80 Essex Pauper Letters, p. 273, no. 257, David Rivenall to the Chelmsford overseer, 22
November 1828. Similar sentiments are expressed in p. 181, no. 114, John Argent to the Chelmsford overseer, 28 April 1824.
81 Essex Pauper Letters, p. 263, no. 240, Mr Manning to James Read, 14 May 1828. 82 Ibid., p. 219, no. 171, Arthur Tabrum to James Read, 16 October 1825.
83 Bailey, '"Think Wot a Mother Must Feel"', pp. 7-8. 'My family' also appears regularly in the
pauper letters of married fathers, see in particular letters from Walter Keeling to the overseers of Colwich, Staffordshire, 1784-1811, and letters from Samuel Parker and Philip James to the overseers of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, 1832-7, in Narratives of the Poor in Eighteenth-Century
Britain, ed. Steven King, Thomas Nutt and Alannah Tomkins, vol. 1 (London, 2006), pp. 219-
223, 261-83.
84 Crawford, Parents of Poor Children, p. 21.
85 Steven King, ‘Negotiating the Law of Poor Relief in England, 1800–1840’, History 96 (2011),
pp. 410–35.
detaching the illegitimate child from the family, stepfathers and grandfathers were utilising a survival strategy. Repeated threats from Tabrum to send Arthur home do not seem to have been realised; by 1829, the date of the last reported payment, Arthur had been living with his mother and stepfather for over six years.87 In taking
charge of illegitimates' relief, stepfathers and grandparents clearly included illegitimates as dependants within a base level of household responsibility. This provides further evidence that the reluctance of putative biological fathers was based more on their resentment of parish interference and the personal impact of unmarried paternity on their reputation, than a wholesale dismissal of family or parental obligation towards illegitimates. Unrelated parental figures were not legally compelled to take in illegitimate children and so could do so on their own terms in a way that did not damage their independence and authority.
Poverty was not the only difficulty. Other consequences of illegitimacy could result in precarious living situations, particularly if mothers did not marry, had insecure employment or if the child's existence was kept secret. Autobiographical evidence suggests that familial acceptance of responsibility was often accompanied by a conviction that caring for illegitimate children was more difficult because of their birth status. In contrast to existing scholarship, I argue that willingness to cohabit did not simply indicate normalisation or familial indifference. Crosby argued that illegitimacy 'simply did not matter to Benjamin [Shaw]... he accepted [it] as perfectly normal and unremarkable'.88 This echoes Laslett's argument that the high incidence
of illegitimacy in some families, known as the 'bastardy prone sub-society', indicated defiant sexual nonconformism and acceptance of illegitimacy. 89 Although
illegitimacy was very common in Shaw's family, making them a classic example of
87 Ibid., pp. 185, 284. Similar threats were made by Mr Felgate, see ERO: D/P 178/18/23,
George Turner to the overseers of St Peter's Colchester, 8 April 1816; 13 August 1823; 16 March 1825. It was common for parents to threaten to send home their legitimate children as a strategy for relief, see Bailey, '"Think Wot a Mother Must Feel"', pp. 10-11.
88 Crosby, ‘Introduction’, p. xlii. A similar suggestion appears in Emma Griffin, 'Sex,
Illegitimacy and Social Change in Industrialising Britain', Social History 38 (2013), p. 155.
89 Peter Laslett, 'The Bastardy Prone Sub-Society', in Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen and
Richard M. Smith (eds), Bastardy and its Comparative History (London, 1980), pp. 230-2, 239-40. In King's re-examination of this hypothesis he relates multiple illegitimate pregnancies in one family to a 'lack of shame', Steven King, ‘The Bastardy Prone Sub-Society Again: Bastards and Their Fathers and Mothers in Lancashire, Wiltshire, and Somerset, 1800-1840’ in Alysa Levene, Thomas Nutt and Samantha Williams (eds), Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700-1920 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 82-4.
the sub-society, he did not regard illegitimacy as negligible.90 Shaw had a strong
sense of familial obligation and never refused to help his relatives, but frequently used a language of misfortune and trouble to describe the financial problems and emotional anxiety attendant on caring for illegitimate relatives.91 His daughter
Hannah's pregnancy was 'a mater of grief & trouble to us' and a 'misfortune', stating, '[p]arents trouble is not done when they have reared their Children’. This concern was specific to illegitimate status; Bella's pregnancy gave them 'no Smale concern for her as... she did not get married soon'. Concern was not only confined to daughters. When his son William had two illegitimate children with two different women in 1815, Shaw wrote that they ‘had a good deal of trouble on that account’.92 He did not
describe similar levels of anxiety about his legitimate grandchildren. What Crosby perceived as normalisation was in fact resignation to make the best of a bad situation. But, Shaw's repeated assistance, despite the attendant anxiety, indicates the strength of his obligation towards family, and the inclusion of illegitimate members within it.93
So far we have focused on how families felt about the illegitimate children in their households, but how did illegitimates themselves feel? There is compelling evidence that illegitimates did not feel that they belonged within a household-family, particularly in comparison with legitimate half-siblings. Autobiographer James Burn (c. 1800-) was brought up primarily by his mother, an itinerant pedlar, and his stepfather William McNamee, a former soldier. Burn saw McNamee as a father figure, 'my mentor', who had a significant impact on his early life: 'I owe him an eternal debt of gratitude for having left an indelible impression of the noblest aspiration of his mind upon my own.' Burn and McNamee did at points have a mutually fulfilling affective relationship: 'he... not unfrequently evinced as much real
90 All of Shaw's seven children had illegitimate children or bridal pregnancies, and he had
seven illegitimate grandchildren. Between them, he and his wife Betty had thirteen illegitimate half-siblings, first cousins, nieces or nephews. Calculated from Family Records of
Benjamin Shaw.
91 For Shaw's strong sense of family loyalty see: Crosby, 'Introduction', p. xx; Karen Harvey,
The Little Republic: Masculinity and Domestic Authority in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford,
2012), pp. 151-2; Shani D'Cruze, ‘Care, Diligence and "Usfull Pride”: Gender, Industrialization and the Domestic Economy, c. 1770 to c. 1840’, Women’s History Review 3 (1994), p. 326.
92 Family Records of Benjamin Shaw, pp. 56-8, 52. This language was commonly applied to
illegitimate children, see Evans, ‘Unfortunate Objects’, pp. 109-12, 125.
93 Similar evidence is found among a cottager family of North Staffordshire in the same
affection for me as if I had been his own child'. However, Burn's position weakened once his parents had their own children, suggesting that many poor parents prioritised their affective and provisioning responsibilities towards legitimate offspring. As his brother Robert grew older, 'little hold I formerly had upon McNamee’s good graces seemed to be waning', and he began to be 'made the scape- goat for both [Robert's] sins and my own.'94 Aged 12 he went to live with his
biological father and stepmother, neither of whom he had met before. He attributed his stepmother's 'coldness and disdain' towards him as a result of her prioritisation of her own children, and because 'my father had deceived her in hiding my existence'. A lack of blood tie, and therefore natural affection, was also significant, according to common stepmother stereotypes; Burn 'knew my step-mother could not love me – it was not in the nature of things for her to do so'. As a result, Burn felt like 'a complete stranger in my father's house', a notion of exclusion that Burn emphasised in his narrative persona as an outsider struggling to overcome hardship. His use of stock tropes suggests that it was plausible to his readers that illegitimates would be excluded in these ways.95
Illegitimates also occupied a liminal position in higher-status households where poverty and settlement were less relevant. This partly reflected difficulties in maintaining secrecy and uncertainty over their place in the household. Elizabeth Gordon (c.1795-), the illegitimate daughter of professional Samuel Bentham, cohabited for most of her childhood with her father, stepmother and legitimate half- siblings. Her half-brother George remembered her as 'a favorite in our family' who 'had been brought up as one of us'.96 However, her identity was unknown to her or
her siblings. She seems to have occupied a position more similar to a ward, but differentiated from the legitimate children. She did not travel with the family when they went abroad for Samuel's work and was known by a separate surname, Gordon.
94 James Burn, The Autobiography of a Beggar Boy, ed. David Vincent (London, 1978), pp. 47, 49,
54-55, 60, 71.
95 Ibid., pp. 37, 73-5. The assumption that stepmothers would find it difficult to love children
that they were not biologically related to was common, see: Crawford, Blood, Bodies and
Families, pp. 88, 98-9; Stephen Collins, ‘British Stepfamily Relationships, 1500-1800’, Journal of Family History 16.4 (1991), pp. 337-8. For more on Burn's rhetorical aims, see chapter 5, pp.
278-9.
96 George Bentham, Autobiography, 1800-1834, ed. Marion Filipiuk (Toronto, 1997), pp. 94-5;
Catherine Pease-Watkin, ‘Jeremy and Samuel Bentham – The Private and the Public’, Journal
of Bentham Studies 5 (2002), p. 18. Pease-Watkin sees Elizabeth Gordon's childhood as 'happy',
When their uncle Jeremy brought all the children identical presents, he wrote that ‘[t]he announcement of Gordon’s cost her a night’s sleep: but report says that her joy was a little damped by the apprehension lest her’s should be taken from her; which, of course, it will not be.’97 This suggests that Elizabeth was unused to being treated
the same as her siblings. Jeremy's reference to her as 'Gordon' indicated a subordinate position by referring to her as one would a companion or servant. As neither Elizabeth nor her siblings knew of her identity until she was in her late twenties, it is understandable that a desire for discretion complicated equitable
treatment within the household. 98 Physician Erasmus Darwin's illegitimate
daughters had lived with family friends of their father, and cohabited with their father, stepmother and legitimate half-siblings only as adults. Darwin wrote to his friend Josiah Wedgwood that '[o]ne of the Miss Parkers... is at our house as a governess to our girls at present'.99 Although elder children did often help younger
ones, it is unusual to refer to this role using the occupational term. Families had difficulty categorising illegitimates; they were dependents in need of protection, but lacked the same rights, relationships and life trajectories as legitimate children. The same 'subtle distinctions' observed in poor families were also present in those of higher status.100
Illegitimates' household membership was also typically transient. They moved between households as economic circumstances changed, or parents became able to cohabit with them due to subsequent marriage or a waning need for secrecy.101 The
Parker girls were not unusual in having lived in several different households before
97 The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 7, January 1802-December 1808, ed. J.R.
Dinwiddy (Oxford, 1988), p. 323, Jeremy Bentham to Samuel Bentham, 22 August 1805. This episode is also mentioned in Pease-Watkin, 'Jeremy and Samuel Bentham', p. 18.
98 Bentham, Autobiography, p. 94.
99 The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Desmond King-Hele (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 429-
30, nos 94-3, Erasmus Darwin to Josiah Wedgwood, 7 January 1794. A visitor also mistakenly identified Eliza Courtney, living with her paternal grandparents, as a governess, Lord
Granville Leveson Gower, Private Correspondence 1781-1821, ed. Castalia, Countess Granville
(London, 1916), vol. 2, p. 320, Lady Bessborough to Granville Leveson-Gower, 22 August 1808. Georgina Walpole, the daughter of the Earl of Orford and a maidservant, also only lived in her stepfather's home as an adult, when she paid for her own board. See NRO: HMN 4/46/2/5, Georgina Walpole to Anthony Hamond, 30 August 1800.
100 See above, p. 118.
101 For the changing imperative of secrecy according to paternal age in particular, see chapter
the age of fourteen.102 This partly reflected the differing occupational trajectories
intended for illegitimates, suggesting a conceptual separation between illegitimate and legitimate siblings. Elizabeth Gordon left her father's household aged 12 to train as a governess, unlike her legitimate half-sisters who remained in the parental home.103 In other cases, transience reflected parental inability to bring them into the
same household as their legitimate family. Augustus Montgomery (1762-97), the adulterine illegitimate son of the Earl of Pembroke, left his father's home for boarding school at the exceptionally young age of five. Although he returned home periodically, he spent the majority of his young adulthood either at school or in the navy, in marked contrast to other peers' sons who were usually educated for a period at home.104 Augustus did develop close affective and instrumental relationships with
his stepmother and siblings, explored below, but his presence in the household was ultimately conditional. As his stepmother stated, 'he cou'd never have come into the House, had I not desir'd it.'105 These children were not born to poor parents, so their
temporary membership of the household did not reflect financial insecurity.
In other cases, the precarity of illegitimate inclusion reflected the insecurities of maternal employment and was particularly evident in households formed by publicly unsanctioned relationships, such as master-servant. Sally Bradford convinced her employer and lover Sylas Neville to include her illegitimate daughter Polly in his household in 1770. Sylas enjoyed some aspects of this domesticity, suggesting that small children could elicit affection from even reluctant householders. He admitted six months after four-year-old Polly's arrival that 'I feel an affection for both [Sally] & her child', as Polly 'seems to love me pretty well now & is at least very obedient'. However, Sylas' unusual status as Sally's master and lover, but not husband, created difficulties. In October 1770 he recorded, '[h]ad a
102 Tadmor notes that the illegitimate nephew of diarist and shopkeeper Thomas Turner
similarly moved between the households of his legitimate kin, Tadmor, Family and Friends, p. 186.
103 Marion Filipiuk, 'Introduction', in George Bentham, Autobiography, 1800-1834, ed. Marion
Filipiuk (Toronto, 1997), pp. ix-xxviii, p. xxi.
104 The Pembroke Papers (1734-1780): Letters and Diaries of Henry, Tenth Earl of Pembroke and his
Circle, ed. Lord Herbert (London, 1942) (hereafter PP1), p. 497.
105 Pembroke Papers (1780-1794): Letters and Diaries of Henry, Tenth Earl of Pembroke and his Circle,
ed. Lord Herbert (London, 1950) (hereafter PP2), p. 34, Elizabeth, Lady Pembroke to George, Lord Herbert, 21 August [1780].
violent dispute with [Sally] about correcting her child, which she promised I should have the full power of doing, before I consented to have her here.'106 Polly's uncertain
position disrupted the smooth running of relationships based on authority and obedience, particularly as Sylas had no legal authority over Polly or Sally. Polly's position was also highly insecure. When Sylas decided to move the household to Edinburgh he insisted that Polly be left behind, perhaps fearing that the presence of a small child would damage his reputation in a new social circle.107 Polly was sent
back to her maternal family, but never saw her mother again. Sally became increasing financially dependent on Sylas and, after giving birth to three of his children in the next three years, was unable to visit her daughter.108 A factor that is
not readily acknowledged by historians is that when women gave birth to a second illegitimate child by another man, they often had to choose to stay with one child over another. By the time she was 12, Polly had lived in households headed by her grandmother, aunt, great uncle, mother's lover/employer, and foster parents.
Evidence of the quality of illegitimates' relationships with foster parents is scarce. Multiple studies of different national and chronological contexts indicate that illegitimate infants had far higher mortality, most likely reflecting their greater tendency to live in overcrowded or disease-ridden institutions, or limited maternal breast-feeding.109 Garðarsdóttir's study of nineteenth-century Iceland found that
children whose mothers were servants, and who therefore lived in non-maternal households, had far higher mortality than children integrated into households with stepfathers or maternal family.110 However, Newall suggested that nursing or
106 The Diary of Sylas Neville, 1767-1788, ed. Bazil Cozens-Hardy (London, 1950), pp. 81, 85.
Quarrels over Polly continued into November, p. 105.
107 NRO: MC7/578, Sylas Neville to unknown [draft], 5 February 1777. 108 The Diary of Sylas Neville, pp. 213, 214, 246.
109 The so-called 'mortality penalty' is observed from the early modern period right through to
the early twentieth century, and at its worst illegitimate infants were twice as likely to die than their legitimate counterparts. See: Alysa Levene, ‘The Mortality Penalty of Illegitimate Children: Foundlings and Poor Children in Eighteenth-Century England’ in Alysa Levene, Thomas Nutt and Samantha Williams (eds), Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700-1920 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 34-49; Alice Reid, ‘The Influences on the Health and Mortality of Illegitimate Children in Derbyshire, 1917-1922’ in Alysa Levene, Thomas Nutt and Samantha Williams (eds), Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700-1920 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 168-89.
110 Ólöf Garðarsdóttir, 'The Implications of Illegitimacy in Late-Nineteenth-Century Iceland:
The Relationship between Infant Mortality and the Household Position of Mothers Giving Birth to Illegitimate Children', Continuity and Change 15.3 (2000), pp. 438-9, 447-8, 453-5, 457.
fostering may also have improved illegitimate survival, particularly compared to institutional alternatives.111 Conflicting evidence exists of both foster parental neglect
and long-term diligent care.112 In some circumstances, long-term nursing may have
created stability and allowed the formation of affective relationships. In St Margaret Westminster several children stayed with the same nurses for years, and were in some cases apprenticed to them in a kind of de facto adoption.113 Widespread
acceptance of the transferable nature of 'social parenthood', and the relatively common practice of taking dependent legitimate children into households as nurse children, or later as servants or apprentices, would certainly facilitate normative bonds of authority and duty, if not necessarily affection. Jablonka's study of nineteenth-century France suggests that dependent illegitimates could slot into bonds of 'fictive kinship' between a foster parent and child, echoing a biological relationship.114
Testimony from adult illegitimates certainly suggests that foster relationships could be remembered positively. John Wilkes sent his illegitimate son John Smith, whom he publicly identified as his nephew, to be brought up by fencing instructor Domenico Angelo. Angelo's son Henry remembered Smith as 'an inmate at our house', who only periodically visited Wilkes.115 Years later, when stationed in
Bengal, Smith asked Wilkes, '[w]hen you see the Angelo Family I beg you will assure them of my esteem. I shall always have a very great regard for them.'116 Smith
regularly asked for news of the Angelos suggesting a desire to maintain some sort of
111 Fiona Newall, 'Wet Nursing and Child Care in Aldenham, Hertfordshire, 1595-1726: Some
Evidence of the Circumstances and Effects of Seventeenth-Century Child Rearing Practices', in Valerie Fildes (ed.), Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England: Essays in Memory of Dorothy
McLaren (London, 1990), pp. 122-39.
112 On neglectful nurses see Crawford, Parents of Poor Children, pp. 65-6. For the debate see
Valerie Fildes, ‘Maternal Feelings Re-assessed: Child Abandonment and Neglect in London and Westminster, 1550-1800’, in Valerie Fildes (ed.), Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial
England: Essays in Memory of Dorothy McLaren (London, 1990), pp. 162-8.
113 CWAC: E230-E239 (MF978-MF979), St Margaret Westminster, overseers' accounts, 1714-
1722, records for Alice Middleton, Evans Coot, Watlington Bambridge and Frances Bayley.
114 Jablonka, 'Fictive Kinship'. See also Hansen, 'Bonds of Affection'.
115 Henry Angelo, Reminiscences of Henry Angelo, with memoirs of his late father and friends,
including numerous original anecdotes and curious traits of the most celebrated characters that have flourished during the last eighty years (London 1830), vol. 1, p. 55.
116 BL: Add. MSS 30874/47, John Smith to John Wilkes, 18 August 1791. Similar sentiments
appear in: 30874/194, John Smith to John Wilkes, 10 November 1796; 30873/134, John Smith to John Wilkes, 5 November 1788. Smith was born around 1760 or 1762, 30868/ 40, John Wilkes to Cotes, 17 February 1764; Peter D.G. Thomas, John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty (Oxford,