Social scandal

Being hauled before the justice of the peace and subjected to a bastardy examination could be humiliating for a single mum or mother-to-be, and many chose to protect the identity of the man with whom they’d had an illicit affair. If his name was made known then pressure could be put upon the couple to wed and in some cases the parish would even pay for a marriage license.

Until 1732/ 3 a pregnant spinster might find herself being evicted from her home and carted off to her ‘parish of settlement’, which was sometimes deemed to be the place where she used to live or where she was born, as parish overseers did their best to avoid the trouble of identifying an absent father. If he wasn’t a local and couldn’t be traced then the parish could be faced with a bill for her lying-in and maintenance.

The whole process was not only a means of saving public money but was also intended to send a moral message to deter others from falling into the same situation. In Scotland, parish ministers presided over kirk sessions where adulterers and ‘fornicators’ had to publicly confess to their sins in a show of repentance. Kirk session minutes are therefore a good place to look if your ancestors were Scottish.

As late as the mid 18th century women who were pregnant with ‘bastards’ in England and Wales could still be punished with a public whipping. Even in the early 19th century they could be imprisoned for 6–12 months in the hope that they would be reformed. Sadly, these harsh measures only encouraged abortion and infanticide. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that attitudes slowly began to change. In 1919, the Registrar General for Scotland finally discontinued using the word ‘illegitimate’ on birth certificates for children born out of wedlock.