Unwed mothers and their illegitimate children in 18th-century Geneva

Abstract

ABSTRACT The civil authorities and poor relief institution (hôpital général) exerted a tight control over extramarital sexuality in early modern Geneva. All unwed pregnant women were supposed to self-denounce and those who did not were actively sought for. From this resulted 3420 criminal trials between 1670 and 1794. This phenomenon has been interpreted has a form of strict repression against single mothers. However, shedding light on the attitude towards illegitimacy, this paper claims that repression was not the only aim at which the authorities and the hôpital général were striving; rather, they endeavoured to ensure that someone, usually the father, would provide for the child. Furthermore, it aspires to underline pauper’s agency by studying the unwed mothers’ resistance strategies before the City Council and the hospital: it argues that some women, in the particular context of the Protestant city, not only managed to cope with the precarious situation of rearing an illegitimate child but actually chose it over enforcing a marriage with the alleged father legally.