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Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century England: the social context of illegitimacy in rural Kent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Barry Reay
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Extract

More bad history has been written about sex than any other subject. Our ignorance about the sexual attitudes and behaviour of people in the past is compounded by a desire to rush to rash generalisation. This is unfortunate, for (consciously or not) our perceptions of the present are shaped by our assumptions about the past. Britain's current preoccupation with ‘Victorian values’ is but a politically visible example of a more general phenomenon. And, more specifically, we do not know a great deal about lower-class sexuality in nineteenth-century England. There are studies of bourgeois desires and sensibilities, but little on the mores of the vast bulk of the population.

As Jean Robin has demonstrated recently, one of the most fruitful approaches to the subject is the detailed local study – the micro-study. It may not appeal to those with a penchant for the broad sweep, but such an approach can provide a useful entry into the sexual habits of the people of the past. This article is intended as a follow-up to Robin's work. It deals with a part of rural Kent and, like Robin's work, it covers an aspect of nineteenth-century sexuality – in this case, the social context of illegitimacy. More particularly, this study (and here I differ from Robin) will question the usefulness of the concept of a ‘bastardy-prone sub-society’ (more of which later), a term still favoured by many historical sociologists. The experience of rural Kent suggests that bearing children outside marriage should be seen not as a form of deviancy but rather as part of normal sexual culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , October 1990 , pp. 219 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

Notes

1 For example, Shorter, E., The Making of the Modern Family (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Stone, L., The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London, 1977).Google Scholar For two critiques, see, respectively, Vann, R.T., ‘The making of the modern family’, Journal of Family History, 1 (1976), 106–17CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Macfarlane, A., ‘The family, sex and marriage’, History and Theory, 18 (1979), 103–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Shorter has written an even worse book: A History of Women's Bodies (London, 1982).Google Scholar

2 See ‘Victorian values’, New Statesman, 27 May 1983Google Scholar; Walvin, J., Victorian Values (London, 1988).Google Scholar The Tory obsession with ‘Victorian values’ has prompted some fascinating, empirically-based, counter-attacks: see Thomson, D., ‘The decline of social security falling state support for the elderly since early Victorian times’, Ageing and Society, 4 (1984), 451–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, K.D.M. and Millar, J., ‘Lone-parent families and the Welfare State: past and present’, Continuity and Change, 2 (1987), 387–422CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jean Robin's work (see below) also has implications for Tory assumptions about our past.

3 For a good summary of the current state of knowledge, see Rule, J., The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750–1850 (London, 1986)Google Scholar, ch. 8. For courtship (with some sensible comments on sexuality), see Gillis, J.R., For Better, For Worse. British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (Oxford, 1985).Google Scholar For the bourgeoisie, see Gay, P., The Bourgeois Experience Victoria to Freud, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1984, 1986).Google Scholar

4 Robin, J., ‘Prenuptial pregnancy in a rural area of Devonshire in the mid-nineteenth century Colyton, 1851–1881’, Continuity and Change, 1 (1986), 113–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robin, J., ‘Illegitimacy in Colyton, 1851–1881’, Continuity and Change, 2 (1987), 307–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For a description of the area, see Reay, B., The Last Rising of the Agricultural Labourers. Rural Life and Protest in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar, chs. 1–2.

6 Reay, Last Rising.

7 Robin, ‘Prenuptial pregnancy’, p. 114

8 The figures for prenuptial pregnancy and illegitimacy in the pages which follow are drawn from my work on family reconstitution for the nineteenth-century parishes of Dunkirk and Hernhill, based on parish registers of baptisms, marriages and burials held at the Cathedral, City and Diocesan Record Office, Canterbury The family reconstitution files were coordinated with information held in a variety of other records – court (including bastardy cases), estate, tithe surveys, poor relief, and the census enumeration books. For the methodology involved in this kind of work, see Wrigley, E.A. (ed.), An Introduction to English Historical Demography (London, 1966)Google Scholar; Macfarlane, A., Reconstructing Historical Communities (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar; Knodel, J., Demographic Behaviour in the Past. A Study of Fourteen German Village Populations in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. ch. 1. For the range of sources used in my work on Dunkirk and Hernhill, see Reay, Last Rising.

9 The figures for table 1 include prenuptial births – i.e. children born to couples before their marriage. If we want to calculate solely the percentage of pregnant brides to non-pregnant brides, then the proportions for Dunkirk are 43.1% (pregnant) and 56.9% non-pregnant, for Hernhill 47.8% (pregnant) and 52.2% non-pregnant. But in this part of Kent most baptisms occurred 1–2 months after the birth of the child – prenuptial pregnancy intervals are based on the time from marriage to first baptism. To compensate for what amounts to an underestimation of the true rate of prenuptial pregnancies by this two month delay, those children baptised 9–10 months after marriage could be included in the prenuptial category; taking the figures perhaps as high as 60% for Hernhill and 55% for Dunkirk. The civil registers of births (under the control of the Registrar General) are effectively closed to use by historical demographers, but I was able to calculate the ages of baptism in Dunkirk and Hernhill by matching the registers of baptisms against the dates of birth given in the Vaccination Registers for the Boughton District 1853–1871 (Kent Archives Office, G/F NPv1/1,5–6).

10 Smith, R.M., ‘Marriage processes in the English past: some continuities’, in Bonfield, L., Smith, R.M., and Wrightson, K. (eds.), The World We Have Gained (Oxford, 1986), p. 92.Google Scholar

11 Kent Archives Office, PS/US 21. Upper Division of the Lathe of Scray Petty Sessions: Bastardy Examinations 1860–71.

12 Knodel, J., Demographic Behaviour, p. 219.Google Scholar

13 Hair, P.E.H., ‘Bridal pregnancy in earlier rural England further examined’, Population Studies, 24 (1970), 65CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Wrigley, E.A., ‘Marriage, fertility and population growth in eighteenth-century England’, in Outhwaite, R.B. (ed.), Marriage and Society (London, 1981), p. 161.Google Scholar

14 See also Knodel, Demographic Behaviour, pp.216–18; Wrigley, ‘Marriage’, p. 158.

15 Kälvemark, A.-S., ‘Illegitimacy and marriage in three Swedish parishes in the nineteenth century’, in Laslett, P., Oosterveen, K., and Smith, R.M. (eds.), Bastardy and its Comparative History (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), p. 332.Google Scholar

16 That is those whose children were baptised 0–3 months after marriage (see table 2), still probably an underestimation of the visibly pregnant (see note 9). Compare Smith's survey for 16 English parishes 1550–1799. Smith, ‘Marriage processes’, pp. 84–6 (esp. tables 3.1 and 3.2).

17 For a sample of the range of studies, see Laslett et al. (eds.), Bastardy; Robin, ‘Illegitimacy’, Knodel, Demographic Behaviour, ch. 8; Wrigley, ‘Marriage’, pp. 155–63; Carter, I., ‘Illegitimate births and illegitimate inferences’, Scottish Journal of Sociology, 1 (1977), 125–35Google ScholarPubMed; Gillis, J.R., ‘Servants, sexual relations, and the risks of illegitimacy in London, 1801–1900’, Feminist Studies, 5 (1979), 142–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frykman, J., ‘Sexual intercourse and social norms: A study of illegitimate births in Sweden 1831–1933’, Ethnologia Scandinavida, 3 (1975), 111–50Google Scholar; Fairchilds, C., ‘Female sexual attitudes and the rise of illegitimacy. A case study’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 8 (1978), 627–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarViazzo, P.P., ‘Illegitimacy and the European marriage pattern’, in Bonfield, et al. (eds.), World We Have Gained, ch. 4Google Scholar; Nair, G., Highley The Development of a Community 1550–1880 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar, index: ‘illegitimacy’, Wilson, A., ‘Illegitimacy and its implications in mid eighteenth-century London: the evidence of the Foundling Hospital’, Continuity and Change, 4 (1989), 103–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Note Wrigley's comment: ‘illegitmacy is better regarded as embracing a wide range of situations rather than as a simple, categorical alternative to legitimacy’ (Wrigley, ‘Marriage’, p. 155).

19 Public Record Office, RG 11/966: Hernhill Census 1881.

20 Unless otherwise indicated, this case and these which follow are based on my family reconstitution files for Dunkirk and/or Hernhill, which include material from the census returns 1851–81 (see note 8).

21 Public Record Office, HO 107/1623: Chartham Census 1851. Daniel Cozens's wife, Elizabeth (Arnold), died in 1848. The Chartham parish register records the baptism of Daniel Wills, ‘son of Lucy Wills, Chartham’, on 2 September 1849; but there is no entry for the infant Mary Cozens Wills. See Cathedral, City and Diocesan Record Office, Chartham burials, baptisms.

22 Public Record Office, RG 9/523: Boughton Census 1861.

23 Public Record Office, RG 9/525: Boughton Census 1861, RG 10/977. Boughton Census 1871.

24 Laslett, P., ‘The bastardy prone sub-society’, in Laslett, et al. (eds.), Bastardy, pp. 217, 219Google Scholar; Robin, ‘Illegitimacy’, p. 339.

25 Robin, ‘Illegitimacy’, pp. 328–9, 339

26 Laslett, ‘Bastardy prone sub-society’, pp. 217–18.

27 Eleven of Hernhill's 31 strong ‘sub-society’ came from farming families (i.e. 35%). Cf. Robin, ‘Illegitimacy’, pp. 312, 330. However she did find that the highest percentage of prenuptial pregnancies was initiated by farmers: Robin, ‘Prenuptial pregnancy’, p. 117.

28 I have benefited greatly from Meg Arnot's analysis of this whole question.

29 For an extremely useful study of illegitimacy networks in the Kent parish of Ash-next-Sandwich, 1654–1840, see Newman, A., ‘An evaluation of bastardy recordings in an east Kent parish’, in Laslett, et al. (eds.), Bastardy, pp. 141–57.Google Scholar

30 Family reconstitution data.

31 Cathedral, City and Diocesan Record Office, Boughton-under-Blean baptisms.

32 Kent Archives Office, PS/US 21. Bastardy Examinations 1860–71.

33 Kent Archives Office, PS/US 12: Upper Division of the Lathe of Scray Petty Sessions 1868–71. 6 July 1871, PS/US 13: Upper Division of Lathe of Scray Petty Sessions 1871–6: 5 Dec. 1872, 5 Nov 1874, 3 Dec. 1874, 24 Nov 1875.

34 Family reconstitution files; Kent Archives Office, PS/US 14: Upper Division of the Lathe of Scray Petty Sessions 1820–33, pp. 142, 155; Kent Archives Office, Q/SBe 191. East Kent Quarter Sessions, January 1848.

35 Levine, D. and Wrightson, K., ‘The social context of illegitimacy in early modern England’, in Laslett, et al. (eds.), Bastardy, pp. 158–75.Google Scholar Anthea Newman seems similarly ambivalent: Newman, ‘Evaluation of bastardy recordings’, pp. 154–6.

36 Robin, ‘Illegitimacy’, pp. 331–5.

37 See Reay, Last Rising, ch. 3.

38 Kent Archives Office, PS/US 21. Bastardy Examinations 1860–71.

39 Levine and Wrightson, ‘Social context of illegitimacy’, pp. 168–9

40 PS/US 21. passim.

41 PS/US 21. Knight vs Smith.

42 PS/US 21. Payn vs Sellen (May 1868), Payn vs Sellen (June 1868).

43 PS/US 21. Sherlock vs Aylett.

44 PS/US 21. Smith vs Butcher.

45 PS/US 21. Knight vs Smith.

46 PS/US 21. Curling vs Kay

47 PS/US 21. Payn vs Sellen (May 1868).

48 PS/US 21. Milgate vs Bass.

49 PS/US 21. Branchett vs Rook (Dec. 1867).

50 PS/US 21. Silcock vs Rook.

51 PS/US 21. Nicholls vs Black.

52 Ibid.

53 See the discussion of prenuptial pregnancy above.

54 See Ingram, M., ‘The reform of popular culture? Sex and marriage in early modern England’, in Reay, B. (ed.), Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1985), ch. 4Google Scholar; and Ingram, M., Church Courts, Sex and Marriage in England, 1570–1640 (Cambridge, 1987), ch. 4.Google Scholar

55 PS/US 21. Knight vs Smith.

56 PS/US 21. Curling vs Kay.

57 PS/US 21. Lefever vs Harris.

58 PS/US 21. Silcock vs Rook.

59 PS/US 21. Payn vs Sellen (June 1868).

60 PS/US 21. Branchett vs Rook (July 1865).

61 PS/US 21. Curling vs Kay

62 Fairchilds, ‘Female sexual attitudes’.

63 PS/US 21. Branchett vs Rook, July 1865, Dec. 1867, Jan. 1868.

64 PS/US 21. Johncock vs Harper.

65 PS/US 21. Nicholls vs Black.

66 PS/US 21. Payn vs Sellen (May 1868).

67 See Public Record Office, RG 9/525: Throwley Census 1861.

68 PS/US 21. Drewry vs Wakefield.

69 PS/US 21. Parks vs Hyland, Smith vs Butcher.

70 PS/US 21. Smith vs Butcher.

71 Kent Archives Office, PS/US 11. Upper Division of the Lathe of Scray Petty Sessions 1864–8: 29 Sept. 1865.

72 Kent Archives Office, Q/SBe 176: East Kent Quarter Sessions, Easter 1844.

73 Kent Archives Office, PS/US 10: Upper Division of the Lathe of Scray Petty Sessions 1839–45: 13 July 1844; Q/SBe 228: East Kent Quarter Sessions: April 1857

74 PS/US 21. Johncock vs Harper.

75 PS/US 21. Knight vs Smith.

76 PS/US 21. Payn vs Sellen (May 1868).

77 PS/US 21. Branchett vs Rook (July 1865).

78 Kent Archives Office, PS/US 11. 29 May 1865.

79 Kent Archives Office, Q/SBe 238: East Kent Quarter Sessions: October 1859

80 Kent Archives Office, PS/US 13: 1 August 1876.

81 PS/US 21. Smith vs Butcher.

82 Kent Archives Office, Q/SBe 238.

83 PS/US 21. Branchett vs Rook, July 1865, Dec. 1867, Jan. 1868; Payn vs Sellen, May 1868, June 1868.

84 Leffingwell, A., Illegitimacy and the Influence of the Seasons upon Conduct (London, 1892), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

85 The infant mortality rate for illegitimate births in Hernhill was 126.8; the rate for all births for the period 1813–40 (based on aggregative analysis) was 88.9.

86 Somerset House, Will of William Kay 1879.

87 Cathedral, City and Diocesan Record Office, Boughton-under-Blean marriages.

88 PS/US 21. Foster vs Cole.

89 PS/US 21. Branchett vs Rook (Dec. 1867).

90 Ibid. (Jan. 1868).

91 Kent Archives Office, PS/US 12: 1 June 1871.

92 Levine and Wrightson, ‘Social context of illegitimacy’ p. 169

93 This is not to deny the tremendous value of Peter Laslett's work as a stimulus to research and discussion; it is rather to suggest that we must now move beyond the language and terminology of the ‘Laslett thesis’.

94 If we include these children baptised 9 and 10 months after marriage, to allow for a two month gap between birth and baptism, the figure for extra-martial conceptions becomes 63.4%. See table 1 and note 9 above. (N.B. the figure of 60% in note 9 did not include non-legitimised illegitimacies).

95 Robin, ‘Illegitimacy’, pp. 337–8.

96 For example: Walvin, Victorian Values, p. 126.

97 Robin, ‘Illegitimacy’, pp. 313, 338.

98 Laslett, P., ‘Introduction’, in Laslett, et al. (eds.), Bastardy, p. 17Google Scholar The figures for Hernhill were arrived at through aggregative analysis of the parish registers of baptisms; the population of unmarried women aged 15–45 was calculated from the 1851 census for Hernhill.

99 Family reconstitution data. Compare Gwyneth Nair's very similar comments for the nineteenth-century Shropshire village of Highley, Nair, Highley, p. 239.

100 See Reay, Last Rising, ch. 1 (for some of these people).

101 Kent Archives Office, U2394 ZI. Family scrap book of Reverend J.W Horsley