexual system as poor men used their bodies to construct new heterosexual identities. But poor women were never merely the victims of men, and the aim of the Foundling Hospital was not to save the reputation of poor women but rather to save the lives of abandoned children. See his Sex and the Gender Revolution, Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London, volume one (London, 1998). 7. Hitchcock, English Sexualities, p. 93. For another critique of the periodization of the history of sexuality and the representation of the increased sexual passivity of women in the eighteenth century, see K. Harvey, ‘The Substance of Sexual Difference: Change and Persistence in Eighteenth-Century Representations of the Body in Eighteenth-Century England’, Gender and History, 14, 2, August 2002, pp. 202–223 and her ‘The Century of Sex? Genders, Bodies and Sexuality in the Long Eighteenth Century’, Historical Journal, 45, 4, 2002, pp. 899–916. 8. For the seventeenth century, Bernard Capp has challenged the orthodoxy of the double standard and suggested that male concerns about sexual reputation and claims to respectability provided poor women with a powerful tool with

234 Notes

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

which to push men into marriage after the commencement of sexual relations or to obtain economic assurances from the fathers of their babies, see his ‘The Double Standard Revisited: Plebeian Women and Male Sexual Reputation in Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 162, 1999, pp. 70–100; See also, J. Gammon, ‘Ravishment and Ruin: The Construction of Stories of Sexual Violence in England, c.1640–1820’ (PhD thesis, University of Essex, 2000), pp. 12–15. V. Jones, ‘The Seductions of Conduct: Pleasure and Conduct Literature’, in R. Porter and M. Mulvey Roberts (eds), Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century (Basingstoke, 1996); Capp, ‘The Double Standard Revisited’; A. Clark, ‘Anne Lister’s Construction of Lesbian Identity’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 7, 1, 1996, pp. 23–50, p. 27 and K. Harvey, ‘Representations of Bodies and Sexual Difference in Eighteenth Century Erotica’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1999), Chapters 3 and 4. On the literary trope of seduction, see S. Staves, ‘British Seduced Maidens’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 14, 1980/1981, pp. 109–134, and A. Clark, ‘The Politics of Seduction in English Popular Culture, 1748–1848’, in J. Radford (ed.), The Progress of Romance, the Politics of Popular Fiction (London, 1986). My research was based on the bound volumes of petitions from 1768–1778, every fifth year up until and including 1799, 1800 and 1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/ 1/1/1–25. See P. Crawford and L. Gowing (eds), Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 2000), pp. 115–116. On eighteenth-century begging letters, see D. Andrew, ‘Noblesse Oblige: Female Charity in an Age of Sentiment’, in J. Brewer and S. Staves (eds), Early Modern Conceptions of Property (London, 1995) and her ‘ “To the Charitable and Humane”: Appeals for Assistance in the Eighteenth-Century London Press’, in H. Cunningham and J. Innes (eds), Charity, Philanthropy and Reform from the 1690s to 1850 (Basingstoke, 1998). 6.5.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/9. 16.4.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. GC Minutes, 6.3.1776, LMA/A/FH/K02/15. 10.6.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/10. Thomas Sokoll in his study of pauper letters argues that the use of plain words that tell stories of poverty in a straightforward manner using little punctuation and phonetic spelling indicates that pauper letters were intimately related to the spoken word. See his, ‘Old Age in Poverty: The Record of Essex Pauper Letters, 1780–1834’, in Hitchcock et al. (eds), Chronicling Poverty, p. 130. As suggested by A. Wilson, ‘Illegitimacy and its Implications in Mid-EighteenthCentury London: The Evidence of the Foundling Hospital’, Continuity and Change, 4, 1, 1989, pp. 103–164, p. 105. 23.12.1770, LMA/A/FH/A14/7/4/1. J. Brownlow, The History and Objects of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1865), pp. 2–3. Account of the Foundling Hospital (London, 1796), p. 8. GC Minutes, 22.9.1797, LMA/A/FH/K02/021. See also, B. Outhwaite, ‘ “Objects of Charity”: Petitions to the London Foundling Hospital, 1768–1772’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32, 4, Summer 1999, pp. 497–510.

Notes 235 23. See J. Gillis, ‘Servants, Sexual Relations, and the Risks of Illegitimacy in London, 1801–1900’, Feminist Studies, 5, 1979, pp. 140–173 and F. Barret-Ducrocq, Love in the Time of Victoria: Sexuality and Desire among Working-Class Men and Women in Nineteenth-Century London (Harmondsworth, 1992). 24. These statistics are based on the 1138 accepted petitions for admission and do not include the 152 rejected petitions. Petitions for Admission, 1763–1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1–15 and LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/2/1–10. 25. Hanway, A Candid Historical Account, p. 54. See also A. Levene, ‘Health and Survival Chances at the London Foundling Hospital and the Spedale Degli Innocenti of Florence, 1741–99’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002), pp. 85–94 and her ‘The Origins of the Children of the London Foundling Hospital, 1744–1760: A Reconsideration’, Continuity and Change, 18, 2, 2003, pp. 201–235. 26. 25.10.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 27. 1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/8. 28. 11.6.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. 29. 26.7.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. 30. 4.11.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. 31. 1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/8. 32. 5.6.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/4. 33. 1.1.1795, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/5. 34. 9.10.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. 35. 9.10.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/4. 36. 27.11.1798, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/6. 37. 27.10.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 38. 1.1.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/8. 39. 15.5.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/4. 40. 15.9.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 41. 1.4.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/9. 42. 25.3.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/9. 43. 20.2.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/8. 44. D. Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 10, 27. 45. R. Palmer, A Ballad History of England from 1588 to the Present Day (London, Batsford, 1979), pp. 6–7. See also, Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women, p. 31 and V. Neuberg, Popular Literature: A History and Guide from the Beginning of Printing to the Year 1897 (Harmondsworth, 1977), p. 113. 46. See also L. Shephard, The History of Street Literature; The Story of Broadside Ballads, Chapbooks, Proclamations, News-Sheets, Election Bills, Tracts, Pamphlets, Cocks, Catchpennies, and Other Ephemera (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp. 91, 100. 47. For the early modern period, see A. Fox, ‘Ballads, Libels and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England’, Past and Present, 145, 1994, pp. 47–83, 58 and Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order, pp. 15–16. 48. N. Tadmor, ‘“In the Even my Wife read to Me:” Women, Reading and Household Life in the Eighteenth Century’, in J. Raven, H. Small and N. Tadmor (eds), The Practice and Representation of Reading in England (Cambridge, 1996), p. 168. See also A. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), p. 37. See also Chapter 8. 49. 26.2.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III.1.56–61.

236 Notes 50. My definition of seduction here is drawn from petitioners’ use of the words seduction, seduced, deluded, deceived, drawn aside/away, led aside, overcome, overseen and decoyed away in their narratives. I made a distinction between the vocabulary of seduction and that of sexual relations by focussing on the representation of power relations in the petitions. 51. The ballot was used for admission to the City Lying-in Hospital, the British Lying-in Hospital and the Middlesex Lying-in wards. See also B. Croxson, ‘The Foundation and Evolution of the Middlesex Hospital’s Lying-In Service, 1745–86’, Social History of Medicine, 14, 1, April 2001, pp. 27–57, p. 42. 52. Mr Hoyle’s Games (London, 1770, 15th Edition). Many more editions were published during the eighteenth century. See also J. Arbuthnot, Of the Laws of Chance, or, a Method of Calculation of the Hazards of Game (London, 1692) and Annals of Gaming or Complete Directions for Whist, Hazard, Quadrille, Tennis, Piquet, Loo, Billiards and Back-gammon (2nd Edition, Periodical Publications, The Covent Garden Magazine, August 1773). 53. G. Rude, Hanoverian London, 1714–1808 (London, 1971), p. 71 and M. Thale (ed.), The Autobiography of Francis Place (1771–1854) (Cambridge, 1972), p. 98. 54. Cited in J. Ashton, Old Times: A Picture of Social Life at the End of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1885), p. 184. 55. See, A Short Sketch of the Times (1794), reproduced in Palmer, A Ballad History of England, p. 33; J. Ashton, Chapbooks of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1969 [1882]) and J. Ashton, Modern Street Ballads (London, 1888). 56. Mother Bunch’s Golden Fortune Teller (W. Fordyce and T. Fordyce, Newcastle, n.d.), in the New York Public Library’s (hereafter NYPL) Collection of Chapbooks, KVD p.v.16. See also The Astrologer in the Madden Collection of Ballads (Cambridge University Library, Microfilm 1785); A New and Ingenious Fortune Book, For Batchelors, Maids, Wives and Widows (Belfast, 1763), Houghton Library (hereafter HL), Harvard University, 25276.2 v.3 No. 13; A New and Well-Experienced Card Fortune Book: Delivered to the World from the Astrologer’s Office in Greenwich Park, for the benefit of Young Men and Blooming Maids (Manchester, n.d.), HL 25276.33*v.1 No. 2. S. Pederson, ‘Hannah More Meets Simple Simon: Tracts, Chapbooks, and Popular Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of British Studies, 25, 1986, pp. 102–103. 57. (J. Evans, London, n.d.), in Boswell’s collection of chapbooks, HL 25274.2*v.21. 58. 1.6.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. 59. See the entry for ‘misfortune’ in Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755) and in the English Dialect Dictionary (London, 1898). 60. See the Petitions of Elizabeth Key: 9.4.1777 LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8 and Ann Morton, 6.3.1782 LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. See the entries under ‘chance’ and ‘chanceling’ in the English Dialect Dictionary. Again all the examples given are from the nineteenth century and not for London. See also J. Gillis, For Better, For Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (Oxford, 1985), p. 129. 61. Ann Winterflood’s GHOST, in the Madden Collection of Ballads (Cambridge University Library, Microfilm, 1785). See also, The Ghost of Maria (Pitts,

Notes 237

62.

63. 64.

65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80.

London, n.d.) and The Unfortunate Maid (no publication details) NYPL *KVB Ballads, Boxes 604–605 and 1809–1822. T. Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth-Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 (London, 1999), p. 189. See also Maria, The Unfortunate Fair a ballad that told a story of a woman seduced by a captain who was then forced to become a prostitute. NYPL *KVB Ballads, Boxes 1147–1164. 4.11.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. A few historians have argued that contraceptive knowledge and practice was widespread amongst the poor. See J. Riddle, ‘Contraception and Abortion in the Middle Ages’, in V.L. Bullough and J.A. Brundage (eds), Handbook of Medieval Sexuality (London, 1996) and A. McClaren, Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of Fertility in England from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth Century (London, 1984), pp. 58–85. There is some evidence of women’s desire to learn how to control their reproduction, see P. Crawford, ‘The Construction and Experience of Maternity in Seventeenth-Century England’, in V. Fildes (ed.), Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England (London, 1990), pp. 16, 20. L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage, 1500–1800 (London, 1990), pp. 54, 262–263, 266, 307–308, 315 and Hitchcock, English Sexualities, pp. 52–53. 18.1.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. This is the only reference to abortion made in the petitions and the means by which she tried to abort her child are not described. See P. Crawford, ‘Attitudes to Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century England’, Past and Present, 91, May 1981, p. 70 and Crawford and Gowing, Women’s Worlds, pp. 14–15. The Banks of Inverary, in A Collection of Ballads, c.1780–1820 collected by Thomas Bell (British Library). 18.1.1801, LMA/A/FH/A/1/1/25. 3.3.1770, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 21.8.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. See also 1.11.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/10. 9.11.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. 5.12.1792, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/18. 12.3.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. L. Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1998), p. 74. 18.6.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. For further discussion, see pp. 176–177. The same was true of the French women who submitted their children for admission to the Hospice des Enfants Assistes in Paris during the nineteenth century, see R. Fuchs, Abandoned Children, Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany, 1984), pp. 90–98. Despite the very different legal, political, religious and medical context of unmarried motherhood in nineteenth-century Paris, the similarity of archival material and findings between the London Foundling Hospital and the Hospice in Paris during the nineteenth century is remarkable. There existed a dialogue between the institutions from the establishment of the London Foundling Hospital. For further discussion, see pp. 177–188. 25.10.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25.

238 Notes 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88.

89. 90. 91. 92.

93.

94.

95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

26.6.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. 13.7.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 10.10.1770, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 1.5.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. 16.5.1799, Ibid. 1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. See also, V. Fildes (ed.), ‘Maternal Feelings Re-Assessed’, in Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England, p. 147; Trumbach does acknowledge this even though it contradicts his thesis ‘Sex and the Gender Revolution’, p. 280. For another challenge to Wilson’s conclusions on the origins of foundlings during the General Reception, see Levene, ‘Health and Survival Chances’, Chapter 2 and her ‘The Origins’, passim. This was also the case for the parents of children deposited in the Hospice des Enfants Assistes in Paris, see R. Fuchs, Abandoned Children, Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany, 1984), p. 63. For further discussion, see Chapters 6 and 8. See Gowing, Domestic Dangers, p. 74. 14.7.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. Examples here are drawn from readings of A Collection of Ballads, c.1780–1820 collected by Thomas Bell (British Library); Madden Ballads Collection (Cambridge University Library); A Collection of English Ballads and Chapbooks Published at Various Places Between the Years 1733 and 1832 (BL) and W. Chappell and J.W. Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads (vols 1–9, Hertford, 1874–1893). The Effects of Love, in A Collection of Ballads, c.1780–1820 collected by Thomas Bell (BL). In the same collection, see also The Banks of the Clyde, The Squire and the Milk Maid, The Banks of Inverary, Poor Mary of the Moor and The Unfaithful Lover. See also L. Roper (ed.), ‘Will and Honour: Sex, Words and Power in Augsburg Criminal Trials’, Oedipus and the Devil, Witchcraft, Sexuality and Religion in Early Modern Europe (London, Routledge, 1994), Chapter 3. See also, Gowing, Domestic Dangers, p. 257. 24.4.1797, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/22. 19.6.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. See Gowing, Domestic Dangers, pp. 143–146. 1.6.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. See also 13.9.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. There are only twenty rapes mentioned in the petitions between 1767 and 1810. See J. Gammon, ‘Ravishment and Ruin: The Construction of Stories of Sexual Violence in England, c.1640–1820’ (PhD thesis, University of Essex, 2002), pp. 203–249. 19.3.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. 13.4.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 3.11.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 21.2.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. 1.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 7.8.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. See also 29.5.1771, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2; 5.4.1797, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/22.

Notes 239 109. 110. 111. 112.

113. 114. 115. 116. 117.

118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132.

133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/7. 9.4.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. 22.7.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. 7.9.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. An interesting parallel can be drawn between Bridget Allworthy’s circumstances in H. Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones (London, 1985 [1749]) and Mary’s case. 29.6.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 23.7.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. 9.1.1797, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/22. 2.2.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. D. Kent, ‘Gone for a Soldier: Family Breakdown and the Demography of Desertion in a London Parish 1750–91’, Local Population Studies, 45, 1990, pp. 27–42, p. 30. See also O. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750–1789 (Oxford, 1974), p. 115. 23.2.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 6.4.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 10.4.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. For further discussion, see pp. 105, 139. 13.4.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 24.7.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. 16.3.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/23. 18.5.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall, Roxburghe Ballads, III, 148, 164, 570, in Chappell and Ebsworth, volume VI, 1887, 139. 20.1.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 15.3.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. See also 16.10.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7; 4.3.1767, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/3/1 and 29.10.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/8. NYPL chapbooks, KVD*p.v.13. See the entry for ‘drawn aside’ in Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755). 24.2.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 20.10.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. This same description of a seducer is used in A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall. See note 126. See also 18.5.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5; 18.4.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/10 and 20.12.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 12.8.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. See The Banks of the Inverary in Bell’s Collection, Advice to the Fair Sex and The Betrayed Maiden in the Madden Collection. 21.2.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. 20.2.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. See Advice to Youth in the Madden Collection of Ballads (Cambridge University Library Microfilm 1785). See also Gowing, Domestic Dangers, pp. 58, 260, 262.

6 The duty of poor mothers in eighteenth-century London 1. Foundling Hospital (hereafter FH) Billet Book, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), LMA/A/FH/1/209. No. 5691.

240 Notes 2. W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, 1965, 5th Edition), pp. 446, 449–451. 3. P. Crawford, ‘The Construction and Experience of Maternity in SeventeenthCentury England’, in V. Fildes (ed.), Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England (London, 1990), pp. 3–29. 4. E. Badinter, The Myth of Motherhood (London, 1981). 5. Ruth Perry has suggested that the increase in the expression of maternal sentiment during the eighteenth century is rooted in the emergence of print culture during this period and the popularity of diary-keeping. See her ‘Colonising the Breast: Sexuality and Maternity in Eighteenth-Century England’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 1991, 2, 2, pp. 204–234, p. 205, note 1. 6. On the rate, see D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1925), p. 26. 7. E. Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (London, 1976), p. 195 and L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage (London, 1990), pp. 296–297. 8. Maternal instinct was no longed believed to be innate but mothering was a skill that had to be learned. See P. Weiss, Gendered Communities: Rousseau, Sex and Politics (New York, 1993), p. 47. See also B. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (Oxford, 1728), p. 76. Good mothering and responsible child rearing was now defined as a social duty. See J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, II, section 58–61, in J. Yolton (ed.), The Locke Reader (Cambridge, 1977). 9. O. Hufton, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, volume one, 1500–1800 (London, 1997), p. 191 and P. Crawford, ‘ “The Sucking Child”: Adult Attitudes to Child Care in the First Year of Life in Seventeenth-Century England’, Continuity and Change, 1, 1, 1986, pp. 23–51, p. 41. F. Bound, ‘Writing the Self? Love and the Letter in England, c.1660–c.1760’, Literature and History, 3rd series, 11, 1, April 2002, pp. 1–19. 10. H. Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500 (Harlow, 1995), p. 52. 11. L. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent–Child Relations from 1500–1900 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 268 and A Lasting Relationship: Parents and Children over Three Centuries (London, 1787), pp. 12–13. See also Crawford, ‘The Sucking Child’, p. 41; Bound, ‘Writing the Self?’ and C. Stearns and P. Stearns (eds), Emotion and Social Change: Towards a New Psychohistory (London, 1988), Introduction. 12. Gowing, ‘Ordering the Body’, pp. 44–62. 13. Toni Bowers has used the literary creations of Defoe to explore the impossibility of becoming the perfect mother for most women in eighteenth-century England. Both Moll and Roxana represented the conflict between motherhood and survival. Bowers suggests that eighteenth-century literature, pamphlets and broadsides dwell on representations of ‘unnatural mothers’. These were women who were too poor to conform to the middle-class definition of maternity, promulgated in Pamela, which was increasingly forced on women by the end of the century. Nussbaum has analysed eighteenth-century novels, travel narratives, medical documents and visual culture as sites of the struggle over meanings of sexuality, reproduction and the family and the emergence of new understandings of sexual difference. She suggests that changing cultural representations of motherhood and sexuality were fundamental to the creation of imperial Britain. Both have chosen to explore the

Notes 241

14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

meanings of imagined rather than actual motherhood. See T. Bowers, The Politics of Motherhood, British Writing and Culture, 1680–1760 (Cambridge, 1996) and F. Nussbaum, Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives (Baltimore, 1995). For France, see S. Woolf, ‘The Societie Charite Maternelle, 1788–1815’, in J. Barry and C. Jones (eds), Medicine and Charity Before the Welfare State (London, 1991) and for Germany, see M. Lindemann, ‘Maternal Politics: The Principles and Practices of Maternity Care in Eighteenth-Century Hamburg’, Journal of Family History, Spring 1984, pp. 44–46. For Britain, see V. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 115 and Perry, ‘Colonising the Breast’, pp. 206–207. D. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1989); L. Forman Cody, ‘The Politics of Reproduction: From Midwives’ Alternative Public Sphere to the Public Spectacle of Man-Midwifery’, EighteenthCentury Studies, 32, 4, Summer 1999, pp. 477–495, p. 484; M.C. Versluysen, ‘Midwives, Medical Men and “Poor Women of Labouring Child”: Lying-in Hospitals in Eighteenth-Century London’, in H. Roberts (ed.), Women, Health, and Reproduction (London, 1981). V. Fildes (ed.), ‘Maternal Feelings Re-Assessed: Child Abandonment and Neglect in London and Westminster, 1550–1800’, Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England, pp. 139–168, 152–153. See also Hufton, The Prospect Before Her, pp. 206–207. It is also important to note that despite Rousseau’s pronouncements on the duties of parents he abandoned all five of his children to the Enfants Trouves in Paris. See L. Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston, Beacon), p. 70. (Thanks to Michele Cohen for the references on Rousseau.) Cunningham, Children, pp. 20–28; Fildes, ‘Maternal Feelings’, pp. 144, 151. See H. Fielding, Tom Jones (London, 1985 [1749]) and Fildes, ‘Maternal Feelings’, pp. 153–154. See LMA/A/FH/A8/1/18 for an example of a foundling left at a wealthy man’s door in Argyll Street who was later taken into the Hospital. Cunningham, Children, p. 91. It is difficult to be certain about numbers because there is no single institutional source, which we could use to measure the extent of abandonment in London at this time. General Committee (hereafter GC) Minutes, 24.2.1768, LMA/A/FH/K02/011. 7.2.1767, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/3/1. 25.5.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. See also, 28.8.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. Olwen Hufton has shown how the parents of Samuel Johnson and Jane Austen expected to remain in regular contact with their children while they were at nurse. Moreover, such women were rarely chosen lightly. Enormous effort went into finding the right nurse for one’s child. See her, The Prospect Before Her, p. 193. Crawford, ‘The Construction and Experience’, p. 24. On the scandal of ‘baby-farming’ in the nineteenth century, see M. Arnot, ‘Infant Death, Child Care and the State: The Baby-Farming Scandal and the First Infant Life Protection Legislation of 1872’, Continuity and Change, 9, 2, 1994, pp. 271–311. Exodus 2. The Bible.

242 Notes 28. J. Henderson and R. Wall (eds), Poor Women and Children in the European Past (London, 1994), p. 10. and A. Levene, ‘The Origins of the Children of the London Foundling Hospital, 1744–1760: A Reconsideration’, Continuity and Change, 18, 2, 2003, pp. 201–235. For further discussion, see p. 92. 29. Cunningham, Children, pp. 94–95. 30. Bound, ‘Writing the Self?’, p. 5. 31. For further discussion of the strengths and the limits of this evidence, see pp. 108–109. 32. 16.3.1763, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/4/1. 33. See also Fildes, ‘Maternal Feelings’, p. 147. 34. 22.7.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. 35. 28.12.1763, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/2/1. See also 11.2.1767; 21.7.1772; 7.10.1772; 22.6.1774; 7.9.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3 and /5. 36. 31.10.1770, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2 and 12.1.1774; 9.3.1774; 3.1.1776; 14.5.1777; 11.6.1777; 23.9.1772; 17.12.1788, LMA/FH/A8/1/1/3; 1/1/5; 1/1/7; 1/1/8; 1/1/17. See also Chapter 5. 37. Hufton, The Prospect Before Her, p. 206 and note 46. 38. 13.4.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 39. 13.3.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. 40. 14.7.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. See also pp. 114–115. According to the law on infanticide of 1624, only unmarried mothers could be brought to trial. See M. Jackson, New-Born Child Murder: Women, Illegitimacy and the Courts in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester, 1996). 41. 20.8.1766, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/9/1. 42. 2.7.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/9 and 13.6.1764, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/2/1. 43. 13.5.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/25. 44. 23.6.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25 and 19.7.1769, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 45. 17.8.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 46. 1.1.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25 and 4.10.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 47. 24.5.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 48. 19.10.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. See also 30.11.1768; 6.7.1768; 5.7.1769; 31.10.1770; 25.11.1772; 17.11.1773; 9.11.1774; 31.1.1776; 18.12.1776; 5.12.1781; 26.6.1782; 7.1.1789; 22.2.1797; 22.7.1800 and 23.6.1801, LMA/ A/FH/A8/1/1/1; 1/1/2; 1/1/3; 1/1/5; 1/1/7; 1/1/8; 1/1/13; 1/1/17; 1/1/22; 1/1/24 and 1/1/25. 49. 6.12.1775 and 20.12.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 50. GC Minutes, 7.2.1781, LMA/A/FH/K02/017. 51. GC Minutes, 13.6.1764; 7.11.1764; 5.9.1770, LMA/A/FH/K02/009 and /013. 52. GC Minutes, 24.2.1747, LMA/A/FH/K02/002. See also Chapter 4. 53. GC Minutes, 16.8.1758, LMA/A/FH/K02/006. 54. See Chapter 5. 55. 25.11.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 56. Sub-Committee Minutes, 12.4.1749, LMA/A/FH/A3/5/1. 57. See 18.11.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 58. 2.11.1763, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/2/1 and 18.11.1772, LMA/A/FH/A/1/1/3. 59. 21.2.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. 60. 31.10.1770, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 61. 3.3.1790, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/17. See also 4.4.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. 62. 12.6.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/17. See also 2.2.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/23.

Notes 243 63. 24.4.1771, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 64. 21.10.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. See also 24.7.1776; 13.3.1782; 26.4.1797, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3; 1/1/7; 1/1/13 and 1/1/22. 65. 17.5.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. 66. 17.4.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/23. 67. 6.6.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/10. 68. 9.6.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 69. 18.5.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/23. 70. 29.6.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 71. 1.7.1769, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. See also 4.4.1770; 8.7.1772; 3.2.1773; 22.10.1777; 13.3.1777; 22.5.1782; 4.9.1782; 20.11.1782; 2.1.1797, LMA/A/ FH/A8/1/1/2; 1/1/3; 1/1/4; 1/1/8; 1/1/3; 1/1/13 and 1/1/22. 72. See also Cunnningham, Children, pp. 95–96. 73. 5.7.1769, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 74. 14.12.1763, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/2/1. 75. 29.5.1771, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 76. 8.2.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. See also 16.10.1782 and 26.3.1777, LMA/A/ FH/A8/1/1/13 and 1/1/8. 77. 30.11.1763, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/2/1. 78. 16.12.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 79. 20.11.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. 80. 8.2.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/23. See also, 29.10.1777; 26.2.1777, LMA/A/ FH/A8/1/1/8. 81. 23.12.1789, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/17. 82. 6.11.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. 83. 1795, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/5. 84. 1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/3/8. 85. During the General Reception period between 1756 and 1760, the mortality rate was 61 per cent. See McClure, Coram’s Children, Appendix III. 86. 11.9.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. 87. 17.11.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 88. 23.9.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/10. 89. 19.3.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. 90. See 18.5.1799 and 15.2.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/23 and 1/1/16. 91. 6.11.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. 92. 17.1.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/10. 93. 2.1.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/23. 94. 20.7.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/23. See also 9.9.1799 and 23.5.1770, LMA/A/ FH/A8/1/1/23 and 1/1/2. 95. McClure, Coram’s Children, p. 3. See the painting by John Sanders, The Girls Dining Room, 1773. 96. 19.4.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 97. 19.10.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 98. 29.6.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 99. In his study of Richard Napier’s records, Michael MacDonald suggests that more women then men were affected by grief after their children’s death. See his Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 80–82. 100. 8.9.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4.

244 Notes 101. GC Minutes, 14.11.1750, LMA/A/FH/K02/003. See B. Nicholson and J. Kerslake, The Treasures of the Foundling Hospital (Oxford, 1972). Tokens and notes were also left with foundlings abandoned elsewhere. Many of these children were also well dressed. See Fildes, ‘Maternal Feelings’, p. 153. Wilson has used these tokens to examine the geographical origin of foundlings. See his ‘Illegitimacy and its Implications in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London: The Evidence of the Foundling Hospital’, Continuity and Change, 4, 1, 1989, pp. 103–164. 102. See the ballads, Fair Sally; or, the Bonny Seaman, I’ll stay for my Jack and he’ll wed me and The Token, New York Public Library *KVB Ballads. 103. D. O’Hara, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester, 2002), p. 10 and Chapter 2 ‘The language of tokens and the making of marriage’. On love letters and tokens, see Bound, ‘Writing the Self?’, p. 11. 104. LMA/A/FH/A09/1/1, No. 6. 105. LMA/A/FH/1/2 and /202. 1741–1742, 1743–1746, 1750. 106. Between 1756 and 1771 only seventeen children were admitted on the payment of £100. The practice was abolished in 1800. GC Minutes, 24.12.1800, LMA/A/FH/K02/024. 107. LMA/A/FH/A09/1/193 1785–1789. Exact date and number are concealed by pins. 108. FH Billet Book, LMA/A/FH/1/179, No. 16525. 109. See also, O’Hara, Courtship, p. 83. 110. GC Minutes, 20.12.1758, LMA/A/FH/K02/006. 111. Or, it is possible that the hospital made no real effort to record the details of tokens because receipts could now be used to establish the relationship between a parent and a child. 112. There is some confusion about the exact numbers because of the mislabelling of the billet books and stray tokens. 113. M. McDonald and L. Hurcombe (eds), Gender and Material Culture in Historical Perspective (Houndmills, 2000), p. xvii. 114. A. Buck, Dress in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1979), p. 119. 115. See p. 197 for a description of a woman who could reclaim her child using her earnings from her business of selling old clothes from a cellar in Seven Dials. The area around Monmouth Street was London’s main market for second-hand clothes. See Buck, Dress, p. 179 and B. Lemire, Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 1660–1800 (Houndmills, 1997), pp. 4, 50, 97–98 and Chapter 4. This was a culture that was bound up within criminal and plebeian survival strategies. The theft and reselling of clothing contributed to the eighteenth-century crime-wave as clothes became objects of both desire and necessity. See D. Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 1996 [1989]), pp. 219–220. 116. LMA/A/FH/9/1/1, No. 52. 117. Ibid., No. 54. 118. A ‘mantle’ was a loose sleeveless cloak or shawl, worn especially by women (OED). 119. FH Billet Books, LMA/A/FH/1/209, No. 57503. 120. FH Billet Books, LMA/A/FH/1/209, No. 1303.

Notes 245 121. See the chapbooks, The Academy of Compliments and The Art of Courtship; or the School of Love (Aldermary Church Yard, London, n.d.), New York Public Library, *KVD p.v.21. See also A. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 26–27 for a discussion of the popularity of versifying at work and leisure. 122. Foundling Hospital display case. The Foundling Museum was opened to the public in June 2004.

7 Childbirth 1. D. Evenden, ‘Mothers and their Midwives in Seventeenth-Century London’, in H. Marland (ed.), The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe (London, 1993), p. 14 and The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London (Cambridge, 2000), p. 87. 2. A. Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660–1770 (London, 1995), p. 30. 3. Ibid., p. 28. 4. D. Owen, English Philanthropy 1660–1960 (London, 1965), p. 36. 5. For France, see S. Woolf, ‘The Societie Charite Maternelle, 1788–1815’, in J. Barry and C. Jones (eds), Medicine and Charity Before the Welfare State (London, 1991) and for Germany, see M. Lindemann, ‘Maternal Politics: The Principles and Practice of Maternity Care in Eighteenth-Century Hamburg’, Journal of Family History, Spring 1984, pp. 44–61. For Britain, see V. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 115. 6. Wilson, The Making, p. 146. The numbers increased when other institutions were established. 7. J. Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men: A History of the Struggle for the Control of Childbirth (London, 1977), p. 25. 8. B. Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis of a Voluntary Hospital: The Foundation, and Institutional Structure of the Middlesex Hospital’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1995), p. 16, fn. 16. 9. J. Nicols, A Sermon Preached before . . . the President and Governors of the City of London Lying-in Hospital (London, 1767), p. 5. See also Lisa Forman Cody, ‘The Politics of Reproduction: From Midwives’ Alternative Public Sphere to the Public Spectacle of Man-Midwifery’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32, 4, Summer 1999, pp. 477–495, p. 484. See Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men; M.C. Versluysen, ‘Midwives, Medical Men and “Poor Women of Labouring Child”: Lying-in Hospitals in Eighteenth-Century London’, in H. Roberts (ed.), Women, Health and Reproduction (London, 1981). 10. See Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men; M.C. Versluysen, ‘Midwives, medical men’; Wilson, The Making and Cody, ‘The Politics of Reproduction’. 11. Up until now, it has been thought that only two such hospitals existed in eighteenth-century London. The Store Street Hospital has been overlooked. However, I found A Short Account of the Institution, Plan, and Present State of the New General Lying-In Hospital in Store Street, Tottenham Court Road (London, 1787) in the British Library. 12. Wilson, Making, p. 38. 13. D. Defoe, Moll Flanders (London, 1989 [1722]), p. 221.

246 Notes 14. Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men, p. 38. 15. A Sermon Preached at the Parish Church of St Anne, Westminster on Friday, May the 24th, 1754 Before the Governors of the Middlesex Hospital for Sick and Lame and for Lying-in Married Women (London, 1754), p. 21 and Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis’, p. 32. 16. Laws, Orders and Regulations of the British Lying-in Hospital (London, 1769), p. 1. 17. A. Gunn, ‘Maternity Hospitals’, in F.N.L. Poynter (ed.), The Evolution of Hospitals in Britain (London, 1964), p. 96. 18. Working-class mothers were important to the nation as ‘reproductive citizens’. D. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1989), p. 68. 19. British Lying-in Hospital (hereafter BLI) Minutes, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA) LMA/H14/BLI/A2/1, 9.2.1787. 20. A Sermon Preached in the Parish Church of St Andrew Holborn on Thursday March 29th, 1753 Before the President and Governors of the City of London Lying-In Hospital for Married Women (London, 1753), p. 18. 21. Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis’, p. 8. 22. For a convincing argument that historians should use a multi-layered approach to the study of benefaction that acknowledges the significance of religious, political, social and individual motives, see S. Cavallo, ‘The Motivations of Benefactors: An Overview of Approaches to the Study of Charity’, in J. Barry and C. Jones (eds), Medicine and Charity Before the Welfare State (London, 1991). 23. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, p. 109, fn. 34. 24. D. Andrew, ‘Noblesse Oblige: Female Charity in an Age of Sentiment’, in J. Brewer and S. Staves (eds), Early Modern Conceptions of Property (London, 1995), p. 277. 25. Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis’, p. 23. 26. Ibid., p. 13. 27. S. Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge, Hospital Pupils and Practitioners EighteenthCentury London (Cambridge, 1996), p. 50. 28. J.S. Taylor, ‘Philanthropy and Empire: Jonas Hanway and the Infant Poor of London’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 12, 1979, pp. 285–305 and his Jonas Hanway, Founder of the Marine Society, Charity and Policy in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 1985). 29. Wilson, The Making, p. 107. 30. Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge, p. 8. See also Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, p. 5. 31. J. Woodward, To Do the Sick No Harm: A Study of the British Voluntary Hospital System to 1875 (London, 1974), pp. 38–40. 32. Subscribers received the right to recommend patients, to vote for administrative changes and to inspect the hospital. The Middlesex charged 3 guineas annual subscription to have one sick/lame patient or one lying-in patient. For 5 guineas they could have both. The BLI charged 3 guineas which was increased to 4 guineas in 1800. For 30 guineas a subscriber could recommend and have in the house one woman at a time; 6 guineas p.a. or one payment of 60 guineas entitled subscribers to have two women in the house at a time. The City Hospital asked for 3 or 5 guineas. The General Lying-in Hospital (GLI) stated that a payment of 30 guineas made you a governor for life or

Notes 247

33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

39.

3 guineas p.a. entitled you to recommend. The Store Street Hospital asked for 2 guineas p.a. or 20 guineas to become a governor for life. After 1787, they raised the cost to 3 guineas and 30 guineas. The Westminster charged 3 guineas. Women had the same subscription rights as men. On the process of recommendation, see H. Marland, Medicine and Society in Wakefield and Huddersfield 1780–1870 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 146 and B. Croxson, ‘The Foundation and Evolution of the Middlesex Hospital’s Lying-in Service, 1745–86’, Social History of Medicine, 14, 1, April 2001, pp. 27–57, p. 49. B. Croxson, ‘The Public and Private Faces of Eighteenth-Century London Dispensary Charity’, Medical History, 41, April 1997, pp. 127–150, p. 134. A Sermon Preached at the Parish Church of St Anne, Westminster, on Friday, May the 24th, 1754 Before the Governors of the Middlesex Hospital for Sick and Lame, and for Lying-in Married Women by Thomas Church (London, 1754), p. 21; An Accou nt of the City of London Lying-in Hospital, p. 5; An Account of the British Lying-in Hospital, p. 10. The British Lying-in Committee met on a Friday morning, and the City Hospital received women on a Wednesday morning. The Middlesex Hospital in Windmill Street admitted lying-in patients, as well as lame and sick people into its 36 beds 8 of which were used for lying-in patients. (Although the number of beds had increased to 55 by 1759, it is not clear what proportion was designated for women giving birth. See Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis’, pp. 9, fn. 39, 15.) In 1758, Croxson claims that 235 women were delivered, see her ‘The Foundation and Evolution’, p. 41. At the BLI in Brownlow Street, off Long Acre, with 40 beds, 9108 women delivered between November 1749 and December 1770. See, An Account of the British, p. 17. Of these women, 8912 delivered and were discharged, and 196 died while in the hospital. The City of London Lying-in Hospital with 33 beds was located in Aldersgate Street, from its institution until 1770 when it moved to City Road in 1773, where they could accommodate 42 women. When it began, the General Lying-in Hospital had less than about ten beds and only 359 women delivered in its first three years but from 1755 it began to expand and in 1761 over 1500 women delivered. See Wilson, The Making, p. 152. P. Rhodes calculated that there were about 20 beds in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital and about 160 deliveries per annum, see his Doctor John Leake’s Hospital: A History of the General Lying-In Hospital, York Road, Lambeth (London, 1977), p. 77. Many of the women who delivered in the hospitals must have been outpatients. See the Rules for In-patients in An Account of the . . . General Lying-in Hospital, p. 2 and Laws, Orders, and Regulations, pp. 36–40. BLI Minutes, LMA/H14/BLI/A1/1/1, 4.1.1754. An Account of the British Lying-in Hospital (London, 1770), p. 6. See also Laws, Orders and Regulations, p. 20. In this account, the balls are white and red. The system was abolished in 21.11.1800. See the BLI Minutes, LMA/ H14/BLI/A2/3. City of London Lying-in Hospital (hereafter CLM) Minutes, 19.2.1754, LMA/ H10/CLM/A1/1/1; R.B. Canning, The City of London Maternity Hospital: A Short History (London, 1922), p. 4. In 1772, women trying to gain entry into the Middlesex who had drawn black balls on 3 successive weeks could be admitted the following week without balloting, and in 1774 the Weekly

248 Notes

40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

55. 56.

Board could veto the result of the ballot and admit women they deemed most in need. See Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis’, p. 207 and her ‘The Foundation and Evolution’, pp. 27–57. Wilson, The Making, p. 148. BLI Minutes, 25.1.1749, LMA/H14/BLI/A1/1/1. General Committee Minutes of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 14.11.1769, LMA/H1/GLI/A1/1–4, see P. Rhodes, Dr. John Leake’s Hospital, p. 39. V. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 86, 106. Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis’, pp. 32–34. BLI Minutes, 2.5.1751, LMA/H14/BLI/A1/1/1. BLI Minutes, 16.1.1752, LMA/H14/BLI/A1/1/1; CLM Minutes, 21.6.1753, LMA/H10/CLM/A1/1/1. Woodward, To Do the Sick No Harm, p. 44. CLM Minutes, 29.6.1753, LMA/ H10/CLM/A1/1/1. CLM Minutes, 10.12.1767, LMA/H10/CLM/A1/1/2. Wilson, The Making, p. 147. Some subscribers took issue with the British Lying-in hospital because they admitted only married women causing the Governors to justify their policy in public. BLI Minutes, LMA/H14/BLI/A1/1/1, 28.2.1755. Ibid., 17.1.1759, 9.2.1759, LMA/H14/BLI/A1/1/2. Ibid., 12.12.1751; 6.2.1752; 23.4.1752; 4.4.1760; 14.11.1760; 16.3.1764; 40.6.1764; 31.5.1765; 10.7.1772; 30.7.1794; 5.1.1801, LMA/H14/BLI/A1/1/ 1–3 and /A2/1–3. CLM Minutes, 21.6.1753, 10.12.1767 and 1.1.1794 LMA/ H10/CLM/A1/1/1–4. BLI Minutes, 27.3.1801, LMA/H14/BLI/A2/3. 6.6.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/10. Six petitions to the Foundling Hospital in my sample include women who gave birth at the City Hospital. One, Mary Clarke, was unmarried; the others were widows. However, they cannot be cross-referenced because the Admission Register of the hospital covers only the years 1750–1769 and the minutes do not contain details of women admitted or lists of women giving thanks for being delivered. The problem of determining the true identities of the women is complicated by the fact that the women lied about their names. For example, see the Weekly Board Minutes of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 10.2.1795, ‘Matron reported that Jane Williams, a single woman, who came into the Hospital under the name of Elizabeth Jones died on Saturday evening last she been in a delerious state for the last fortnight as it is supposed to her having taken a false oath upon her admission.’ Also, 16.6.95. ‘Matron reported that Sarah Lisby who came in under the name of Sarah Jones by the recommendation of Dr Somers was dead after an illness of ten weeks occasioned by bad habit of body.’ LMA/A/FH/GLI/A2/1. Bastardy examinations by women also provide evidence of single women gaining entry into these hospitals. See the bastardy examinations of St Botolph’s, Aldgate: 12.5.1777, Ann Hutchins a single servant gave birth in the BLI; 22.2.1791, Ann Bullen, a widow gave birth to a bastard in the City Hospital. GL/MS2676/11 and /19. T. Henderson, Disorderly Women in Eighteenth Century London: Prostitution and Control in the Metropolis, 1730–1830 (Harlow, 1999), p. 128. Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis’, pp. 32, 35.

Notes 249 57. Six women handing in Foundling petitions stated that they had given birth in the BLI, five were married, Catherine Penfold was not. One, Martha Boutock, cannot be traced through the Lying-in Hospitals records; the others can. 58. For similar evidence on Germany, see J. Schlumbohm, ‘ “The Pregnant Women are here for the Sake of the Teaching Institution”: The Lying-in Hospital of Gottingen University, 1751 to c.1830’, Social History of Medicine, 14, 1, April 2001, pp. 59–78. 59. Although Dr G.C. Peachey has argued that the hospital originated in Jermyn Street under the direction of Sir Richard Manningham in 1739, Jean Donnison has proved that there is no link between the two. See her ‘Notes on the Foundation of Queen Charlotte’s Hospital’, Medical History, 15, October 1971, pp. 398–400. Nevertheless, the confusion still continues, see S. Gallagher, ‘Midwifery in Eighteenth Century Westminster’, Westminster History Review, 1998, 11, pp. 33–40, p. 37. The muddle is exacerbated by the fact that no records for the hospital exist prior to 1809 apart from one account dated 1768. See also T. Ryan, The History of Queen Charlotte’s Lying-in Hospital: From its Foundation in 1752 to the Present Time (London, 1885). 60. An Account of the Rise, Progress, and State of the General Lying-in Hospital, the Corner of Quebec Street, Oxford Road (London, 1968), p. 1. 61. A Short Account of the Institution, Plan, and Present State of the New General Lying-in Hospital in Store Street, Tottenham Court Road (London, 1787), p. 4. This account is a little confusing because it seems to conflate the Store Street Hospital with the GLI, see pp. 3–4. They were, however, two separate hospitals. Both the GLI and the Store Street Hospital applied for a licence in 1773. See note 69. 62. An Account of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital (London, 1765), p. 2. 63. A Short Account . . . of the New General Lying-in Hospital, p. 6. The Board of the Westminster Hospital also admitted women without letters of recommendation at their discretion. The GLI received patients on Saturday mornings. The Store Street Hospital received women in labour at any time. The Westminster Lying-in Hospital received women on Wednesday mornings. 64. Between 1755 and 1768, 8768 women delivered in the GLI. In twenty years, 4000 women delivered in the Store Street Hospital, 1000 in their own homes. Two patients a week were admitted into the Westminster Hospital. 65. The book containing the General Committee Minutes has remained unfit for consultation while I researched my PhD. The LMA thinks it will be another couple of years before the book can be repaired and made fit. Philip Rhodes’ account of the hospital rests almost entirely on his research of the minutes so I have used this source as well as the Weekly Board Minutes that date from 1776 to 1801 to fill in my gaps. P. Rhodes, Doctor John Leake’s Hospital, pp. 27, 34–35. 66. Rhodes, Doctor John Leake’s Hospital, p. 44. A pamphlet containing the laws of the hospital, dated 1808, stated that the women were being kept in separate wards. Rhodes does not elaborate on the reasons why this decision was taken. 67. Adrian Wilson suggests that Queen Charlotte’s might have avoided disputes about settlement perhaps because of its extra-parochial location. See his Making, p. 147, fn. 10.

250 Notes 68. Rhodes, Doctor John Leake’s Hospital, pp. 32–34. The Act covered the settlement of bastard children only. The existing law of settlement took care of legitimate children. 69. Licences were granted to the Duke of Northumberland for the Middlesex Hospital, the Duke of Portland for the BLI, to Barlow Trecothick for the City of London Lying-in Hospital, to Earl Verney for the GLI in Oxford Street, to Viscount Townsend for the Westminster Lying-in Hospital and to the Duke of Dorset for the Store Street Lying-in Hospital in 1773 (LMA/MR/LH/1–10). 70. See Gallagher, ‘Midwifery in Westminster’, p. 37. 71. M.D. George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1965 [1925]), pp. 41, 263; L.D. Schwarz, London in the Age of Industrialisation: Entrepreneurs, Labour Force and Living Conditions 1700–1850 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 4. 72. This might be a reference to the woman who attempted to stab herself in front of the BLI’s General Committee. 73. An Account of the Rise, Progress and State of the General Lying-in Hospital (London, 1768). 74. See George, London Life, pp. 162, 199, 263. 75. See T. Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service in London, 1660–1750: Gender, Life-Cycle, Work and Household Relations’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1996), p. 77. 76. The information recorded in the Admissions Register is not systematic. For the first 783 entries from 1767 until 23.11.1773, the woman’s number, the date of the order for admission, her name and age, the father’s name, her parish of settlement, the date of birth, baptism and discharge, and the name of the person who recommended them is recorded in full. A woman was recorded as unmarried if a B for bastard appeared next to her number in the margin or if the mother’s and father’s surnames were different. The table relates to these details and dates. Donna Andrew has also collected figures from this source and Nic Rogers used them in his article on illegitimacy in Westminster. She calculated the number of women who gave birth to bastards between 1767 and 1775 as 162. See N. Rogers, ‘Carnal Knowledge: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Westminster’, Journal of Social History, 23, 2, Winter 1989, pp. 355–375, p. 367 and fn. 79. However, after 1773 the recording of information on these women becomes much more sporadic and is therefore not subjected to the same type of analysis in this thesis as the years 1767–1773. See LMA Microfilm X/42/1 or LMA/HI/GLI/B1/1–2. There is a gap in all of the hospital’s records from July 1787 until 22.2.1792. 77. P. Earle, A City Full of People: Men and Women of London, 1650–1750 (London, 1994), p. 124 and his ‘The Female Labour Market in London in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, XLII, 3, 1989, pp. 328–353, p. 339. See also, P. Seleski, ‘The Women of the Labouring Poor: Love, Work and Poverty in London, 1750–1820’ (PhD thesis, Stanford University, 1989), p. 134; Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service in London’, p. 12. See also p. 29. 78. Settlement exams of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 1786–1795, LMA/ P85/MRY1/231–232. Exams are only available for these dates. 79. 11.10.1794, LMA/P85/MRY1/232. 80. Queen Charlotte’s Birth and Bastardy Certificates, 1791–1797, Westminster City Archives (hereafter WCA)/PV231. Again, exams are only available for these dates.

Notes 251 81. As we have seen men earned on average about a third more than female domestic servants. Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service’, p. 95 and D. Kent, ‘Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid-Eighteenth Century London’, History Workshop Journal, 28, 1989, pp. 111–129. 82. On the problems of distinguishing between women’s different roles in service, see B. Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth-Century (Oxford, 1996), p. 12. 83. David Kent’s research on the settlement examinations of St Martin’s in the Fields suggests that women’s service wages were lower than this. See his ‘Ubiquitous but Invisible’. Evidence on wages is available for 190 of the mothers who gave birth in the Westminster Lying-in Hospital and for 68 of those who gave birth in the GLI. 84. 18.9.1790, LMA/P85/MRY1/232. 85. On the Middlesex, see Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis’, p. 210. 86. M. Fissell, Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Bristol (Cambridge, 1991), p. 114. 87. J. Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1956), pp. 76, 100; Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service’, pp. 173–174 and J. Hanway, Letters on the Importance of the Rising Generation of the Labouring Part of our Fellow Subjects (London, 1767), p. 35. 88. S. Adams and S. Adams, The Complete Servant: Being a Practical Guide to the Peculiar Duties and Business of all Descriptions of Servants (London, 1825), p. 11. 89. Ibid., p. 12. 90. A. Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1981), p. 32. 91. Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service’, p. 151. 92. B. Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1994), pp. 137–138 and Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service’, pp. 194, 213. 93. See Adams, The Complete Servant, p. 12. (Although this work was published in the nineteenth century, its authors worked as servants in the 1770s). Hill, Servants, p. 44; E. Haywood, A Present for a Servant Maid (London, 1743), pp. 43–49; E. Haywood, A New Present for a Servant Maid (London, 1771), pp. 14–17 and J. Hanway, Domestic Happiness Promoted; in a Series of Discourses from a Father on his Daughter, on Occasion of Her Going into Service (London, 1777), pp. 227–232. T. Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender 1660–1750: Life and Work in the London Household (Harlow, 2000), pp. 100–117. It is possible, however, that masters might have forced their servants to lie to the authorities about their predicament or that these women were bribed with promises of maintenance money not to go to the authorities. 94. T. Meldrum, ‘London Domestic Servants from Depositional Evidence, 1660–1750: Servant–Employer Sexuality in the Patriarchal Household’, in T. Hitchcock et al., Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 47; A. Summers, ‘A Home from Home: Women’s Philanthropic Work in the Nineteenth-Century’, in S. Burman (ed.), Fit Work for Women (London, 1979), p. 39; A. Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (London, 1998), pp. 8, 72, 285. 95. Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter, pp. 127, 143–146. 96. Adams, Complete Servant, p. 37 and Hanway, Domestic Happiness, p. 104.

252 Notes 97. Haywood, A New Present, 1771, p. iii and Seleski, ‘The Women of the Labouring Poor’, p. 66. 98. D. Andrew, ‘Noblesse Oblige: Female Charity in an Age of Sentiment’, in J. Brewer and S. Staves (eds), Early Modern Conceptions of Property (London, 1995), p. 277. 99. Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service’, p. 174. 100. Earle found the same for his sample in ‘The Female Labour Market’, p. 339. 101. Kent, ‘Ubiquitous but Invisible’, p. 112. 102. I disagree with Kent’s argument, as does Hill, Servants, p. 108, that flexibility and security attracted young women into service and not marriage. A poor woman’s choices were overwhelmingly dominated by the need to ‘earn her bread’. Nevertheless, many factors, economic, social and psychological may have influenced her decision to marry or not. 103. Women often chose to move jobs frequently in the search for higher wages and benefits. 104. Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service’, pp. 173–174. See also Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class, p. 100. 105. See Marland, Medicine and Society in Wakefield and Huddersfield, p. 147; R. Porter, ‘The Gift Relation: Philanthropy and Provincial Hospitals in Eighteenth-Century England’, in L. Granshaw and R. Porter (eds), The Hospital in History (London, 1989), p. 166 and Fissell, Patients, p. 114. 106. LMA/HI/GLI/B1/1/2. 107. 21.3.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. 108. 27.3.1773, LMA/H1/GLI/B1/1 and 14.4.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 109. Andrew, Philanthropy, p. 65. 110. General Committee Minutes of 5.5.1767. After her loan was repaid another widow, Mrs Pamela of Stoke near Guildford, took on the debt. Rhodes, Doctor John Leake’s Hospital, pp. 30, 42. 111. Weekly Board Minutes, 1.10.99, LMA/A/FH/GLI/A2/1. Moreover, one gentleman, by the name of Holt donated £12,000 to the Foundling and the lying-in hospitals in 1792. It was decided that all the money was to be donated to the Store Street Hospital specifically because it admitted unmarried women. See A Short Account, p. 7. 112. Women make up 21 per cent of subscribers to the GLI (see An Account of the General Lying-in Hospital); 16 per cent of subscribers to the Store Street Hospital (see A Short Account of the Institution); 44 per cent of subscribers to the British Lying-in Hospital (see An Account) and 15 per cent of subscribers to the City of London Hospital (see A Sermon). 113. 20.7.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. 114. Her name is spelt Lekeup and Leheup in a variety of places but it seems fair to assume she is the same woman. 115. 10.5.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/23. 116. 1.1.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. 117. 11.5.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 118. 15.2.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 119. 21.5.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. See also 1.7.1772; 11.5.1775; 23.9.1772; 21.5.1777; 13.11.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3–13. 120. On the threat imposed by masters, see B. Hill, Servants, p. 44 and note 93. 121. Hill, Servants, p. 57.

Notes 253 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130.

131. 132.

133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142.

143. 144. 145. 146. 147.

148. 149. 150.

151.

LMA/H1/GLI/B1/1. 25.11.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. LMA/H1/GLI/B1/1. 27.10.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 16.9.1793, LMA/P85/MRY1/232. 28.4.1794, LMA/P85/MRY1/232. 21.3.1795, LMA/P85/MRY1/232. An Account . . . of the General Lying-in Hospital, p. 1. It is not possible to state definitively where women lived or where they originated from their settlement details. Women’s settlements and homes could be in different parishes. An Account of the Rise . . . of the General Lying-in Hospital, p. 3. It is not possible to measure the geographical origins of married women patients. Married women took their husbands’ settlements on marriage. The picture is complicated by the requirements of the settlement examination. Queen Charlotte’s Birth and Bastardy Certificates, 1791–1797, WCA/ PV231. Admission Register of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 1767–1773, LMA/H1/GLI/BI/1–2. 17.2.1801, LMA/H1/GLI/A2/1–10; 18.04.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/10. 2.4.1781, LMA/P85/MRY1/231. 12.4.1781, LMA/P85/MRY1/231. 22.8.1786, LMA/P85/MRY1/231. Westminster City Archives (hereafter WCA)/PV231, 3.6.1794. 15.1.1795, WCA/PV231. 17.12.1799, LMA/H1/GLI/A2/1–10; 14.6.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. Nine women in their Foundling petitions claimed that they had lain in at the GLI. Seventeen women claimed that they had given birth in the Store Street Lying-in Hospital. None of these can be traced and verified because individual information of women does not exist for these institutions. Of the 37 women who claimed that they laid in at the Westminster Hospital, 12 have been traced, LMA/A/FH/8/1/1/1–26. Andrew, Philanthropy and Police, p. 133. Croxson, ‘An Economic Analysis’, p. 89. B. Croxson, ‘The Public and Private Faces of Eighteenth-Century London Dispensary Charity’, Medical History, 14, April 1997, pp. 127–150, p. 128. Andrew, Philanthropy, pp. 106, 149–156. A Plain Account of the Advantages of the Lying-in Charity for Delivering Poor Married Women at their Own Habitations (London, 1767), p. 10. B. North, A Sermon Preached before the President, Vice-Presidents, and Governors of the Lying-in Charity for Delivering Poor Married Women at their Own Habitations; on the Tenth Day of April 1771 . . . At the Parish Church of St Ann Soho (London, 1771), p. 10. Wilson, The Making, p. 197. Wilson, The Making, p. 197. North, A Sermon Preached before the President . . . of the Lying-in Charity, p. 13. The hospital was encouraging domiciliary rather than hospital care. Croxson, ‘The Public and Private Faces’, p. 137 and ‘An Economic Analysis’, p. 132. Croxson, ‘The Evolution and Development’, pp. 53–55.

254 Notes 152. 153. 154. 155.

Rhodes, Doctor John Leake’s Hospital, p. 79 and Wilson, The Making, p. 197. Fissell, Patients, pp. 110, 112, 118. Marland, Medicine and Society, pp. 219–220. Evenden, The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London, p. 200.

8 ‘Be so good as to remember where this child goes to’: Poor but not hopeless 1. 30.1.1774, London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), LMA/A/FH/A8/ 1/1/5. 2. D. Defoe, Moll Flanders (London, 1989 [1722]), p. 181. 3. For a classic description of how the poor struggled to survive in eighteenthcentury France, see the two chapters dedicated to ‘economies of makeshift’, in O. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford, 1974), p. 332. The poor’s economies of expedience were similar in both national contexts. 4. For similar evidence on the Foundling Hospital in nineteenth-century Paris, see R. Fuchs, Abandoned Children, Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth Century France (Albany, NY, 1984), p. 102. Fuchs published a later book exploring poor women’s survival networks in nineteenth-century Paris and the alternatives that women had to the abandonment of their children, see her Poor and Pregnant in Paris: Strategies for Survival in the Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick, 1992). 5. A. Clark, ‘Whores and Gossips: Sexual Reputation in London, 1770–1825’, in A. Angerman et al. (eds), Current Issues in Women’s History (London, 1989). 6. On the problems of distinguishing between these terms in eighteenthcentury literature, see N. Tadmor, ‘The Concept of the Household-Family in Eighteenth-Century England’, Past and Present, 151, pp. 111–140; idem ‘ “Family” and “Friend”, in Pamela: A Case-Study in the History of the Family in Eighteenth-Century England’, Social History, 14, 3, October 1989; idem ‘Concepts of the Family in Five Eighteenth-Century Texts’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1992). 7. L. Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford, 1996), pp. 148–159. 8. 29.5.1771, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 9. 17.1.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. 10. 4.11.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. 11. For further evidence of the fluidity of definitions of plebeian female virtue in the eighteenth century, see J. Gammon, ‘Ravishment and Ruin: The Construction of Stories of Sexual Violence in England, c.1640–1820’ (PhD thesis, University of Essex, 2000), pp. 13, 21, 260–261. For a discussion of the importance of the honour to be gained by an honest and diligent housewife in the context of her daily work and household position, see G. Walker, ‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour in Early Modern England’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth series, VI (Cambridge, 1996), p. 237, p. 245. For reference to the importance of the possession of industriousness and sobriety for unmarried mothers amongst people of their own class despite a negative sexual reputation, see Clarke, ‘Whores and Gossips’, p. 236. See also F. Dabhoiwala, ‘The Construction of Honour,

Notes 255

12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

Reputation and Status in Late-Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth-Century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth series, VI (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 208, 212. However, he argues that this flexibility was characteristic of only the early modern period and the situation was much changed by the end of the eighteenth century, p. 213. For a brief discussion of this point, see A. Clark, Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (London, 1995) p. 61. The same terms were also used by employers to testify to the good character of female rape victims bringing cases against their alleged attackers in rape trials at the Old Bailey at the time, see Gammon, ‘Ravishment and Ruin’, p. 183. See also Bob Scribner, ‘Is a History of Popular Culture Possible?’, Journal of European Ideas, 10, 2, pp. 175–191, 1989, p. 175 and J. Mullan and C. Reid (eds), Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection (Oxford, 2000), Introduction. A. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000), p. 12. N. Tadmor, ‘ “In the Even my Wife read to Me”: Women, Reading and Household Life in the Eighteenth Century’, in J. Raven, H. Small and N. Tadmor (eds), The Practice and Representation of Reading in England (Cambridge, 1996), p. 168. See also Fox, Oral and Literate, p. 37. See T. Harris (ed.), ‘Problematising Popular Culture’, in Popular Culture in England, c.1500–1850 (Houndmills, 1995) for his encouragement to historians to study the interactions between elite and popular culture. See also R. Outhwaite, ‘ “Objects of Charity”: Petitions to the London Foundling Hospital, 1768–1772’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32, 4, Summer 1999, pp. 497–510, 514; R. Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution, Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in Enlightenment London, volume one (London, 1998), p. 281. P. Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London 1660–1730 (London, 1989), p. 218; D. Marshall, The English Domestic Servant in History (London, 1949), p. 7; P. Seleski, ‘The Women of the Labouring Poor: Love, Work and Poverty in London, 1750–1820’ (PhD thesis, University of Stanford, 1989), p. 55 and T. Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service in London, 1660–1750: Gender, Life-Cycle, Work and Household Relations’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1996), p. 12. F. Prochaska, ‘Philanthropy’, in F.M.L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 363. For evidence of plebeian women helping other women through illegitimate pregnancies, see Clark, ‘Whores and Gossips’, pp. 235–237 and her Struggle, p. 57, 81–82. However, Clark does argue that the numbers of employers who helped their servants were far outnumbered by employers who threw their servants out on the streets, see her ‘Womanhood and Manhood in the Transition from Plebeian to Working-Class Culture: London 1780–1845’ (PhD thesis, Rutgers University, 1987), p. 67. 22.11.1786, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/16. On Elizabeth Shackleton’s fondness for some of her servants, see A. Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (London, 1998), pp. 143–146. 5.9.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 8.2.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 20.3.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7.

256 Notes 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

17.8.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 29.5.1771, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 14.7.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 27.11.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 5.12.1792, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/18. 9.1.1797, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/22. 15.2.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 31.10.1787, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/17. 5.6.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. 14.7.1773; 27.10.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 15.6.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 18.5.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 8.2.1775. See also 18.12.1771; 29.5.1771; 29.7.1772; 22.7.1772; 25.11.1772; 13.10.1773; 19.1.1774; 20.4.1774; 18.5.1774; 8.2.1775; 9.4.1777, LMA/A/ FH/A8/1/1/2–8. Indeed, the role of upper-class employers in the lives of their unmarried servants provides further evidence countering Donna Andrew’s argument that elite women dissociated themselves from the Foundling Hospital because of its supposed associations with immorality. See her Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1989), p. 63 and also D. Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in EighteenthCentury England (London, 1993), p. 159. It is also at odds with Anna Clark’s history of changing class relations at this time. In contrast, Clark argues that members of the upper classes expected repentance from unmarried mothers and would have denied them any help because they were not dependent upon networks of reciprocity for survival, see her ‘Whores and Gossips’, p. 237. 12.1.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 18.11.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 11.9.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. 15.2.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 11.10.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 17.2.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/2/10. 22.6.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 10.4.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 24.8.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 18.6.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. 18.5.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 15.6.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 8.2.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 11.10.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. See the second quote used to open the chapter. See also Gammon, ‘Ravishment and Ruin’, p. 226. 2.3.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 2.9.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. Exceptions include Mr Clay and Andrew Grant. See p. 192. 5.12.1792, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/18. 17.8.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. For further discussion of the language used in character references, see pp. 113, 176.

Notes 257 61. 22.7.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 62. 5.12.1792, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/18. Clark argues that fathers and other male relatives, unlike female relatives, shunned unmarried pregnant family members but the petitions show that family members of both genders often supported their relatives through pregnancy and beyond, see her ‘Whores and Gossips’, pp. 237–238. Although it contradicts his thesis, Trumbach also demonstrates how families helped unmarried mothers, Sex and the Gender Revolution, p. 289. 63. 25.6.1799, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/24. 64. 20.1.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 65. 6.9.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 66. 16.1.1790, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/17. 67. 20.8.1769, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 68. 1770, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 69. 10.3.1770, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 70. 23.9.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 71. 3.4.1776, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/7. 72. 9.1.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13. 73. 7.6.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 74. 8.2.1769, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 75. F. Prochaska, The Voluntary Impulse: Philanthropy in Modern Britain (London, 1988), pp. xiii–xiv; his ‘Philanthropy’, in F.M.L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 363. For evidence of plebeian women helping other women through illegitimate pregnancies, see Clarke, ‘Whores and Gossips’, pp. 235–237. 76. On France, see O. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, p. 115. 77. D. Evenden, The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London (Cambridge, 2000), p. 87. 78. 29.6.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 79. 17.1.1801, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. 80. 3.10.1772, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/3. 81. 14.7.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 82. 27.10.1773, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/4. 83. 29.1.1777, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/8. 84. 1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. 85. 9.6.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 86. 9.6.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 87. 18.6.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 88. 1.1.1768, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/1. 89. 24.10.1770, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 90. 15.5.1771, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/2. 91. M. Thale (ed.), The Autobiography of Francis Place (1771–1854) (Cambridge, 1972), p. 63. See below for an example of a woman who kept a cellar in Seven Dials from where she sold clothes, p. 197. 92. 16.2.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 93. 5.4.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 94. 7.9.1774, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/5. 95. 24.5.1775, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/6. 96. 3.5.1800, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/25. 97. 22.5.1782, LMA/A/FH/A8/1/1/13.

258 Notes 98. Similar evidence exists for the Foundling Hospital in Paris during the nineteenth century; see Fuchs, Abandoned Children, pp. 236–240; and in Florence, Milan and Rome see the Introduction as well as, Eugennio Sonnino, ‘Between the Home and the Hospice. The Plight and Fate of Girl Orphans in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Rome’ and Volker Hunecke, ‘The Abandonment of Legitimate Children in Nineteenth-Century Milan and the European Context’, in J. Henderson and R. Wall (eds), Poor Women and Children in the European Past (London, 1994), p. 10. 99. It is possible that thousands of parents reclaimed their children by taking them out as apprentices. They could avoid paying maintenance charges and providing a bond for their child by doing so. Sub-Committee Minutes, 23.6.1762, LMA/A/FH/A3/5/4. Thousands of petitions for the apprenticeship of foundling children exist for the eighteenth century but it was thought to be too time-consuming to research them for the purposes of this study. 100. Account of the Foundling Hospital (1749). 101. General Court (hereafter G. Court) Minutes, 1.10.1740, LMA/Microfilm/ X041/010. 102. General Committee (hereafter GC) Minutes, 25.7.1759, LMA/A/FH/K02/7. 103. G. Court Minutes, 28.3.1764, LMA/Microfilm/X041/010; GC Minutes, 4.4.1764, LMA/A/FH/K02/9. 104. GC Minutes, 11.4.1764, LMA/A/FH/KO2/9. 105. 8.2.1764, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/5/1. 106. GC Minutes, 12.11.1760, LMA/A/FH/KO2/7. 107. Ibid., 21.4.1762, LMA/A/FH/K02/8. 108. 24.9.1760, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/2/1. 109. 11.6.1760, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/2/1. 110. GC Minutes, 18.6.1760, LMA/A/FH/K02/7. 111. 30.7.1760, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/2/1. 112. GC Minutes, 7.12.1757, LMA/A/FH/KO2/006. 113. 26.5.1764, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/6/1. 114. 2.7.1800, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/20/1. 115. 2.7.1800, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/20/1. 116. On France, see Fuchs, Abandoned Children, p. 239. 117. 20.8.1766, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/9/1. 118. 21.3.1761, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/3/1. 119. 1796, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/20/1. 120. 25.9.1765, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/8/1. 121. For similar evidence on France, see Fuchs, Abandoned Children, p. 236. 122. 18.7.1772, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/14/1. 123. 22.8.1764, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/6/1. 124. 29.8.1764, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/6/1. 125. 9.5.1764, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/5/1. 126. 5.9.1764, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/7/11. 127. 3.8.1786, Catherine was also single, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/19/1. 128. 12.7.1786, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/19/1. 129. 27.6.1759, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/2/1. 130. 16.1.1777, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/15/1. 131. 14.7.1762, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/3/1. 132. 23.7.1783, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/17/1.

Notes 259 133. 25.9.1771, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/13/1. 134. 1.3.1788, LMA/A/FH/A11/2/15/1.

Conclusion 1. L.H. Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 15, 20 and Chapter 3, pp. 82–111. 2. See L. Forman Cody, ‘The Politics of Illegitimacy in an Age of Reform: Women, Reproduction, and Political Economy in England’s New Poor Law of 1834’, Journal of Women’s History, 11, 4, Winter 2000, pp. 131–157 and J. Bourne Taylor, ‘Representing Illegitimacy in Victorian Culture’, in R. Robbins and J. Wolfrey (eds), Victorian Identities: Social and Cultural Formation in Nineteenth-Century Literature (London, 1995).

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Index abandonment, 4, 92, 96, 102, 129–31, 143–4, 206 abortion, 111 acquaintances, 112, 190–3 age of marriage, 2 alcohol, 33–4 Aldgate parish, 6, 11, 22–4, 32–45 alehouses, 24 see also taverns apprenticeship and apprentices, 1, 88, 118, 200 ballads, 48 see also popular literature ballot, 85–8, 94, 97, 109, 151 bastardy examinations, 6–9, 27–8, 159 see also Aldgate parish; Islington parish; Lambeth parish; settlement bastardy prone sub-society, 4 betrothal, 2 bigamy, 38, 44 breastfeeding, 132, 151, 175 British Lying-in Hospital, 14, 145, 147, 151–3, 171 Bromley, Rev. Mr, 101 Brownlow, John, 69–70, 101 chapbooks, 48 see also popular literature character, 147, 175–6 childbirth, 14, 145–7, 189, 190–1 see also British Lying-in Hospital; City of London Lying-in Hospital; General Lying-in Hospital; Middlesex Lying-in Hospital; midwives and midwifery; Royal Maternity Charity; Store Street Lying-in Hospital; Westminster Lying-in Hospital church courts, 5, 11, 112

City of London Lying-in Hospital, 14, 145, 147–8, 151–3, 171 clothes, 127, 140, 142, 189, 196 cohabitation, 37–8, 41 coins, 140–1 compassion, 5, 13, 16, 58, 71, 174, 177, 188, 192, 202 contraception, 111 Coram, Thomas, 12, 68–9, 207 courtship, 12, 17, 32, 34–5, 45, 51–9, 112–17 crime, 30 culture of the poor, 4, 9–11, 14, 48–66, 100, 108–9, 125–6, 139–43, 201 desertion, 39, 44–5, 120–2, 125 deviance, 3–4 domestic service, 29, 31–2, 113, 159–60, 166–7, 176–88 see also master/servant relationships dunghills, 68 East End, 19–24, 53 economies of makeshift, 30, 132, 172–3, 207 education, 10 see also literacy emotion, 128–9, 131 enclosure, 2, 19 family, 19, 28, 174, 178, 188–90, 200 fatherhood, 137–9, 204 Fleet, 47–8 footmen, 158–9 Foundling Hospital accepted petitions, 14, 98, 100, 102, 107–9, 177–93 admission process, 15, 72–5, 85–94, 98, 100, 182–3 art gallery, 12–13, 76–85 chapel, 12 concerts, 75 277

278 Index Foundling Hospital – continued establishment and management, 12, 67–76 General Reception, 13, 89–94 government funding, 89, 93 mortality rate, 87, 91–2, 136–7 rejected petitions, 103–7 staff, 72–3 Foundlings contact with parents, 13, 76–7, 133–4 education, 88, 134 legitimate, 14, 92, 206 relationships with nurses, 76, 88 training, 88 friendship, 16, 28, 173, 175–7, 190–3, 200 General Lying-in Hospital, 14, 145, 147, 154, 156–7, 162, 164, 167 George, Mary Dorothy, 25 ghosts, 49, 59–65 Handel, George Frideric, 75 Hanway, Jonas, 1, 70–1, 91–2, 97, 149, 187, 207 Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, 48 Hitchcock, Tim, 98–100 Hogarth, William, 1, 77, 81–5 hope, 114, 204–5 household, 3, 18–19 illegitimacy rate, 2 illness, 112, 119 indiscriminate admission, see Foundling Hospital, General Reception infanticide, 4–5, 75, 132–3 Irish, 48 Islington parish, 11, 24, 32–5 Justices of the Peace, 6–7, 25 Lambeth parish, 11, 24, 32, 35–45, 155, 169 leisure, 33–4, 159 life cycle, 29, 164–9

life stories, 9–10, 100, 201, 203 see also bastardy examinations; culture of the poor; Foundling Hospital, accepted petitions, rejected petitions; literacy literacy, 9–12, 100, 108, 140, 142–3, 176 lodging houses, 40 lotteries, 109 see also ballot lying-in, see childbirth McClure, Ruth, 13, 16 Magdalen Hospital, 99 mariners, 11, 36 marriage, 2–4, 12, 52 ceremony, 38, 47–8 clandestine, 47–8 irregular, 38 master/servant relationships, 34, 113, 117, 160–4, 177–88 Middlesex Lying-in Hospital, 14, 145, 147–8, 150, 151, 153, 171 midwives and midwifery, 16, 145–7, 172, 174, 191 migration, 2–4, 18–19, 25, 27, 31, 45, 166, 175, 182, 190, 200 misfortune, 79–81, 107, 109–17, 125–6, 134, 188, 205 mobility, 2, 18–19, 36, 40, 43, 52, 190 needlework, 29 neighbourhood, 16, 160, 174, 176, 186, 190–3, 200 ostracism, 4–5, 25, 175–6, 203 Pamela, 11 parish officers, 205, 208 Petitions for reclaiming, 15, 174, 193, 197 philanthropy, 71, 96–7, 146, 149–50, 170–2, 207–9 Poor Law, 208–9 see also bastardy examinations; settlement popular literature, 9–12, 48–66, 109–10, 115–16, 123 pregnancy, 35, 129

Index 279 press gang, 42, 119 promise of marriage, 13, 32, 116, 180 prostitution, 4, 30–1, 33, 43, 103–4, 110–11, 153 quantitative history, 4 rape, 117, 161 reclaiming, 13, 15–16, 74, 77, 90–1, 134, 139, 174, 193–200, 202 see also Petitions for reclaiming references, 15–16, 176, 180, 187, 196, 199 remarriage, 197–8 reputation, 163, 176, 201, 203, 206 respectability, 14, 163 Royal Maternity Charity, 14, 145, 171 sailors, 53–4, 118, 159, 165–6 secrecy, 92, 114, 157, 175–7, 186, 203, 205 seduction, 13, 101, 109, 114–16, 180, 205 settlement, 6–9, 14, 24–8, 72, 152, 155–6, 159, 162, 167–8 sexual passivity, 98–100, 107, 116, 122–6 sexual relationships, 205 see also courtship

shame, 4–5, 70, 113, 157, 169, 175–6, 204–5 sin, 112, 115 songs, see popular literature Store Street Lying-in Hospital, 14, 145, 147, 154, 164, 186 surrogate parenthood, 130, 143 taverns, 33–4, 37–8, 165 tokens, 14, 74, 127, 139–43 transportation, 120 victimhood, 4, 16, 100, 109 Wade (Wale), Samuel, 79–81, 86 wages, 30, 39, 131, 135, 159–60 war, 36–7, 42, 54, 93, 118–21, 168 West End, 19–24 Westminster Lying-in Hospital, 14, 145, 147, 150, 154–5, 158–60, 161–8, 171, 186 widowhood, 42–4, 52, 102, 119–20, 166 Wilson, Adrian, 16, 147, 150 work, 6, 17, 28–32, 35–41, 117–22, 157–8 workhouse, 5, 27, 136–7, 146