Carnal Knowledge: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Westminster

Carnal Knowledge: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century WestminsterAuthor(s): Nicholas RogersSource: Journal of Social History, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Winter, 1989), pp. 355-375Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3787885 .

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CARNAL KNOWLEDGE:

ILLEGITIMACY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY

WESTMINSTER

By Nicholas Rogers York University

Within the last two decades illegitimacy has been a major source of inquiry among scholars interested in the broader patterns of family formation and sexuality in

past societies. The rise of illegitimacy in the eighteenth century, corresponding with the rise of pre-nuptial pregnancies, has prompted historians to speculate whether there was a major shift in sexual attitudes and courtship customs with the onset of industrialization or urbanisation. The notion that there was such a shift has been advanced in its most flamboyant form by Edward Shorter, who has

argued that the rising illegitimacy ratios in Europe denoted a fundamental rupture of the prudential and economically-motivated marriage customs of peasant societies in favour of a growing search for sexual fulfillment and romance. As women flocked to the city, they left the older familial controls and values behind them in favour of a new, "expressive" sexuality.1 Illegitimacy recorded the casualties of such a quest, especially in eras of rapid transition when the new sexual attitudes were precariously rooted in society.

Historians have reacted to Shorter's "sexual revolution" in a number of different ways. Some have doubted whether illegitimacy ratios (the proportion of

illegitimate per 100 births) could permit such a grand interpretation, largely because they could be seriously affected by changes in nuptiality and fertility. Others have contended that the crude figures masked the uneven temporalities of illegitimacy and its particular geographical and social distribution. The work of Peter Laslett, for instance, has highlighted the unusually high levels of

illegitimacy in some rural rather than urban areas; and while seeing the long term trends in bastardy as crudely related to changes in fertility, it has emphasized the

importance of bastard-prone societies in any explanatory equation.2 Such genera? tional continuities necessarily throw doubt about the magnitude and severity of the change in sexual attitudes during the eighteenth century and its plausible relation to industrial and urban development. Even those who have accepted the link between rising illegitimacy and economic change have felt unhappy about Shorter's sweeping statements. Most stress the continuing and often precarious quest for stable conjugal relationships rather than any new-found liberation.3

As a contribution to this debate I propose to examine the social context of

illegitimacy in eighteenth-century London. As the leading port, capital and

consumption center of an aristocratic, capitalist order, London attracted a continual influx of young migrants to work in its service industries and rich variety of trades. Moreover, London has sometimes been seen as a powerful solvent of tradition mores and a promoter ofthe very values, individualism, social mobility, conducive to Shorter's "sexual revolution."4 In fact it is no accident that Shorter



356 j ournal of social history

should have invoked London as a likely milieu for the new sexual hedonism ofthe

eighteenth century.5 Yet there are some difficulties in using London as a test case. To begin with it

is impossible to measure rates of illegitimacy in the British metropolis with any accuracy because there is no single institutional source that allows one to do so. As John Rickman noted in 1831, parochial baptisms were a very imperfect guide to the illegitimacy ratio because they ignored extra-parochial sites for the

registration of bastards as well as more informal forms of concealment.6 The comment applies equally to the eighteenth century, for bastards born in parish workhouses were not always noted in church registers; and, indeed, some workhouses had their own chaplains for the baptism of infants whose chances of survival were poor.7 Lying-in hospitals were also used by bastard-bearers, even

though the official policy of such institutions was to discourage such practices, and there was no guarantee that such births would find their way into parish registers. This was certainly true of the hordes of illegitimate children who were left at the

Foundling Hospital, a practice encouraged by parish officials eager to hold down the poor rates. We do not know to what extent the Foundling intake skewed

parochial illegitimacy ratios, but since it seems likely that 75% of the 16,300 children admitted between 1741 and 1760 were London-born and illegitimate, it would have been substantial.8 These births alone would have constituted roughly 3.5% of the metropolitan total, legitimate and illegitimate, within the bills of

mortality. Because illegitimate births were not centrally registered and like other forms of

deviance, were highly sensitive to the politics of vigilance,9 it is difficult, if not

impossible, to determine whether there was a secular rise in illegitimacy in

eighteenth-century London. But there is a documentary series which allows us to

probe the social context of illegitimacy and offer some tentative conclusions about attitudes towards sexuality; in other words, to explore themes such as the social status of partners, the seasonality and geography of seduction, sexual hedonism and conjugality, which are central to the debate. This is the bastardy examinations, taken on oath before a Justice of the Peace, which sought to discover the putative father of illegitimate children who were likely to become a

charge upon the parish so that he could provide some maintenance towards his

offspring. These records are similar to the declarations de grossesse which have been used by French historians studying urban illegitimacy.10 While they are parochial rather than city-wide productions and more discretionary and formulaic than their French counterparts, they do provide some evidence about the social status of the parties and some clues as to the nature of their relationship.

For this initial inquiry into London illegitimacy I have used the quite extensive

documentary series of three large Westminster parishes together with the frag? mentary, but revealing evidence ofthe Westminster New Lying*In Hospital. The

parishes feature St. Margaret and St. John, the oldest part of the capital which included Parliament, the Abbey, and the main government offices within its

boundaries; St. Martkvhvthe-fields, its neighbour to the north which took in much ofthe Strand and the streets and alleys bordering upon Soho, St. Giles and Covent Garden; and St. Clement Danes, the parish that took in the eastern part ofthe Strand, the area bordering the Inns of Court, and the southern courts and



CARNAL KNOWLEDGE 357

alleys of Drury Lane. These sprawling parishes numbered over 75,000 inhabitants

by 1710, and while their population did not appreciably increase and may have even declined over the century, they continued to function as a service and residential centre for the beau monde and the gentry who congregated in London for the parliamentary session and the Season, not all of whom could afford or were

disposed to rent a townhouse in one of Westminster's more fashionable squares.11 These parishes consequently housed an enormous variety of trades and occupa? tions which carried, clothed, fed and entertained the idle rich and the nation's leaders as well as the middling citizens who ventured westwards in search of

pleasure. Rich and poor lived cheek by jowl in this luxury-driven economy which was persistently fueled by new recruits from the countryside. It was the type of milieu in which illicit sexual activity was likely very high and in which illegiti? macy was a perpetual hazard.

Who, then, were the casualties of such unions, to a point that they became the

subject of parish vigilance? A sampling of the evidence reveals that a small

minority, usually no more than four per cent, were married women. They included a few Catholic wives who had applied for relief on behalf of themselves and their

children and were stigmatised for their technically illegal marriages.13 More

typically they involved women whose husbands had deserted them, sometimes by seeking anonymity in the forces or the merchant marine. Such happened to Alice

Potter, who testified in 1714 that her husband Thomas had three years ago "entered himself in the Scipio merchant ship...bound for Maryland in America where he arrived and to ye best of her knowledge and informacion hath ever since continued."14 Alternatively there was the case of Susan Derby, whose husband's

departure for the war in 1712 led her to have an affair with a boatswain at the Bell

alehouse, Deptford, in June 1712, "at wch time she lay with him all night & once since at another alehouse in the same town."15

A further 7-10% ofthe bastard-bearers were widows, normally of two years or

more, few of whom had acquired any settlement since the death of their husbands. This is a somewhat higher proportion than one would find in the smaller market

towns, denoting, no doubt, the very precarious position of single-parent families in an employment market where there was a surfeit of single females. Some

widows, in fact, likely traded sexual favours to ward off destitution. Such would seem to be the case with Martha Greenacre, a shoemaker's widow left to fend for a three-year old, who had an affair with a captain in the Guards.16 The same was




probably true of Eleanor Walker, who was invited by her father's lodger, a Lincoln's Inn lawyer, "to take a bottle of wine." He subsequently "prevailed with her to lodge with him all night" and to resume their relationship on several occasions.17 But not all widows entered sexual relations under such constraints. Some found economic and emotional security in consensual unions rather than in transient encounters with fellow lodgers or landlords. Katherine Lewis, for

example, a widow of fourteen years, had an illegitimate child by a chairmaker, with whom, she testified, "she hath been acquainted...many years."18 Of the 49 cases in St. Margaret's where the couples were known to have "cohabited together as Man & Wife," ten, that is, 20%, involved widows.19 They included Anne

Higgins, who in the course of twelve years had three children by Samuel Manners, a man separated from his first wife; and Katherine Velders, who for four years cohabited with Thomas Smith, a soldier in the First Regiment of Foot Guards.

The vast majority of bastard-bearers were nonetheless single women, anywhere from 80-95% depending upon the decade. Most of these unmarried mothers were in their early to mid-twenties and had entered the London job market as servants,

although singularly few, as their conditions of hiring reveal, were in better-paid situations.20 Some were likely maids of all work or housemaids rather than chambermaids or personal attendants to milady; and the majority did not work in fashionable households at all, but in inns, taverns, shops and modest households.

Certainly they were not as well paid or established as the unmarried mothers john Gillis has uncovered for nineteenth-century London.21 Nor, by eighteenth- century standards, as literate. In the first three decades approximately 20-25% of

the bastard-bearers could sign their name, rising to 37% towards the end of the

century. This ratio did not make them appreciably more literate than female

paupers for West-End parishes and by no means as literate as the average bride who married in Westminster.22 Generally speaking they were poor women in

relatively menial jobs, half of whom achieved their own settlement in London by serving out their annual term.23

Precisely how many of these women were born outside of London is unclear, for the bastardy examinations, unlike the French declarations, do not divulge prove- nance. Nor can we accurately assess how many were actually servants at the time of pregnancy. But the examinations do suggest that relatively few were absolute newcomers to the city and it is rare to encounter young women who came to London to conceal the shame of their illegitimate offspring, or even women who became pregnant within months of arriving there.24 Certainly there were fewer cases than historians have uncovered in French towns during the eighteenth century.25 Most single women entered sexual relationships after, and sometimes well after, their entry into the service economy. These were not country girls taken in by city slickers, but women who had spent several years working in London before becoming pregnant.26

The social standing of their lovers was predictably more diverse, and conforms to the pattern that has been detected in Nantes and Aix-en-Provence and upon which Shorter has laid so much emphasis.27 That is, there was a decline in the

proportion of illicit relationships between socially unequal partners and a corre-

sponding rise in relationships of equality. As the following table reveals, there was a perceptible drop in the percentage of assymetrical unions over time, from over 30% of all cases at the beginning to the century to 14% by the 1780s. The decline




is first discernable among the gentlemen-officers, and then among the more

socially diverse masters who included tailors, victuallers, and butchers as well as

genteel employers.29 But this trend was partially offset by the slight rise in the number of attomeys and surgeons who impregnated servants and others, a factor

TABLE 2 Social status of putative fathers of illegitimate children28

170348 1735-52 1780-86

which might be explained by the growing visibility of the professional sector in London society. On the other hand, there was a noticeable increase in the

proportion of symmetrical unions, from 60% in the early decades to 75% by the end of the century. This growth was not attributable to a higher incidence of servant relationships or indeed, to encounters with soldiers and sailors, but to the

growing number of illicit unions between single women and journeymen in

popular trades such as tailoring, carpentry, and shoemaking, where the possibili? ties of becoming a master were increasingly slim. Together with the butchers, bakers, waiters and shopkeepers, they constituted at least 40% of all cases by the end of the century.

The shifting social profile of illicit unions might at first sight substantiate Shorter's "sexual revolution," the move away from the archetypal forms of sexual

exploitation within the household or military milieu to a more consensual, social

endogamy and erotic sexuality. But before we can pass judgment on this matter we need to consider whether the target populations of the bastardy examinations altered over time, either as a result of changes in the law or social mores. We also need to consider the social and economic context of illegitimacy as closely as

possible, for we cannot necessarily assume that sexual vulnerability or choice

corresponded strictly to social standing or particular settings. In particular, we cannot assess the meaning of symmetrical relationships without considering their

duration, geographical range and social expectations.



360 journal of social history

French historians have been generally confident that the diclarations de

grossesse accurately reflected the changing levels of illegitimacy over time, even to the point of correlating them with wage-price indices.30 By contrast, the

English bastardy examinations do not permit such a strict reading, because they were principally concerned with restricting the public's financial liability for the child and were thus uninterested in those cases of illegitimacy which were not

likely to become a charge on the parish. Indeed, it seems clear that a significant proportion of cases brought to the attention ofthe civil authorities did not even result in an examination, for putative fathers sometimes paid a lump sum to the

parish for the upkeep of the child, thereby avoiding the vexation of judicial interrogation and affiliation orders.31 Lump sums were regularly advanced to the

parishes under examination by the early eighteenth century, and their net effect was to minimize the recorded incidence of illicit sexuality, among gentlemen and

propertied tradesmen in particular. Not only were these classes more likely to make some informal settlement for their illegitimate children, they were also more likely to indernnify the parish. Consequently one should not place too much

explanatory weight upon the changing sociology of illegitimacy. The proportion of gentlemanly offenders was doubtless under-represented.

One is still left with the question of why gentlemen and military officers feature so prominently in the bastardy examinations of the early decades and less so thereafter. Prior to the 1733 act, which toughened the laws against putative fathers who might default on maintenance payments, it is conceivable that women deliberately assigned paternity to men of higher social standing in the

hope of obtaining some support for their child.32 But I doubt if the law was

systematically abused in this way. Such allegations would not necessarily have

improved the safekeeping of the illegitimate offspring, for in such potentially unstable unions a bastardy deposition was often an admission of failure to secure a suitable maintenance by inrbrmal means - at a time, one should add, when a

parish provision was a potential certificate of death. As Jonas Hanway recognized, the maintenance of a bastard was commonly reckoned to be "worth no more than

eight or ten months* purchase, and that there is a chance of its being but so many days."34 With such high mortality rates, parish officials made a profit from the small lump sum payments they solicited from putative fathers.

Part ofthe reason for the high visibility of officers in the opening decades ofthe

eighteenth century is the particular conjunction of demobilization with moral

vigilance. From 1711 there was a scaling-down ofthe armed forces engaged on the continent against France and her allies, with a substantial demobilization two

years later. At the same time the Society for the Reformation of Manners was

especially active in its crusade against immorality, and this had a reverberative effect upon parish policing. The evidence for St. Margaret's and St. John, where there were a number of army barracks, would tend to confirm this hypothesis.35 In the years 1712-18, the percentage of casual encounters was higher than at any time, around 8.6, and involved a noticeable number of soldiers, sailors and officers. Some of the women who struck up liaisons with army officers were doubtless prostitutes. One presumes this was the case with Elizabeth Woodyer, whose encounter with Captain Robert Ledyard of the First Battalion of Guards, first took place in the "Tilt Yard Guard Room about the beginning of November




(1714) & several times since in the same place."36 It may also have been true of Barbara Katherine Clay, who deposed that Captain Copsey had carnal knowledge of her body "the first time at a private house in Colledge Court in the beginning of May (1713), then a second time at theBuffar's Head Tavern in Charing Cross"

graduating ultimately to meetings at "his own dwelling house in Marsham Street, Westminster."37 Indeed, one may surmise, from the number of trysts that occurred in taverns, that sexual favours were often for hire, or that servants had been dazzled by the colours of the Parade and the suavity and flattery of the officer set. No less than 24.1% of illicit unions recorded in St. Margaret's for 1712-18 took

place in a tavern or alehouse. Among those involving gentlemen the percentage was slightly higher, 28.6.

In the early decades ofthe century, then, we are picking up the social effects of

demobilization, amplified by the regulatory drives ofthe reformation societies. At the same time a notable minority of cases involving gentlemen and officers were of longer standing. Margaret Bayne, for example, was the mistress of General

George Hamilton, bearing him a fifth child at his lodgings in James Street.38

Margaret Innes testified that she had cohabited with Richard Hull of Chelsea in

Edinburgh and in other parts ofthe country. Mary Ford claimed that she had lived with James Tate, a gentlemen on the Strand, "for several years."39 But pregnancy appears to have put great strain on these concubinages. Otherwise they would not have come to the attention of the authorities.

The bastardy examinations of the early eighteenth century suggest that the

easy-doing tolerance of extra-marital sex and illegitimacy among the aristocracy and gentry was not always accompanied by a sense of responsibility for its

consequences. Contrary to what Lawrence Stone and Roy Porter have argued, gentlemanly dalliance was not necessarily offset by a code of honour which offered some security to the objects of gentlemanly desire and their offspring.40 Whether this changed as the century progressed is a moot point. Certainly a reassertion of

gentlemanly paternalism for their bastard offspring is a plausible explanation for the decline in assymetrical unions that came to the attention ofthe authorities,

although it seems more likely that it registered changes in nuptiality and sexual attitudes. Gentlemanly bachelordom was high in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, generating, if Defoe is to be believed, an increased demand for extra-marital sex. After 1750 more gentlemen married, the peerage excepted, and even within this highly endogamous group the proportion marrying began to rise again in the last quarter of the century.41 Moreover, as domesticity made

headway among the upper classes, some abandoned their rakish habits. The Duke of Buckingham, for instance, had a number of bastards before his third marriage, but once he had legitimate offspring he was heard to say that "he wish'd he had never had the others, or at least had not own'd them, it being in private families an ill example."42 Only a minority perhaps, shared the duke's sentiments, but the

growing emphasis upon family life and the public critique of aristocratic vice forced gentlemen to become more circumspect in their liaisons, replacing the casual encounter with prostitutes and servants with the kept woman or the fiiles de joie ofthe metropolitan demi-monde. Fear of disease and the growing use of condoms may also have played its part. Illicit sexual activity among gentlemen hardly diminished in the eighteenth century. As late as 1780 the Westminster




Magazine warned parents that if they intended their daughters to be lady's maids,

they should recognise that "a young girl will have occasion to resist temptations from debauched superiors who glory in the demolition of female virtue."43 But it does appear to have become more institutionalised and discreet.44

The recorded decline in assymetrical unions, therefore, does not provide strong evidence for Shorter's "sexual revolution." It was influenced as much by wartime

experiences and regulatory policies as by gentlemanly attitudes, and was doubtless affected by important changes in nuptiality among the upper classes. Until we know more about the more informal forms of maintenance for illegitimate children and the paternal origins of the foundlings at Coram Fields, the case for a significant shift in the social context of urban illegitimacy must remain open.

How, then, are we to characterise lower-class sexual relations in eighteenth- century London? What evidence do the bastardy examinations bring to bear on this disputed terrain?

One ofthe difficulties we face in using bastardy examinations as opposed to the French diclarations de grossesse is that we have little definitive evidence about

promises of marriage. The French records suggest that urban women frequently entered into illicit intercourse on the presumption of marriage, but the London examinations are usually frustratingly silent about such commitments. The early years of one East End parish reveals that women entered into sexual relationships under promise of marriage in at least one in five cases. The records of the

Foundling and Magdalen Hospitals also suggest that such promises, however

manipulative, were made elsewhere.45 Very occasionally we have evidence of such a commitment in Westminster. Ann Marsh, for instance, testified that as a servant in 1702 she became acquainted with one Henry Ryley, an apprentice to a woolen draper, who lived next door in Bedford Street "where he made love to her & promised her marriage."46 Less categorically Mary Bosingham testified in 1713 that "she lived as a servant in Brownlow Street in ye parish of St. Gyles's in

ye fields with one Mr. Roberts where she became acquainted with John Thomas, a footman to a Lady that lodged in her master's house, who pretended great Love & kindness to her & obtained carnal knowledge of her body severall times."47 But

by and large we have to work from inference in delineating the dynamics of illicit

relationships and courtship patterns. Of one thing we can be certain. Illicit sex between men and women of the

servant and artisan class was not usually a casual encounter. Bastard bearers

generally knew the names and addresses of their lovers and the proportion of "hit and run" encounters which Shorter characterises as an integral aspect of the "sexual revolution" was small.48 Very occasionally women admitted to promiscuity. Jane Craib, a 25 year-old former servant, for example, confessed she did not know who the father of her child was, "having had connexions with different men

promiscuously." So, too, did Ann Rowney, a 21 -year-old orphan who admitted to

"having had connexion with different persons."49 Similarly Sarah Saunders, the

daughter of a publican in Clare Market, attributed her pregnancy to an Epsom apothecary, but admitted that she had since copulated with "several other

persons.. .by reason of which she is incapable of giving an Accot who is the father of the Child."50 Others confessed to bawdy behavior, or at least to having been




severely compromised. Elizabeth Watson, for instance, admitted that one

"McDonald, a porter, had carnal knowledge of her body" in an East Smithfield

alehouse, "but as shc.was very drunk" she could not "positively swear" that he

was the only one "as there was several other men in (the) company."51 Alehouse

revelry was also the downfall of Mary Fuller, who testified that a carter named Thomas "made her drink too much strong Drink at ye George in Hyde Park Road and she was overcome with the said Drink & she was persuaded to goe & Lye with him" in his employer's stables.52 But these were exceptional cases. Few illegitimate pregnancies resulting from lower-class unions were the product of one or two

encounters, about 10% in the early eighteenth century, 9% in the years 1735-41, and only 4% in the 1790s, a trend that runs in the reverse direction to that inferred

by Shorter. Most were on-going relationships that had been terminated by desertion and pregnancy, or compromised by financial incapacity. Although the life span of the vast majority was rarely more than ten months, a fact which underscores the total absence of contraception, some were more permanent. In the early decades of the century roughly 3.5% of the symmetrical unions had

lasted two years or more, rising to 5% after 1735. Most illegitimate births, then, were not the product of "hit and run" encounters

and the incidence of these casual unions declined over time. From the fragmen- tary record these appear to have occurred principally among vagrant women, former parish apprentices, young women ill-equipped to deal with the death of

parents on whom they were financially dependent, and those women ofthe town who consorted with soldiers and sailors, or with those young tradesmen whom the

Daily Gazetteer declared "seem to think themselves as well entitled to what they call the Pleasures of life as those of the highest Rank and confirmed fortunes."53

Many illicit unions, in fact, were the consequence of propinquity.54 They grew out of work situations, out of domestic settings or neighbourhood associations.

Margaret Hind, the servant to a victualler in Portugal Street, testified that she entered a sexual relationship with an esquire's servant in nearby Lincoln's Inn Fields whom she met "by carrying Beer" to his master's house.55 Mary Evans, on the other hand, became pregnant by a footman who lodged at her parents; while Frances Hutcheson met her lover through her uncle with whom she lived near

Temple Gate. He was a journeyman to her uncle's resident landlord.56

Many illicit unions, in fact, took place within the same household, with

apprentices, lodgers, or journeymen. Ofthe 141 cases listed in the parish book of St. Clement Danes for the period 1738-52, at least a third expressed some

propinquity, not to mention the ten (7%) which were common-law marriages. Such proximity was less evident in the larger parish of St. Martin's, but even here the vast majority of relationships (over 90%) were between men and women from the same or contiguous parishes who met one another at the local markets, nearby workshops or pubs.57 Sexual contact, could, of course take place at any time,

particularly where household members were concerned, but there does appear to have been an upsurge of activity during the Christmas season, at Easter and at

Whitsun, with a further peak in late August and early September during St. Bartholemew's fair. Occasionally this is expressly admitted. Mary Mogridge first had sex with a pictureframe maker "in the Christmas week 1764." Another confessed to Twelfth Night or soon after.58 Margaret Wilberforce had her first




tryst with a local carpenter "last Easter eve" at a victualler's in Harrow on the Hill, while Elizabeth Clarke's affair with a stone cutter began "last Bartholemew-tide, about Nine in the Evening."59

The pattern of love-making illustrates, among other things, the constraints of service and the still localized nature of the work environment, the proximity of

lodgings to jobs in labouring London. Although men and women ofthe labouring and artisan classes frequently moved residence, often four or five times in as many years, they did so within a narrow geographical sphere.60 Despite the continual flow of migrants into London in the eighteenth century and the short-distance

mobility within it, the metropolis still resembled a mosaic of small neighbourhoods whose finite contacts and associations still defined its patterns of

sociability. As one Londoner later recalled, "the inhabitants of the different districts were less acquainted with each other and more distinct in their manners, habits and characteristics" than they were in the nineteenth century and often knew little of neighbourhoods more than half a mile away.61 Illegitimacy often recorded the tangible horizons and festive conventions within which many people moved, a conclusion that does not square with Shorter's generalizations about female emancipation, where one would have expected few seasonal encounters and a wider geographical range of sexual contacts.

How far these relations were entered into voluntarily is a difficult question to answer. A few women claimed that they had given sexual favours under duress. Ann Lucas, a 31-year old with a mother in the almshouse, testified that a joiner named William Johnson "followed her one Evening from Pater Noster Row under Pretense of seeing her home and by that means became acquainted with her."62 Elizabeth Coleman recalled that "being formerly acquainted" with a shoemaker named William Sheaf "and not having seen each other for a considerable time she met him afterwards by chance...and he professed to get her a place for which

Purpose she went into the City with him and he carryed her to a house in Darkhouse Lane, Thames Street, and having intoxicated her with Drink prevailed on her to lay with him there all night."63 Detailed accounts such as these are unfortunately rare, so we have no means of telling the extent to which sexual favours were solicited under pressure, even in situations where the couple knew one another well and were entering a courtship. In the large, crowded households ofthe aristocracy, where sleeping quarters were cramped and where liveried valets and footmen had a reputation as sexual predators, we can legitimately assume that

female servants were vigorously solicited. The Westminster Magazine warned

parents contemplating sending their daughter to London "to guard against the artful designs of abandoned servants under the same roof; that pleasures may draw her to ruin, or her morals be corrupted by the company she is obliged to associate with."64 And understandably so. Two of Lady FletchwelPs servants became

pregnant within months of one another, one by the footman, the other by the coachman. Other servant pregnancies occurred at the Duke of Dorset's establish? ment in Whitehall, at Leweson Gower's and Lord How's residences at the

Admiralty and at Lord Tennett's seat in Kent.65 In the case of the latter the

offending culprit was the bailiff. Not all relations between servants, or servants and journeymen, were necessar?

ily coercive, of course. Elizabeth Beadle became pregnant by a shoemaker during




a trip they took together to Chicester.66 Servants in different households often

freely associated with one another in domestic settings despite the risks of

exposure and dismissal. These appear to have occurred primarily in genteel households where the relaxed sexuality of their superiors was probably an

inducement to immediate gratification.67 To these one should add relations between servants and apprentices, roughly 6% throughout the century, where the

prospects of setting up a household in the foreseeable future were not very high. The social milieu of service in West-End parishes, then, was not always

conducive to prudential courtships and some servants appear to have been caught up in the relatively uninhabited, hedonistic expression of sexuality for which London was notorious. We cannot entirely agree with John Gillis' statement that urban women rarely entered into sexual relations without a promise of marriage, carrying rural betrothal customs over into the city.68 Such a statement is too

categorical. It places too much weight on popular intention and agency and underestimates the allurements of fashion, the temptations and consolations of the tavern, the theatre and the pleasure garden, and the obstacles to nuptiality. Nonetheless Gillis is correct in recognizing the economic imperatives towards

conjugality and the pragmatic heterosexuality of the London poor. As with the cottage economy, most Londoners had little inducement to attain

economic independence before setting up a household. London wages were

higher than the national average, but from early on in the eighteenth century the

prospects of mobility and security for male breadwinners became slimmer. With the slow but irrevocable dissolution of the guild economy and the increasing penetration of merchant capital in many trades, many artisans were consigned to the position of permanent journeymen or at best to the status of garret masters. From the 1740s onwards, real wages declined, and given the highly seasonal nature of much work in Westminster's luxury economy, artisans found it difficult to establish households without the supplementary earnings of female partners.69 There was consequently an inducement to marry earlier and to forsake the

prudential habits of the previous century, when the average age of artisans and tradesmen at first marriage was in the range of 27.6-28.4 years.70 By the second half of the century over 35% and perhaps as many as 40% of all men were marrying before the age of 25, and as the examinations of St. Clement Danes reveal, over a quarter were artisans.71 Contemporaries still exhorted apprentices to pursue prudential marriages and to avoid the wiles of servants who might ensnare them in marriage.72 But in many of the larger trades where apprenticeship regulations were not strictly enforced and where the prospects of setting up one's own business were few, economic imperatives were counteracting such advice.

At the same time the lower-paid servants or ex-servants who constituted the

majority of bastard bearers in Westminster were not in a very competitive situation in the marriage market. To begin with they were disadvantaged by the sex ratio. In seventeenth-century London there was a surplus of men; in the

eighteenth there was a surplus of women.73 In Westminster itself the imbalance was as high as 10:9 in some years, and judging from the 1811 figures noticeably so in the parishes under investigation.74 Indeed, the Westminster figures in the 1821 census suggest that for every 100 females in the 20-30 age cohort there were only 78 men.75 Servants might have been able to overcome this demographic handicap




with suitable savings, but women in the lower echelons of the servant hierachy were hardly in a position to do so. At wages of ?4-5 in the mid-century decades and 7 or 8 guineas towards the end, women would have had great difficulty in

mustering a modest dowry, especially since the servant economy was extremely volatile, with high turnovers and conspicuous unemployment. In 1753 John Fielding remarked on the "amazing number" of female servants out of place in London. So, too, did Patrick Colquhoun decades later, astounded by the number of servants "who swarm in multitudes, idle and unemployed at all times in this

metropolis...exposed to every species of Seduction."76 In fact the parish examina? tions and the interrogatories ofthe Consistory Court suggest that servants seldom

stayed with one employer for more than one to two years. The normal course was the establish settlement by fulfilling the terms of a yearly contract and then to

change masters and mistresses at a rapid rate. This pattern of employment, and the allurements of fashion and social emulation which necessarily dissipated savings and raised expectations which conflicted with the constraints and humilities of

service, was hardly conducive to prudential marriage strategies. Nor was it so for women who had left service and attempted to eke out a living washing, scouring, in the local markets or in the poorly-paid garment trades. It led women to use their

sexuality to secure partners, to see early marriage as a safeguard against unemploy? ment or economic marginality. Many young women in Westminster would have found the conventional transition from service to marriage a hazardous business,

especially if their savings were small and their skills commonplace. Their obstacles to nuptiality were many, and it only required an unwanted pregnancy to jeopardise a courtship or put it to the test.

But were these bastard-bearers of the age and disposition where they wanted

permanent companionship? Had they reached what Peter Laslett terms the moment of "courtship intensity?"77 In order to answer this question I have

compared the ages of Westminster's bastard-bearers with those of married women or widows who gave details of their London-based marriages in the parish examinations of St. Martin-in-the fields. Such a comparison is not without its

problems, particularly with respect to the representative nature of the marriage data and their likely accuracy.78 On the other hand, the advantage of such a

comparison is its class specificity. Both sets of women entered service at some

point in their lives and to a large extent sought their pleasures and comforts within the same urban milieu, the labouring world of Westminster, with its petty traders, artisans and soldiers.




TABLE 3

Age of Westminster bastard-bearers, compared with the age at first marriage of Westminster paupers.79

As the above table reveals, there was very little difference in age between the bastard-bearers and neighbouring women at first marriage. The average age of both groups is in all likelihood somewhat inflated because it is impossible from the examinations to locate on the one hand, repeaters, and on the other, remar-

riages.80 But as the median and modal scores reveal, the ages of both groups were

very similar, confirming the pattern found in other studies of English bastardy. Westminster's bastard-bearers, in other words, were ofthe age when marriage was a cultural priority, and their age profile even followed the national trend in female

ages upon marriage, which fell from 26.9 years for the period 1700-49 to 24.7 years for 1750-1799. Infact the age ofthe Westminster bastard-bearers was not atypical for other regions. They approximated, very closely, those derived from the family reconstitutions of Colyton, Aldenham, Alchester and Hawkshead.81 In these

parishes there was a marked correlation between the age of bastard-bearers and married women at first birth, buttressing the argument that illegitmacy was often the product of frustrated courtship.

Although the Westminster evidence is less conclusive on this issue because we cannot determine the age of married women at first birth, it nevertheless seems

likely that illegitimacy in the West End was often related to courtship intensity. As the following table shows, the age distribution of the bastard-bearers was

noticeably concentrated in the 20-24 age cohort. In three cases this group was

responsible for approximately half of all illegitimate births. The age ofthe married

women, on the other hand, was spread more evenly through the lower cohorts, with a noticeable minority of women, roughly one in five, marrying before twenty. Such early marriages have been noted for native Londoners in the seventeenth

century and it is conceivable that the Westminster examinations recorded the

persistence of this pattern.82 But the central conclusion that emerges from this

comparison is that the bastard-bearers were not as sexually precocious as some marrieds. Nor were they as young as London prostitutes, the majority of whom, as Sir John Fielding noted, were in their teens.83 Coming to London in their late

teens, achieving a settlement by service by the age of 21, most of Westminster's bastard-bearers became sexually active at an age consonant with their marital

expectations, in most instances around 24 years of age.84




TABLE4

Age Distribution of Westminster bastard-bearers, compared with age at marriage of Westminster paupers (in %).

Years 15-19 20-4 25-9 30-4 35-9 40-4

Some of these women had already made the leap to conjugality, but not, of

course, to marital status. At least 3% testifed that they were cohabiting with their

partners "as man and wife" in any one decade and as many as 8.6% so declared in the St. Margaret examinations of 1718-22. In the first half century, in particular, a noticeable number of cohabitations were with soldiers, around 18%, but such informal consensual unions were not simply part ofa military sub-culture. Patrick

Colquhoun, the Westminster police magistrate whose offices were in Orchard

Street, St. Margaret's, noted in the 1790s the "prodigious number among the lower classes who cohabit together without marriage."85 and while the numbers who did so may have increased with the closing ofthe Fleet in 1754, there is little doubt that cohabitation was a well-established, if minority, convention in the

early part of the century. The bastardy examinations suggest it was favoured by those who could not afford the 7/6d for a clandestine marriage, such as labourers,

by living-out servants and coachmen whose marriage might have compromised their jobs, and of course by married men who had separated from their wives. To these one should add costers, sweeps, waiters and publicans for whom sexual non-

conformity was a way of life, and the tailors and shoemakers who deliberately flouted marriage law.86 Bastardy examinations did not, it should be emphasized, provide an accurate index of the sociology of common-law marriages. Like abortive courships, they recorded the breakup of these informal arrangements, through death, desertion, or war.

Arguments about illegitimacy are necessarily inferential because we have little hard evidence about the sexual attitudes aiid motivations of the bastard-bearers themselves. But on the basis ofthe Westminster evidence we must conclude that the burden of proof goes against Shorter's "sexual revolution." In the first instance the case for a dramatic shift in the social contours of illegitimacy must remain

open. Because ofthe complex problems of registration and the policing of sexual deviance we cannot determine whether there was a decline in assymetrical relationships and a growing convergence of status between partners in extra- marital unions. Even if there was, it cannot be attributed to a change in female

attitudes; rather to the changing sexual attitudes of the gentry and professional classes, whose liasions became more discreet and institutionalised over time.

More damaging to Shorter's argument is the evidence that can be gleaned about

symmetrical unions. Had there been a "sexual revolution" in the eighteenth- century, at least of the sort Shorter has projected, one would have expected a

progressively higher proportion of casual encounters, little territorial endogamy,




and a low seasonality of seduction. One would also anticipate a relatively high

proportion of young pregnant women, given the pattern of recruitment into

Westminster's service trades and the temptations ofthe town. But none of these

conditions holds. Instead one discovers that the majority of bastard-bearers were

women of marriageable age who had spent some years in service or the menial trades before seeking a partner from the locality, sometimes consumating their

relationship during the holiday season. This is not to discount the evidence of

sexual hedonism. One can discover women caught up in the sexual permissive? ness of the town. But this was usually the product of economic vulnerability, isolation, parental deprivation and the libertinage ofthe aristocratic household, and cannot be ascribed to sexual liberation.87

Westminster illegitimacy ought more properly been seen as the product of failed courtship or the breakdown of consensual unions brought on by unemploy? ment, war or premature death. It must be related to the life chances of the poor and the ongoing processes of social reproduction. Those processes were in large part determined by a luxury-consumption economy that had contradictory effects

upon the quest for conjugality. On the one hand Westminster's economy provided young women with the prospect of continuing employment opportuni? ties in domestic service and various consumer trades and induced male artisans to seek partners to offset the hazards of seasonal unemployment and over-produc- tion. On the other hand it rendered conjugality an elusive goal, partly because the

continuing influx of female recruits from the countryside created severe imbal- ances in the sex ratio, and partly because the luxury economy generated social

expectations and sexual license that sometimes undermined traditional courtship practices. Servants ofthe aristocracy, in particular, found it difficult to reconcile the allurements of wealth and glamour with the drudgery of the quotidian and sometimes entered sexual relationships without much planning or foresight. Prudential marriage strategies were also difficult for women in the poorly-paid garment and provisioning trades, who were prepared to countenance quite flexible relationships to offset their economic marginality. "Young men and women in the country" wrote Arthur Young in 1771, "fix their eye on London as the last stage of their hope."88 It was a superficially glamorous stage for the

youthful, but not one that offered much prospect of economic and emotional

security. For the women who ventured there, charting the currents of courtship and conjugality was necessarily a hazardous business.

Department of History 4700 Keele Street North York, Ontario, Canada M3J1P3

FOOTNOTES

1. Edward Shorter, "Illegitimacy, Sexual Revolution and Social Change in Modern Europe" Journal oflnterdisdplmary History II (1971): 237-272, and The Makmgofthe Modern Family (New York, 1975), chs. 3-4.




2. Peter Laslett, "Introduction: comparing illegitimacy over time and between cultures" and "The bastardy prone sub-society" in Peter Laslett, Karia Oosterveen, & Richard M. Smith (eds.) Bastardy and its Comparative History (London, 1980), pp. 26-31, 217-240.

3. See, for example, David Levine, Family Formation in an Age ofNascent Capitalism (London and New York, 1977), ch. 9; L. Tilly, J. Scott & M. Cohen, "Women's Work and European Fertility Patterns" Journal of Interdisciplinary History VI (1976): 447-76; Cissie Fairchilds "Female Sexual Attitudes and the Rise of Illegitimacy: A Case Study" Joumal of Interdisciplinary History VIII (1978): 627-667.

4. For "modernizing" London, see E.A. Wrigley, "A Simple Model of London's Importance in Changing English Society and Economy, 1650-1750," Past and Present XXXVII (1967): 44-70.

5. Shorter, "Sexual Revolution," 249, 252.

6. British Parliamentary Papers, XXXVI (1833), 47.

7. My examination of the registers of St. Paul, Covent Garden, suggests that the recorded baptism of workhouse bastards was intermittent. They appear in the first and last decades ofthe century but not elsewhere, and seriously influence illegitimacy ratios, which were as follows: 1700-02, 8.5%; 1730-32, 4.1%; 1760-62, 3.7%; 1790-92, 4.9%. Rev. Wm. H. Hunt (ed.) The Registers ofSt. Paul Covent Garden, 2 vols (Pub. Harleian Society, XXXIII & XXXIV, London, 1906).

8. Ruth K. McClure, Coram's Children (New Haven & London, 1981), pp. 96-103, 261. For the decadal totals of baptisms, amended by demographers, see E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541-1871 (London, 1981), p. 79.

9. On this issue, see the essays by Anthea Newman, David Levine and Keith Wrighton in Laslett et al. (eds.) Bastardy and its Comparative History, pp. 141-191. Too often the historical debate on illegitimacy is riven with positivistic assumptions about the ease with which illegitimacy can be accurately measured over time, ignoring the complex processes of registration and under-registration.

10. See, for example, Fairchilds, "Female Sexual Attitudes," pp. 627-67; Alain Lottin, "Naissances Illegitimes et Filles-Meres a Lille au XVIIIe Siecle, ''Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine XVII (1970): 278-322; Jacques Depauw, "Illicit Sexual Activity and Society in Eighteenth-Century Nantes" in Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (eds.) Family and Society (Baltimore, 1976), pp. 145-191, first published in French in Annales, E.S.C. XXVII (Juiy-Oct. 1972): 1155-82.

11. M. Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century, (London, 1925), appendix IIIB; Leonard Schwartz, "Social Class and Social Geography: the middle classes in London at the end of the eighteenth century" Social History VIII, no. 2 (May 1982): 167-185.

12. Sources: Westminster Public Library, St. Margaret's, 1712-22,1722-35,1735-52, E 2574-8; St. Clement Danes, 1760-69,1780-86, B 1180-1,1185-7; St. Martin's, 1780-86, F 5066-71.1 should like to thank the Westminster City Library Archives Department for allowing me to microfilm these sources and granting me permission to quote from them.

13. B 1173/217, B 1187/229.

14. E 2574/158, 173. See also E 2578/165.

15. E 2574/33.

16. F 5041/65.

17. B 1207/89.

18. E 2574/14.




19. E 2575/3,20,139,166,2576/50,93,2577/117,151,336,, 2578/194. Foran example ofa widow having a child by the landlord ofthe alehouse where she lodged, see B 1207/107 & 108.

20. Most received no more than ?3-5, diet and lodging, in the mid-century decades, rising to ?6- 8 by the end of the century. This placed them squarely in the bottom of the servant hierarchy. See J.J. Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century London (London, 1956), pp. 146-9.

21. John Gillis, "Servants, Sexual Relations and the Risks of Illegitimacy in London, 1801 -1900" in Judith Newton, Mary P. Ryan and Judith R. Walkowitz (eds.) Sex and Class in Women's History (London, 1983), pp. 114-145.

22. My literacy figures for paupers in St. Martin-in-the-fields was 17% for 1757, and 40% for 1760. In St. Clement Danes, 15.5% in 1757/8,34.2% in 1764/5 and 40% in 1776/7. The marriage registers for St. Paul Covent Garden and St. Anne Soho reveal that in the late 1750s, 70% of all women could sign the parish register.

23. In the years 1750-52, for example, 56% of the bastard bearers in St. Martin's gained their own settlement by service; in the years 1790-1,59%. The percentage in St. Clement Danes, 1760-69 was 57%. In the same parish about 5% of all single women achieved their settlement by a pauper apprenticeship and a further 10% failed to obtain one on their own account.

24. Elizabeth Turner, for example, had sexual encounter with her mistress's lodger, one Captain Courtney, within a week of entering service. See E 2574/271.

25. Depaux, "Illicit Sexual Activity" in Family and Society, p. 155; Fairchilds, "Sexual Activity" reprinted in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Raab (eds.) Marriage and Fertility (Princeton, New Jersey, 1980), pp. 198, 201.

26. At least half of the single women had spent two years or more in the workforce following their settlement by service. That yearly hiring may not have been their first job in London, either, for 56% entered that hiring at 20 years or more. These observations are derived from the examinations of St. Clement Danes, 1760-69, 1780-86, and St. Martin's, 1780-86, 1790-91, B 1180-1, 1185-7, and F 5066-71, 5073-4.

27. Depauw, "Illicit Sexual Activity "in Forster and Ranum (eds.) Family and Society, pp. 158,165- 6,172, 189; Fairchilds, "Female Sexual Attitudes" and Shorter "Sexual Revolution" in Rotberg and Rabb (eds.) Marriage and Fertility, pp. 93-94,185. See also Shorter, Making of the Modem Family, pp. 156-7.

28. Sources: Westminster Public Library, bastardy examinations for St. Margaret's and St. John (1712-1718,1735-52), E 2574 & 2578; St. Martin's (1716-17,1750-52,1780-86), F. 5011,5041-2, 5066-71; St. Clement Danes, (1703-7, 1738-52, 1780-86), B 1168-74, 1185-7, 1207.

29. In the years 1712-18 the employers included a knight, a master of music, a tailor and a child's coatmaker. In the years 1735-52 they featured two gentlemen, an army officer, an auctioneer, an apothecary, a surgeon, an ironmonger, three victuallers, a butcher, a brazier and the landlord ofthe Turk's Head Coffee House. E 2574/23, 50, 137, 191; E 2578/58, 97, 115, 378-9.

30. Jean-Louis Flandrin has expressed some scepticism about this, citing the work of Marie-Claude Phan. See his "A Case of Naivete in the Use of Statistics," Journal of lnterdisdplmary History IX (1978): 314, and Marie-Claude Phan, "Les Diclarations de grossesse en France (XVIe-XVIIIe siecles): Essai institutionel," Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine XXII (1975): 61-88.

31. On this practice, see Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in Engfish Society, 2 vols. (London, 1969,1973), I, 211, and George, London life, p. 214. The practice was declared illegal in 1805; see W. Toone, The Magistrates Manual (London, 1813), p. 46. For evidence of such composition fees, as they were called, in St. Martin's and St. Margaret's, see Commons Journals, XVIII, 393 and E 2578/291 et seq. According to my calculations about 25% of all cases in St. Margaret's, 1735-52, were settled this way. None of these cases gave rise to an examination.




32. The act, 6 Geo II c.31, came under severe criticism by the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834, who claimed it was an inducement to blackmail, forced marriages and promiscuity. In fact, the act appears to have been fairly ineffectual. In urban settings it encouraged putative fathers to abscond. See U.R.Q. Henriques, "Bastardy and the New Poor Law," Past and Present XXXVII (1967): 103-129.

33. One cannot discount that this might happen. In Villainy Unmask'd (London, 1752), pp. 33-4, the anonymous author described the activities of "Trapps" who extorted money out of embarrassed gentlemen who were tricked into believing that they had begot bastards during a night of intoxication. But it should be noted that the community pressures to conceal bastardy and to settle out of court were far greater in smaller, face-to-face societies than in eighteenth-century London. For examples of such pressures, see G.R. Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives (London, 1979), pp. 48-58. In the Westminster examinations I have found only one case where a woman attributed paternity to an employer and subsequently retracted her story. See E 2578/45, 57, 60.

34. Jonas Hanway, An earnest Appeal forMercy to the Children ofthe Poor (London, 1766), p. 29, cited by George, London life, pp. 214-5.

35. I owe this suggestion to Dr. Randolph Trumbach of Baruch College, the City University of New York; personal communication, 25 May 1988.

36. E 2574/144, 154.

37. E 2574/84.

38. E 2574/165.

39. E 2577/12, 70. See also E 2577/151, the case of Jane Robinson, widow, who lived in lodgings with an Edinburgh gentlemen in Old Tothill Street.

40. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in Engfand 1500-1800 (London, 1977; abridged version, 1979) pp. 330-332, 398; Roy Porter, "Mixed Feelings: the Enlightenment and sexuality in eighteenth-century Britain" in Paul-Gabriel Berce\ Sexuality in Eitfiteenth-Century England (Manch? ester, 1982), p. 10.

41. Stone, The Family, pp. 39-41.

42. The Works ofjohn Sheffield, Duke ofBuckingfwm, 2 vols. (2nd. ed., London, 1729), ii, 39. Thanks to Gill Tieman of York University for this reference. For an argument which stresses the importance of domesticity in curbing extra-marital sex within the aristocracy, or at least rendering it less visible, see Randolph Trumbach, The Rise ofthe Egalitarian Family (New York, 1978), pp. 148, 161-3.

43. Westminster Magazine VIII (1780): 15-16.

44. Young bloods like William Hickey openly used the brothels of Covent Garden, but his memoirs also provide evidence about kept women. See Peter Quennell (ed.) Memoirs of William Hickey (London, 1975), pp. 38-55. For similar developments in Nantes, see Depauw, "Illicit Sexual Activity" in Forster and Ranum (eds.) Marriage and Society pp. 167-9.

45. Randolph Trumbach, "Whores and Bastards: Women and Illicit Sex in 18th-Century Lon? don," unpublished paper presented to the North-East American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of Toronto, 14 October, 1979, and his "Modern prostitution and gender in Fanny Hill: libertine and domesticated fantasy" in G.S. Rousseau & Roy Porter (eds.) Sexual Underworlds of the EnU^itenment (Manchester, 1987), pp. 78-9; Stanley Nash, "Prostitution and Charity: The Magdalen Hospital, A Case Study," Joumal of Social History XVII (summer, 1984): 619. Nash states that the Magdalen was especially preoccupied with "young Women, who have been seduced under Promise of Marriage, and afterwards have been deserted by their Seducers."

46. B 1207/144.




47. E 2574/46.

48. Shorter, "Sexual Revolution," 243. For examples of women who knew little about their lovers, see F 5074/128, 222, 268; F 5074/14, 145, 254.

49. F 5074/265; F 5073/110.

50. B 1171/288; see also the cases of Mary Immeson and Mary Reading who both cited two possible fathers for their children. F 5073/262; F 5074/115.

51. F 5042/88.

52. E 2574/35. See also the case of Janet Lockhart, F 5074/82.

53. Daily Gazetteer, 9 Jan. 1744.

54. Among the higher-paid servants of the nineteenth century propinquity is less evident, but this was probably the result of their higher social expectations about male partners and the growing contraints on their leisure time. See John Gillis, "Servants, Sexual Relations," pp. 122-3, 126-30.

55. B 1170/113.

56. B 1173/313; B 1170/34.

57. Women sometimes mentioned their lover's local. See B 1185/259, 320; 1186/5, 118, 139.

58. B 1180/201, 236.

59. E 2574/261, 268. See also E 2574/30, 224, 276, and F 5067/15.

60. This is confirmed by a survey of the interrogatories of the Consistory Court of London, which required witnesses to state where they had been and what they had been doing in the last five years. For the interrogatories, see Greater London R.O., DL/C/243-283, 1689-1790. A survey of working class patterns of residence in St. Margaret and St. John in 1839 revealed that 44-4% of households had been in their dwellings for a year or less. See "Report ofthe Committee ofthe Statistical Society of London on the State of the Working Classes in the Parishes of St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster," Journal ofthe Statistical Society of London I (April, 1840): 24.

61. J. Richardson, Recollections.. .of the last Half-century (London, 1856), pp. 3-4, cited by George, London Life, p. 334n. For evidence of dense neighbourhood networks and affiliations in the seventeenth century, see Jeremy Boulton, Nei$bourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987), chs. 8, 9, 11.

62. B 1172/264.

63. B 1173/64.

64. Westminster Magazine, VIII (1780), 15-16.

65. B 1185/176; E 2574/9,40,121; E 2577/357; E 2578/14,122; F 5073/132. Ofthe women whose illegitimate children were delivered by the Westminster New Lying-In Hospital, 1767-75, no less than 23% had affairs with footmen.

66. E 2574/69.

67. E 2574/89, 199, 270.

68. JohnGillis, For Better, For Worse BritishMarriage, 1600 to the Present (New York, 1985),p. 180.




69. For the decline in real wages, see Rufus S. Tucker, "Real Wages of Artisans in London, 1729- 1935," Journal of the American Statistical Association XXXI (1936): 73-84, and L.D. Schwartz, "The Standard of Living in the Long Run: London 1700-1860," Economic History Review XXXVIII, no. 1 (Feb 1985): 24-41.

70. Roger Finlay, Population and Metropolis (London, 1981), pp. 19,139. Finlay suggests a average of 28.4 years; V.B. Elliot, from a study of London marriage licenses, 1598-1619, produced an average of27.6.

71. Information derived from the St. Clement Danes examinations, 1745-92, B 1171 -89. Because it is difficult to detect remarriages, the proportion of youthful marriages relative to first marriages was even higher than these figures suggest. For early marriages among artisans, see B 1173/15,1176/219, 1179/26, 250,1180/41, 1182/179, 218, 316, 328.

72. Anon., A Present ForAn Apprentice: Or, A Sure Guide togain both Esteem andan Estate (London, 2nd. ed., 1740), p. 31.

73. Finlay, Population and Metropolis, pp. 140-2.

74. The sex ratio for Westminster, denoting the number of males per 100 females per decade, was as follows:

The figures are derived from burial returns for the Bills of Mortality. Source: British Parl. Papers (1801/2) VII, 445-52. The 1811 ratios for St. Martin-in the fields and St. Clement Danes were 90.9 and 88.7 males per 100 females. See B.P.P. (1812), XI, 227-33.

75. B.P.P. (1822) XV, 237.

76. George, London Life, p. 119; Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (London, 7th ed., 1806), pp. 633-4.

77. Peter Laslett, "Illegitimate Fertility and the Matrimonial Market" in J. Dupaquier et al. (eds.) Marriage and Remarriage in Populations ofthe Past (London, 1981), p. 467.

7 8. The same could be said of the data derived from parish reconstitutions, which privileges stayers over movers and is only accurate to within one year. In the parish examinations women were often very specific about when and where they married, matters on which the terms of pauper settlement frequently rested. The marriage data are derived from the pauper examinations for 1750-52 and 1785- 91, F 5041-2, 5071-4.

79. I owe the figures for the Westminster Lying-In Hospital to Dr. Donna Andrew ofthe University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario. I should like to thank her for her useful comments on this essay.

80. The pauper examinations disclose remarriages where there were dependent children from the first marriage, so that it is conceivable that older widows were reporting second marriages rather than first. Repeaters are impossible to detect unless they had bastards in the same parish or unless they had two or more bastard children that were likely to become chargeable to the parish. In the case ofthe bastard-bearers I have excluded widows from the calculations.

81. Karia Oosterveen & Richard M. Smith "Bastardy and the Family Reconstitution Studies of Colyton, Aldenham, Alcester and Hawkeshead" in Laslett et al. (eds.) Bastardy and Its Comparative History, pp. 107-8. The median age of women at the birth of first bastard was 24.5 years for 1700-49




and 23.9 for 1750-99. From the evidence of 12 reconstituted parishes, the age of women at first marriage was 26.2 years for 1700-49 and 24.9 years for 1750-99. See Wrigley and Schofield, Population History, p. 255.

82. Finlay, Population and Metropolis, pp. 137-9.

83. John Fielding, An Account of the Origin and Effects ofa Police (London, 1758), p. 45. See also Richard B. Schwartz, Daily Life in Johnson's London (Madison, 1983), pp. 76-80.

84. My conclusions about the work patterns of bastard bearers is derived from a close study ofthe St. Martin examinations 1784-5, F 5070-1. The evidence shows that 52.8% achieved their settlement by service by the age of 21. The age at which young women entered service, in London or elsewhere, depended upon work opportunities at home or in their native neighbourhoods. See Richard Wall, "The Age at Leaving Home," Journal of Family History III (1978): 181-202, and R.S. Schofield "Age- Specific Mobility in an Eighteenth-Century Rural Parish," Annales de Demographie Historique (1970): 261-274.

85. Cited by E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1966), p. 56.

86. Gillis, For Better, For Worse, p. 204; for shoemakers, see B 1179/76; E 2574/172, 2578/120.

87. For a similar argument, see Tilly, Scott and Cohen "Women's Work," pp. 627-667.

88. Arthur Young, The Farmer's Letters to the People of England (London, 2nd. ed. 1771), pp. 353- 4, cited by George, London life, p. 157.



Documents

Carnal Knowledge: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Westminster