NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/talk/abortion/48870

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-20 | 3.3 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Helen Johnston)
Subject: Re: Biological Reasons fo
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Physics Department, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 21:00:34 GMT
Lines: 54

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Kevin Darcy) writes:
>
>#1 is incorrect. Under the Common Law, an illegitimate child was considered
>"nobody's child", and had no rights to inheritance or support.
>
While the lack of right to inheritance was pretty generally true
(though not always; witness Elizabeth I of England getting to the
throne despite having been officially bastardized by Act of
Parliament!), the second is certainly not true.  Paternal support of
children born out of wedlock has a very long history. Quoting from J.R.
Gillis, ``For better, For worse: British marriages, 1600 to the
present'':

``... Often men entered into agreements to maintain their children in
the manner that Evan Jones did in 1778. He agreed to pay Elizabeth
Williams of Ceiriog four shillings each week until she was delivered and
then five shillings a month thereafter. If the child lived, then he
would pay three pounds and ten shillings each subsequent year...
Cardiganshire officials operated in a similar manner, the men paying the
women through them.'' [p. 128]

``Much later another Welshman remembered the customary way of dealing
with a man who did not own up to his duties:
    A few neighbours came together, took the child from the young
    girl and took it down to the reputed father to bring up ---
    and to show they meant business they had brought their guns
    with them. If he did not want to bring up the child himself
    --- and that was usually the case --- the girl could make a
    better bargain for taking it back than she could otherwise
    have done.'' [p. 131]

It was not until 1834 with the passage of the New Poor Law that
``...Unwed mothers were stripped of their right to outrelief, even that
provided by the putative father under an affiliation order from the
magistrates... In order to obtain ordinary assistance, she now had no
choice but the workhouse, a provision which was introduced with
deterrence in mind... [I]n the north, there was a sense that things had
been better in `grandfather's days':
    If a young man went a-courting a damsel meek and mild
    And if she from misfortune should hap to have a child
    By going to a magistrate, a recompense to seek,
    They'd make the man marry her, or pay a crown a week.

    But now by the New Poor Law he nothing has to pay
    Nor would he, even if he got twenty children every day.''
[pp. 139-140]

I believe the book "A Midwife's Tale" by someone whose name escapes me,
about a woman who was a midwife in New England around the time of the
American Revolution, also has several examples of child support being
given in America, but I don't have the book with me to check.
--
Helen Johnston       | Astronomye is an harde thynge and yvel forto knowe.
[e-mail]  |      -- William Langland, Piers the Plowman