Maintenance

Williams, Samantha

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-73320-3_5

Maintenance

Samantha Williams²

Chapter
First Online: 24 April 2018

329 Accesses

Abstract

Under the bastardy laws unmarried parents, and particularly reputed fathers, were held financially responsible for their children. Putative fathers were identified and affiliated in the magistrates’ court. However, the amount recovered by fathers was very low in London; this was a failing system. More detailed evidence on the occupations of putative fathers than has been explored by historians hitherto shows that fathers were not necessarily representative of the underlying parish populations. Fathers were charged with initial expenses and weekly maintenance for their child for between 7 and 15 years or payment of a lump sum. However, actually recouping these costs was a difficult and protracted process for parish overseers and much of the expense fell to parish ratepayers instead.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 99.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
T. Nutt, ‘Illegitimacy, paternal financial responsibility, and the 1834 Poor Law Commission Report: the myth of the old poor law and the making of the new’, Economic History Review, 63 (2010), pp. 335–61, at pp. 336–7; T. Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, in A. Levene (ed.), Narratives of the poor in eighteenth-century Britain, I: Voices of the poor: poor law depositions and letters (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006), pp. 127–203, at p. 127.
2.
P. Slack, Poverty and policy in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Longman, 1988), p. 124; P.A. Fideler, Social welfare in pre-industrial England: the old Poor Law tradition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 97–8.
3.
Slack, Poverty and policy, p. 130.
4.
L. Gowing, ‘Ordering the body: illegitimacy and female authority in seventeenth-century England’, in M.J. Braddick, and J. Walter (eds), Negotiating power in early modern society: order, hierarchy and subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 43–62, at p. 45.
5.
Except for deserted wives and children, for whom affiliation orders could also be issued.
6.
Nutt, ‘Paternal financial liability, p. 337.
7.
M. Ingram, Church courts, sex and marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 262.
8.
Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’, pp. 336–7; T. Hitchcock and J. Black (eds), ‘Introduction’, Chelsea settlement and bastardy examinations, 1733–1766 (London: London Record Society, 1999), pp. x-xi, at p. xi.
9.
S. Williams, ‘The maintenance of bastard children in London, 1790–1834’, Economic History Review, 69:3 (2016), pp. 945–971, pp. 949–50.
10.
Gowing, ‘Ordering the body’, pp. 52; L. Gowing, ‘Giving birth at the magistrate’s gate: single mothers in the early modern city’, in S. Tarbin and S. Broomhall (eds), Women, identities and communities in early modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 137–52, at pp. 140–42.
11.
T. Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, pp. 127–34; Hitchcock and Black, Chelsea settlement examinations, pp. vii-xiii.
12.
See Southwark Local Studies Library [SLSL] 4563/1–2, St. George the Martyr bastardy warrants, 1776–1832.
13.
Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, pp. 303–4; A. Levene, ‘Poor families, removals and “nurture” in late Old Poor Law London’, Continuity and Change, 25:2 (2010), pp. 233–262, at pp. 236–7; S. Williams, Poverty, gender and life-cycle under the English poor law (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011), pp. 107–8; A. Eccles, Vagrancy in law and practice under the old poor law (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 88, 108–9; Gowing, ‘Ordering the body’, pp. 43–4; P. Griffiths, Lost Londons: change, crime, and control in the capital city, 1550–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 59–64.
14.
Griffiths, Lost Londons, pp. 56–9.
15.
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 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 102–21; S.H. Mendelson and P. Crawford, Women in early modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 148.
16.
SLSL 1121-2, St. George the Martyr bastardy bonds, 1628–1756; St. Mary Newington extant bastardy bonds 1659–1756. TNA on-line catalogue lists bastardy documents from Sussex from 1608. Shepard argues that the intervention of the parish authorities became more routine over the seventeenth century: A. Shepard, ‘Brokering fatherhood: illegitimacy and paternal rights and responsibilities in early modern England’, in S. Hindle, A. Shepard and J. Walter (eds), Remaking English society: social relations and social change in early modern England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 41–63, at pp. 59–60.
17.
www.londonlives.org, Middlesex sessions papers, LMSMPS500860014, 9 Nov 1702.
18.
Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, p. 128; Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’, p. 107. King cites figures as high as 58% in Tyne and Wear: P. King, ‘The summary courts and social relations in eighteenth-century England’, Past & Present, 183 (2004), pp. 125–172, at Table 1, p. 137; F. Dabhoiwala, ‘Summary justice in early modern London’, English Historical Review, 121 (2006), pp. 796–822; D.D. Gray, Crime, prosecution and social relations: the summary courts of the City of London in the late eighteenth century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 20–22, 117, 132–4.
19.
Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’, p. 338; Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’, p. 105.
20.
(1834) Appendix to the First Report from the Commissioners of the Poor Laws, p. 454.
21.
Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, pp. 130–1.
22.
SLSL, 4563/1-2, St. George the Martyr Bastardy Warrants, 1776–1832.
23.
R.B. Shoemaker, Prosecution and punishment: petty crime and the aw in London and rural Middlesex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 55. And see www.londonlives.org, St. Clement Danes Vestry Minutes, 02/10/1703.
24.
Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, p. 130.
25.
Gowing, ‘Ordering the body’, p. 60.
26.
Ibid., pp. 53. Also see A. Shepard, Accounting for oneself: worth, status, and the social order in early modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 136, 138.
27.
Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’, pp. 109, 121; Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, p. 131.
28.
Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’, passim; Nutt, ‘Bastardy’; Shoemaker, Prosecution and punishment, p. 105 n39.
29.
Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’; Nutt, ‘Bastardy’. For the seventeenth century see Gowing, ‘Ordering the body’, pp. 52–62 and Shepard, Accounting for oneself, pp. 25, 54.
30.
www.londonlives.org, St. Clement Danes parish vestry minutes, WCCDMV362060089, 9 March 1739.
31.
See R. Burn, Justice of the peace (London, 1727), p. 45.
32.
www.londonlives.org, City of London sessions papers, LMSLPS150060033, 23 March 1695.
33.
www.londonlives.org, Westminster sessions papers, LMWJPS653290003, 1 July 1709, LMWJPS655090037 October 1794 www.londonlives.org/. See also http://www.londonlives.org/browse.jsp?div=LMWJPS65509PS655090037&terms=workhouse#highlight June 2015, Westminster Sessions.
34.
SLSL 4563/1-2, Bastardy warrants [this document was tucked in with bastardy bonds], January 1817.
35.
Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’, pp. 112–13; Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, cases 20–23, pp. 171–4.
36.
SLSL 4563/1-2 1809.
37.
Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’, pp. 112–13.
38.
Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’, pp. 343–4.
39.
M.A. Lyle, ‘Regionality in the late old poor law: the treatment of chargeable bastards from Rural Queries’,
Agricultural History Review, 53 (2005), pp. 141–57, at p. 146; Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’, p. 337.
40.
Lyle, ‘Regionality’, p. 146; Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’, p. 337.
41.
Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’; Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’, p. 104.
42.
Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility, pp. 346–7; Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’, p. 104; Lyle, ‘Regionality’, p. 157.
43.
The R² is 0.8593, but with St. Pancras and St. Marylebone excluded it is R² 0.7532. On foundlings see Griffin, Lost Londons, pp. 182–3, 260, 267; Levene, Childhood of the poor, pp. 33–4, 56; Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, pp. 163–4.
44.
‘Town Queries’ (P.P. 1834, XXXVI). St. George the Martyr and St. Saviour’s did not give sufficiently full answers and so their data is not included in Table 5.1. St. Mary Newington did not respond.
45.
‘Town Queries’ (P.P. 1834, XXXVI), rates raised in 1831, bastardy recovery evidence 1832 (referring to 1827–1832).
46.
J. Black, ‘Who were the putative fathers of illegitimate children in London, 1740–1810?’, in Levene et al, Illegitimacy, pp. 50–65, at p. 54; T. Evans, ‘Unfortunate Objects’: lone mothers in eighteenth-century London (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 36, 40, 117–18.
47.
Evans, Unfortunate, pp. 36, 40, 117–19, 158; Black, ‘Putative fathers’, p. 54.
48.
See, for example, SLSL 860-865 St. Mary Newington Bastardy Adjudications [orders], 1808–1843; Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’, pp. 337.
49.
SLSL 97 St. Saviour’s Overseers’ Bastardy Maintenance Book, 1818–1831; SLSL 763 St. George the Martyr Churchwardens and Overseers’ Maintenance Accounts on Affiliation Orders, 1818–1835; SLSL 860-865 St. Mary Newington Bastardy Adjudications [orders], 1808–1843; P74/LUK/63, St. Luke Chelsea, bastardy cases, names of parents and children and payments made and received, 1826–1831.
50.
Abstract to expense of the poor (P.P. 1803–04, XIII.I), pp. 502–3, 509–10.
51.
‘Town Queries’ (P.P. 1834, XXXVI).
52.
Data from L. Shaw Taylor and E.A. Wrigley, ESRC-funded project ‘The occupational structure of Britain 1379–1911’.
53.
‘Appendix to the first annual report’ (P.P. 1835, XXXV), pp. 112–16.
54.
SLSL 860-865 St. Mary Newington Bastardy Adjudications [orders], 1808–1836; SLSL 762 St. George the Martyr Relief and Filiation Orders, 1822–1832.
55.
SLSL 603 St. George the Martyr Register of illegitimate children, 1794–1807; SLSL 763 St. George the Martyr Churchwardens and overseers maintenance accounts on affiliation orders, 1818–1835; London Metropolitan Archives [LMA] P92/MRY/357 St. Mary Newington Register of bastard children, 1802–1835; SLSL 97 St. Saviour’s Overseers’ bastard maintenance book, 1818–1831.
56.
SLSL 588 St. George the Martyr, Illegitimate children individual accounts, 1792–1808.
57.
LMA St. Mary Newington Register of illegitimate children, 1802–1835 and SLSL 860-865 St. Mary Newington Bastardy Adjudications [orders], 1808–1843; SLSL 603 St. George the Martyr Register of Illegitimate children, 1794–1807 and SLSL 588 St. George the Martyr Illegitimate children individual accounts, 1792–1808.
58.
SLSL 4563/1-2, St. George the Martyr Bastardy warrants.
59.
SLSL 603 St. George the Martyr Register of illegitimate children, 1794–1807; LMA P92/MRY/357 St. Mary Newington Register of bastard children, 1802–1835.
60.
www.londonlives.org, St. Clement Danes Miscellaneous Accounts Books, 11/04/1721; St. Clement Danes Vestry Minutes, 01/04/1779.
61.
www.londonlives.org, St. Clement Danes Vestry Minutes, 05/11/1767, 05/04/1768, and see also 03/02/1785 for another case of indemnity for an overseer. For similar cases in the seventeenth century see Shepard, ‘Brokering fatherhood’, pp. 53–4.
62.
LMA P92/MRY/357 St. Mary Newington Register of bastard children, 1802–1835.
63.
SLSL 4563/1-2, St. George the Martyr Bastardy warrants.
64.
https://www.londonlives.org/static/VobeThomas1788.jsp#toc2.
65.
See, for instance, Gowing, ‘Ordering the body’, pp. 55–6; Hubbard, City women, pp. 88, 90–92.
66.
Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, case 1, pp. 135–6.
67.
F. Dabhoiwala, The origins of sex: a history of the first sexual revolution (London: Penguin 2012), pp. 22, 41. See also M. Finn, ‘The Barlow Bastards: romance comes home from the Empire’, in M. Finn, M. Lobban and J. Bourne Taylor (eds), Legitimacy and illegitimacy in nineteenth-century law, literature and history (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 25–47.
68.
SLSL 860-865 St. Mary Newington, Bastardy Adjudications [orders], 1808–1843.
69.
Ibid.
70.
Evans, Unfortunate objects, pp. 35–45; N. Rogers, ‘Carnal knowledge: illegitimacy in eighteenth-century Westminster’, Journal of Social History, 23:2 (1989), pp. 355–375, at pp. 358–61, and Table 2 p. 359; R. Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution: heterosexuality and the third gender in Enlightenment London, I (London: University of Chicago, 1998), ch. 8; Black, ‘Putative fathers’, p. 54.
71.
Rogers, ‘Carnal knowledge’; Evans, Unfortunate objects, ch. 2; Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, ch. 8.
72.
Black, ‘Who were the putative fathers of illegitimate children in London, 1740–1810?’, in Levene et al, Illegitimacy, pp. 50–65, at p. 53.
73.
In the St. Mary Newington Register of Bastard Children occupations are given in 45% of records; St. Mary Newington Bastardy Adjudications in 75% of cases; St. George the Martry 1818–1828/35 82%; and St. Saviours 72%. There is no occupational data in the Register of bastard children for St. George the Martyr 1797–1809.
74.
Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, p. 235.
75.
Ibid., p. 244.
76.
Evans, Unfortunate objects, p. 52.
77.
In the bastardy examinations for St. Margaret Westminster 23% of putative fathers were gentlemen 1712–19, 16% in the 1720s and 6–8% in the 1730s and 1740s, while in St. Leonard Shoreditch the figure was 6%, it was 3% in St. Botolph Aldgate, and it was just 2% in St. Luke Chelsea, c.1750–1800 (although Hitchcock and Black claim that 10% of putative fathers came from the middling sort): Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, pp. 250–1; Hitchcock and Black, Chelsea settlement examinations, p. xviii.
78.
Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, p. 251.
79.
Ibid.; Black, ‘Putative fathers’, p. 63; J. Black, ‘Illegitimacy, sexual relations and location in metropolitan London, 1735–85’, in T. Hitchcock and H. Shore (eds.), The streets of London: from the Great Fire to the Great Stink (London: Rivers Oram, 2003), pp. 101–18, p. 116.
80.
Black, ‘Putative fathers’, p. 64.
81.
Hitchcock and Black, Chelsea examinations, examination 396, pp. 125–6; Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, pp. 240–1.
82.
Rogers, ‘Carnal knowledge’, pp. 358–9; Black, ‘Putative fathers’, p. 63.
83.
Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, pp. 239–40, 247, 251–5; Black, ‘Sexual relations’, pp. 107–8.
84.
Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, p. 253.
85.
www.londonlives.org St. Clement Danes Misc Accounts Books, for instance 13/11/1723; SLSL 588 St. George the Martyr Illegitimate children individual accounts, 1792–1808.
86.
SLSL 860-865 St. Mary Newington, Bastardy Adjudications [orders], 1808–1836.
87.
Payment of a large sum cancelled a bond; see www.londonlives.org, St. Clement Danes Vestry Minutes, 4 January 1776.
88.
J. Hanway, An earnest appeal for mercy to the children of the poor (London, 1766), p. 69.
89.
Hanway, Earnest Appeal, p. 29
90.
SLSL 603 St. George the Martyr, Register of illegitimate children, 1794–1807.
91.
LMA P74/LUK/123.
92.
Trumbach, Sex and the gender revolution, p. 246; J.S. Taylor, ‘The impact of pauper settlement 1691–1834’, Past & Present, 73 (1976), pp. 42–74, at p. 61.
93.
T. Nutt, ‘Illegitimacy, paternal financial responsibility, and the 1834 Poor Law Commission Report: the myth of the old poor law and the making of the new’, Economic History Review, 63 (2010), pp. 335–61, at p. 351.
94.
SLSL 603 St. George the Martyr, Register of illegitimate children, 1797–1809.
95.
www.londonlives.org, St. Clement Danes Miscellaneous Accounts Books, for instance 23/05/1720, 24/05/1720, 31/05/1720, 11/04/1721, 11/04/1721, 15/04/1721.
96.
£80 in St. George the Martyr (SLSL 4580 Bastardy bonds, 1730–1830); £100 in St. Clement Danes (List of securities for the maintenance of bastard children, Registers of bastard children, 1775–1779, www.londonlives.org last accessed 29 August 2014).
97.
www.londonlives.org.
98.
SLSL 4563/1-2 5/1801 a, 11 July 1801.
99.
SLSL 763, St. George the Martyr maintenance accounts on affiliation orders, 1818–1835.
100.
SLSL 97, St. Saviour’s Bastard maintenance Book, 1818–1831.
101.
SLSL 588, St. George the Martyr Illegitimate children individual accounts, 1792–1808.
102.
Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’, p. 337; Lyle, ‘Regionality’, p. 146.
103.
Nutt, ‘Illegitimacy’, pp. 155–6.
104.
Hanway, An Earnest appeal, pp. 72–3.
105.
St. Saviour’s 2s. 6d. = 30, >2s. 6d. = 49, St. George the Martyr 4s. = 15, >4s. = 16.
106.
Appendix to the First Report from the Commissioners of the Poor Laws, p. 454.
107.
L.D. Schwarz, ‘The standard of living in the long run: London, 1700–1860’, Economic History Review, XXXVIII (1985), pp. 24–41; L.D. Schwarz, London in the age of industrialisation: entrepreneurs, labour force and living conditions, 1700–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); E.H. Hunt, ‘Industrialization and regional inequality: wages in Britain, 1760–1914’, Journal of Economic History, 46 (1986), pp. 935–66; R.C. Allen and J.L. Weisdorf, ‘Was there an “industrious revolution” before the industrial revolution? An empirical exercise for England, c. 1300–1830’, Economic History Review, 64 (2011), pp. 715–29. But see J. Stephenson, ‘“Real” wages? Contractors, workers, and pay in London building trades, 1650–1800’, Economic History Review, early view on-line, 2017.
108.
R. Burn, Handbook for justices (1727), p. 46.
109.
Poor law report (P.P. 1834, XXVII), pp. 95, 116.
110.
Nutt, ‘Illegitimacy’, ch.s 4, 5, 6.
111.
Appendix to First Annual Report (P.P. 1835, XXXV), p. 116.
112.
SLSL 588 St. George the Martyr Illegitimate children individual accounts, 1792–1808; LMA P92/MRY/357 St. Mary Newington register of bastard children, 1802–1835.
113.
Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’, pp. 336–7; Nutt, ‘Bastardy’, p. 128.
114.
SLSL 860-865 St. Mary Newington Bastardy Adjudications.
115.
Ibid.
116.
Guildhall Library, Annual Register of Poor Children, 1767 (I would like to thank Alysa Levene for her transcription of this); SLSL 764 St. George the Martyr Annual register of the parish poor children until they are apprenticed out, 1789–1805; SLSL 1619 St. Olave Annual register of the parish poor children until they are apprenticed out, 1785–1813; S. Williams, “That the Petitioner Shall have Borne a Good Character for Virtue, Sobriety, and Honesty Previous to her Misfortune”: unmarried mothers’ petitions to the Foundling Hospital and the rhetoric of need in the long eighteenth century’, in A. Levene, T. Nutt, and S. Williams (eds), Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700–1920 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. pp. 86–101.
117.
LMA P74/LUK/63; SLSL 764 St. George the Martyr.
118.
Nutt, ‘Paradox and problems’, p. 104; Nutt, ‘Illegitimacy’, pp. 175–6; Lyle, ‘Regionality’, p. 145; P. Crawford, Parents of poor children, p. 101.
119.
A. Levene, Childhood, pp. 16–17.
120.
Hanway, An Earnest appeal, pp. 72–3.
121.
SLSL 860-865 St. Mary Newington Bastardy adjudications [orders], 1808–1843.
122.
SLSL 588 St. George the Martyr Illegitimate children individual accounts, 1792–1808.
123.
Poor law report (P.P. 1834, XXVII), p. 224; Town Queries for St. George the Martyr.
124.
Levene, Childhood, pp. 12–14, ch. 3; Hitchcock and Shoemaker, London lives, pp. 290–5.
125.
It is possible that some allowance durations have been truncated due to the duration of data availability: St. George the Martyr 1792–1808 (16 years), 1818–1835 (17 years), St. Saviour’s (17 years), but this is less likely for St. Mary Newington 1802–1835 (33 years). Nevertheless, there were no allowances given for longer than 14 years in St. George the Martyr or 10 years in St. Saviour’s.
126.
SLSL 763, St. George the Martyr Churchwardens and overseers maintenance accounts on affiliation orders, 1818–1835.
127.
SLSL 97 St. Saviour’s Overseers’ bastard maintenance book, 1818–1831.
128.
SLSL 763 St. George the Martyr Churchwardens and overseers maintenance accounts on affiliation orders, 1818–1835.
129.
LMA P92/MRY/357 St. Mary Newington, Register of Bastard Children, 1802–1835; P74/LUK/63.
130.
Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’, p. 337; Lyle, ‘Regionality’, p. 144.
131.
SLSL 4563/1-2, St. George the Martyr bastardy warrants.
132.
LMA P92/MRY/357 St. Mary Newington, Register of Bastard Children, 1802–1835.
133.
SLSL 763 St. George the Martyr Churchwardens and overseers maintenance accounts on affiliation orders, 1818–1835; LMA P92/MRY/357 St. Mary Newington Register of bastard children, 1802–1835.
134.
SLSL 763 St. George the Martyr Churchwardens and overseers maintenance accounts on affiliation orders, 1818–1835.
135.
SLSL 588 St. Geo the Martyr Illegitimate children individual accounts, 1792–1808.
136.
www.londonlives.org, St. Clement Danes List of securities for the maintenance of bastard children, 10 December 1776.
137.
A.-M. Kilday, A history of infanticide in Britain c.1600 to the present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 162.
138.
U.R.Q. Henriques, ‘Bastardy and the new poor law’, Past & Present, 37 (1967), pp. 103–29, at p. 125.
139.
Nutt, ‘Illegitimacy and the poor law’, ch. 4, and especially pp. 181–4, 187–90.
140.
B. Reay, Microhistories: demography, society and culture in rural England, 1800–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 198.
141.
P.P. XXXVIII, 1837–8, ‘Return to the House of Commons of the Number of Affiliations made under the provisions of 4 & 5 Will. IV, c.76, s.72, at each Sessions of the Peace in England and Wales subsequent to the said Act etc’, pp. 413–42.
142.
Henriques, ‘Bastardy and the new poor law’, p. 121; Nutt, ‘Paternal financial responsibility’. And see PP 1837–8 XXXVIII.
143.
PP 1837–8 XXXVIII, p. 420.
144.
Nutt, ‘Illegitimacy and the poor law’, p. 191.
145.
There has been a focus on particular groups of inmates within the literature on workhouse populations, such as the elderly and children, but far less is known about unmarried mothers. This is in large part due to the sources allowing for relatively easy analysis of the age and sex profiles of inmates, but not for the marital status or illegitimacy of paupers (which is not necessarily given in the records).
146.
J.R. Gillis, For better, for worse: British marriage, 1600 to the present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 24, 367–8 n52.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Samantha Williams

Authors

Samantha Williams
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Williams, S. (2018). Maintenance. In: Unmarried Motherhood in the Metropolis, 1700–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73320-3_5

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73320-3_5
Published: 24 April 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73319-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73320-3
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics