Out of Wedlock: Perceptions of A Cumbrian Social Problem in the Victorian Context

Abstract

THEPROBLEMOFTHEFALLENWOMAN, the hapless girl left pregnant by her lover, was one which exercised Victorian consciences, just as it was a familiar theme in the literature of the age. Only very occasionally, however, did it lead to agonized public discussion on the part of the churches. Such a discussion (which brought nationally resonant overtones with it) burst upon the Lake Counties, Cumberland andWestmorland, in the autumn of 1865, and then it did so largely by accident, through the naIvete or innocence of Cumberland's most famous philanthropist, George Moore. Moore, the subject of a Samuel Smiles biography, 1 had been absent from his native county· of Cumberland for much of his business career, and he distinguished himself by returning to his youthful haunts to pursue his Christian and philanthropic leanings. During that absence, which spanned much of the first half of the nineteenth century, he had not,. it would seem, followed the evidence for the development of consistently high and growing illegitimate birth ratios for the two Lake Counties. Accordingly, he was, by the middle sixties, correspondingly shocked and moved to protest at a trend which was familiar to every Lakeland parish priest, clerk, or officer. Moore had, of course, stumbled upon an exceedingly complex and intractable social problem, one which was not likely to respond to increased intensities of stark moralizing. But, always a man for positive action, he very properly proposed the collection of information and views on the subject of widespread Cumbrian illegitimacy. His strategy for eliciting this information unfortunately lacked judgement. Moore had been acting as chairman of a gathering of the Evangelical Union, held at the Queen's Hotel, Keswick, in mid-October 1865, and consisting largely of interested clergy. The chairman urged his audience to preach against bastardy, recommended that cases of it should be dealt. with behind closed doors (to minimize publicity), and advocated that hiring fairs and farm sleeping arrangements should alike be brought under greater moral control. We shall return to these institutions. Above all, he offered ten