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Ignominious Dress for Unchaste Women in Workhouses
Minute of the Poor Law Commissioners 5th March 1839
pp 098-100. No. 4.
The Poor Law Commissioners are informed that in several Union
workhouses single women, mothers of children or pregnant, are
compelled to wear a dress of a peculiar colour as a mark of
disgrace.
The Commissioners are aware that such a regulation has originated
solely in a desire on the part of the Guardians to repress vice,
and it is only because they are convinced that principles of
considerable importance are involved in this practice that they
feel called on to express an opinion on the subject.
The following are the principal grounds on which they have arrived
at the conclusion that such distinction in dress, or any equivalent
mark of disgrace, is inexpedient.
It was the obvious intention of the Legislation in the Poor Law
Amendment Act to carry into effect the views of the Commissioners
of Inquiry "that a bastard should be what Providence appears to
have ordained that it should be - a burthen to its mother"
The woman by her imprudence has become charged with the maintenance
of a child, without having previously secured for herself and her
offspring the protection of a husband and father. The amended law,
most properly as the Commissioners conceive, removed the punishment
which by the Statutes of 7 James I c 4 and 50 Geo III c 51, placed
such conduct in the class of crimes, and simply left the mother
to bear the natural consequences of vice. These consequences are,
the burthen of supporting the child, and she becomes an inmate
of the workhouse, because she is destitute of means to bear this
burthen. Whatever the cause of her destitution may be, it ought
not, as the Commissioners think, to affect her treatment there.
Any attempt to inflict disgrace or punishment on the mother of
a bastard, as such, appears to be in opposition to the principles
which guided the legislature in the alteration of the law on this
subject.
Even if the penal provision against mothers of bastards contained
in 50 Geo III c51 had not been repealed, it would not, in the
opinion of the Commissioners, be expedient to inflict any
punishment on unchaste women, as such, in workhouses.
The statute in question empowered 2 justices to commit the mother
of a bastard child to a house of correction for any time not
exceeding 12 months, nor less than 6 weeks, but did not direct
that mothers of bastards, when inmates of workhouses, should be subject to any punishment. The sole object of the workhouse is to
give relief to the destitute poor in such a manner as shall satisfy
their necessary wants, without making pauperism attractive, or
otherwise injuring the industrious classes.
The workhouse is not intended to serve any penal or remuneratory
purpose; and it ought not to be used for punishing the dissolute,
or rewarding the well-conducted pauper. If it is attempted by means
of the workhouse to attain comparatively unimportant ends for
which it is not fitted, there is a danger of not attaining the
important end for which it is fitted.
Many, probably a majority, of the inmates of a workhouse, have
become such by want of prudence on their own part; but it is
manifestly impossible to distinguish in the mode of relief the
various shades of character which have led to pauperism. In administering relief through a workhouse, necessary food, raiment,
and lodging, are all that can be safely offered in any case; and
less than such necessaries can be afforded in none.
The following objections may be raised in reply to these arguments.
1st - That the Commissioners have repeatedly pressed on Boards
of Guardiians the expediency of relieving women with bastard
children in the workhouse only.
2nd - That it is sometimes necessary in towns to separate the
women of infamous and thoroughly abandoned character from the
other female inmates.
The Commissioners feel convinced that relief to able-bodied women
of any class should, as far as possible, be given in a workhouse;
not only because of the evils which would result from relief in
aid of wages, but because in the case of an able-bodied woman,
her means of support are uncertain, and far more difficult to
determine with precision than those of other paupers.
The Commissioners, however, have forborne from pressing this
opinion on Boards of Guardians with regard to widows with families,
believing that in general the Boards of Guardians from not
thoroughly apprehending the evils of out-door relief, would be
disposed to consider as severe any regulation withholding relief
of this nature from a clas sof persons whose circumstances justly
excite their sympathy.
The separation of certain abandoned persons from the other inmates
rests not on the consideration of their past conduct, but on
that of their present habits and character. Their separation from
the other inmates is necessary for the maintenance of order in
the workhouse; and it has even been suggested that it would be
expedient to form a central receptacle in which the riotous and
abandoned prostitutes from the several London Unions might be
congregated and subjected to peculiar regulations.
It will be evident therefore, that, if on the one hand it is
inexpedient that the necessary support of the destitute should
be converted into an appatent reward of good character, but a
real premium on improvidence; so, on the other hand, it was not the intention of the legislature to constitute the Board of
Guardians a tribunal for the punishment of past profligacy by any varieties in the mode of administering in-door relief.
Source: 6th Report of the Poor Law Commissioners 1840
England and Wales plus Ireland pp 1-486
Appendix A pp 081-117
Submitted by Alan Longbottom
Link to an Extract from an account of the mode of supplying
a country parish with a midwife. by Rev Mr Dolling, late Vicar of Aldenham,
Herts. pp 126-128 Dated 6th Aug 1797.
Link to an Extract from an account of a charity
for assisting the female poor, at the period of their lying-in
Page updated August 06, 2007
by Rossbret
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Unmarried Mothers