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Authors: Jennifer Worth
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London. This was reported in all the newspapers. Would a doctor or midwife have attended the birth of these babies? Would these infants have been registered by parish or state? Could the parents, or at least the mothers, be traced? Not a chance. These nine babies would have been but a few of the nameless children thrown into an unmarked grave, the offspring of the abject poor who were destitute and starving, who were outside any census and beyond enumeration, and whom Charles Booth (1844-1916), the first social statistician, numbered at 255,000 for all London and at 1.95 million for Great Britain as a whole. 7 Later surveys considered this estimate to be conservative, stating that the figure was nearer to 3 million.
Obvious mental or physical disability was another reason for concealing a birth. Fear was the catalyst – fear, amongst the poor, of having to support a sickly child who could contribute nothing to the family income. There was also fear of the stigma attached to having a disabled child. It was widely supposed that congenital defects were due to something vaguely sinister ‘in the blood’, which would mark the family out from its neighbours. The baby could be left to die (probably with the connivance of the mother, or the women who had helped with the birth) and then described as still-born. The father would probably have been unaware of any impairment, because men rarely had anything to do with birth in those days. ‘Women’s matters’ were taboo, a silence enforced as much by women as by men.
The upper classes – aristocracy and royalty – were particularly fearful of the stigma of a disabled child in the family. It could lead to ostracism because of so-called ‘tainted blood’, and the upper classes were not above smothering their own babies at birth.
Poverty led to the abandoning of babies. How much of this really went on I don’t know, but we midwives were always being told about it. The women of Poplar would say ‘Gor! You don’ wanna go dahn Lime’ouse [or Bow or Millwall or wherever]. Dreadful people vey are. Leaves ver babies on doorsteps, vey do.’ And women of Limehouse would say exactly the same about the women of Poplar! We got the impression that babies were being left in droves on the doorsteps of every other parish. However, we never saw it, and no baby was left on the convent steps during the 1950s. I personally know a lady who comes from Manchester, and was born in 1940. She tells me that she was an abandoned baby. She was found on a doorstep one morning along with the milk bottles. The baby was very sickly, but although the couple who found her were poor, they arranged for her to go into hospital and paid for the specialist baby care. Then they fostered her for the rest of her childhood.
There are many reliable records of babies being left on workhouse steps, or at the door of one of the state-run orphanages in earlier years. These babies would be named by the workhouse and registered as ‘parents unknown’.
General Booth, in his volume In Darkest England , records that the Salvation Army ‘lasses’ frequently had newborn babies thrust into their arms by desperate young mothers, with heartbreaking words such as ‘You take him, dearie, he’ll have a better life with you. I can’t give him anything.’ Then the mother would disappear into the crowd, leaving no trace of her identity or address.
Infanticide – that’s an ugly word. Did deliberate infanticide go on before pregnancy and birth had to be attended by a registered midwife? It would have been a hanging matter, so the secret would have been well kept. I doubt if any mother would kill her newborn babe in cold blood, but desperate poverty could well drive a grandmother to do such a thing. History is full of grim realities. I recall reading in the national press some years ago of a Scottish woman in the remote highlands who had died at the age of ninety-three. After her death it was revealed that she had drowned
Obvious mental or physical disability was another reason for concealing a birth. Fear was the catalyst – fear, amongst the poor, of having to support a sickly child who could contribute nothing to the family income. There was also fear of the stigma attached to having a disabled child. It was widely supposed that congenital defects were due to something vaguely sinister ‘in the blood’, which would mark the family out from its neighbours. The baby could be left to die (probably with the connivance of the mother, or the women who had helped with the birth) and then described as still-born. The father would probably have been unaware of any impairment, because men rarely had anything to do with birth in those days. ‘Women’s matters’ were taboo, a silence enforced as much by women as by men.
The upper classes – aristocracy and royalty – were particularly fearful of the stigma of a disabled child in the family. It could lead to ostracism because of so-called ‘tainted blood’, and the upper classes were not above smothering their own babies at birth.
Poverty led to the abandoning of babies. How much of this really went on I don’t know, but we midwives were always being told about it. The women of Poplar would say ‘Gor! You don’ wanna go dahn Lime’ouse [or Bow or Millwall or wherever]. Dreadful people vey are. Leaves ver babies on doorsteps, vey do.’ And women of Limehouse would say exactly the same about the women of Poplar! We got the impression that babies were being left in droves on the doorsteps of every other parish. However, we never saw it, and no baby was left on the convent steps during the 1950s. I personally know a lady who comes from Manchester, and was born in 1940. She tells me that she was an abandoned baby. She was found on a doorstep one morning along with the milk bottles. The baby was very sickly, but although the couple who found her were poor, they arranged for her to go into hospital and paid for the specialist baby care. Then they fostered her for the rest of her childhood.
There are many reliable records of babies being left on workhouse steps, or at the door of one of the state-run orphanages in earlier years. These babies would be named by the workhouse and registered as ‘parents unknown’.
General Booth, in his volume In Darkest England , records that the Salvation Army ‘lasses’ frequently had newborn babies thrust into their arms by desperate young mothers, with heartbreaking words such as ‘You take him, dearie, he’ll have a better life with you. I can’t give him anything.’ Then the mother would disappear into the crowd, leaving no trace of her identity or address.
Infanticide – that’s an ugly word. Did deliberate infanticide go on before pregnancy and birth had to be attended by a registered midwife? It would have been a hanging matter, so the secret would have been well kept. I doubt if any mother would kill her newborn babe in cold blood, but desperate poverty could well drive a grandmother to do such a thing. History is full of grim realities. I recall reading in the national press some years ago of a Scottish woman in the remote highlands who had died at the age of ninety-three. After her death it was revealed that she had drowned
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