The man who betrayed me was introduced to me by a respectable person. . . He soon made love to me and we used to go for long country walks. One night he took advantage of me. . .When the affiliation order was made, my little one was termed a bastard. . . I was told that compensation for loss of work etc. would be received when I took the action for ‘breach of promise’. But my solicitor tells me that it will cost me between £30 and £40, and then the man has threatened to go bankrupt. Is there any way for a woman to claim justice or to prove her honour?Footnote 1
This question came from a Welsh unmarried mother to the Member of Parliament Nancy Astor in 1925. As the only woman in the House of Commons, Lady Astor received many letters detailing the contradictions and frustrations of the laws of affiliation. Dorothy Thain, the author of this letter, won twelve shillings and sixpence a week from the father at the magistrates’ court, but she remained dissatisfied. She concluded the letter: ‘for the working woman there is only the workhouse or death, and when her trouble is over there is always the awful shame to endure’. Thain came to this conclusion at a time when the affiliation process had actually improved for women in the wake of the First World War. Victorian unmarried mothers faced even harder circumstances, but the process was not without compensation. As with many types of sexual litigation, women had to surmount numerous barriers to ‘claim justice’, but when they did so, they won most cases. In other words, affiliation suits showed that local courts, like the Divorce Court, limited women's access to sexual litigation, but, once a woman had surmounted the obstacles, gave her a largely sympathetic hearing.Footnote 2
Historians have, like Thain, justifiably stressed the hardships for women in the Victorian approach to illegitimacy. The 1834 Poor Law's bastardy clause made mothers the sole support for illegitimate children. Mothers who were unable to bear the expense had to enter workhouses with their infants and could not leave without taking the children with them. All the same, these provisions quickly proved unworkable. Consequently, the bastardy clauses were the first to be reformed, although the change in 1844 was limited. Women could summon men to the magistrates’ courts to get bastardy orders, but the poor law guardians could not help. Women had to sue within a year of the child's birth unless they could prove that the man had supported the child, and they had to have ‘corroborative evidence’ of paternity. Women bore the confinement expenses alone, and they also paid for the summons and court costs. In addition, men could appeal all orders to the Quarter Sessions; women had no right to appeal, although they could summon a man again if they found new evidence.Footnote 3
Not surprisingly, few women took advantage of the 1844 reforms. The expense involved was considerable, and the maximum award of two shillings and sixpence a week was small. The bastardy laws were so inadequate that Poor Law unions protested them.Footnote 4 Thus, after the baby-farming scares of the 1860s and early 1870s, Parliament reformed the bastardy laws again in 1872–3. The 1872 Poor Law Amendment Act allowed poor law guardians to assist a woman in summoning putative fathers. The guardians could also get an order if the woman and child became chargeable. Such an order remained good only as long as the woman was in the workhouse but worked as corroboration if she sued after she left the union. The law also raised the maximum allowance to five shillings a week.Footnote 5
Clearly, this reform did little to alleviate the problems with the 1844 act. Women still paid the expenses of the confinement and the summons, had to produce corroborative evidence, and lacked the ability to appeal. In addition, the women had to collect the money, bringing them into contact with the fathers every week. Women could prosecute men who fell into arrears, but men's terms in prison erased the debts, and women had to pay the subsequent court charges. Moreover, women could not serve men who had joined the armed services, although this provision changed in the Mutiny Act of 1873. Still, any man serving overseas was exempt, and the amount for men serving at home was only four pence a day. In short, restrictions and complications abounded, and numerous law cases highlighted other problems. For example, a bastardy order was a personal one, meaning that if the mother died, the order ended. Additionally, the mother had to give evidence herself; if she was incapacitated, the suit failed. The personal nature of the suit also meant a woman could not collect from the man's estate after his death.Footnote 6 Technically, a woman had to be single to bring an order, but ‘single’ women included widows, separated women, and even married women if they could prove that their husbands did not have access to them.Footnote 7
Given these problems, only a small percentage of unmarried mothers sued for affiliation. Throughout the late Victorian period, the number of illegitimate births per year was between 38,000 and 42,000, yet the number of bastardy orders was rarely more than 5,000. Of course, some women were in cohabiting relationships, and others came to private agreements. In addition, the high mortality of illegitimate infants meant that many summonses were unnecessary. Still, the number of orders was always small. Ann Higginbotham found that only twenty-five per cent of the women who stayed in Salvation Army homes between 1897 and 1906 got an order. Barry Reay's analysis of illegitimacy in Kent showed that out of forty-six illegitimacies during the period from 1861 to 1870, only seven mothers sued for affiliation. Six of the children died as infants, eleven others lived in cohabiting relationships, and in five other cases, the parents married. But the percentage of women who got orders out of the remaining twenty-four cases was still less than a third.Footnote 8
All the same, as with Thain, if a woman did go to court, she had a good chance of getting an order. Historians have estimated that eighty per cent of cases brought succeeded, although this did not mean that the woman got the money. The man could refuse to pay or flee abroad. Janice Steinberg's analysis of Foundling Hospital Petitions in the late Victorian period found that fifty-five per cent of the men named as putative fathers by petitioners had disappeared before the orders could be served. This percentage was inflated, however, since the Foundling Hospital rarely took a child if the father could be made to pay. And certainly some men were too poor to make much weekly outlay, perhaps providing another reason some women did not summon them.Footnote 9 Given these realities, one can see why both contemporaries and historians have not seen the 1872 reforms as ‘fixing’ the problem of support for unmarried mothers and their children.
Nevertheless, the workings of affiliation proceedings have rarely received extended, systematic analysis. Affiliation proceedings began at the lowest level of police courts or petty sessions. Unfortunately, local courts have left few records behind and those that exist give only the barest of facts. Thus, historians must peruse local newspapers to get a sense of how affiliation proceedings worked. Doing so also has the advantage of giving depth to the study by concentrating on one geographic area. In this article, I will use the Western Mail, a publication based in the Welsh city of Cardiff that began publication in 1869. The Western Mail provided unusually thorough coverage of local courts in South Wales, an area roughly from Swansea to Abergavenny, but could also include Western English towns. When combined with the poor law records of the Cardiff workhouse, this source allows detailed analysis of affiliation proceedings in the decades immediately following the reforms of 1872–3.Footnote 10
This essay will analyse a sample of 226 Welsh affiliation cases culled from the newspaper between 1869 and 1900. Using the newspaper is unavoidable, but it is a problematic source. The Western Mail was a conservative paper, founded by John Crichton-Stuart, third Marquess of Bute, and edited by Lascelles Carr. In 1877, Carr bought the newspaper and continued to edit it until 1901 when ill health forced his retirement. The paper was strongly Tory and highly critical of liberalism and dissent. Although later editors criticised those, such as writer Carodoc Evans, who exposed the underbelly of Welsh society, Carr had little hesitation in printing stories about ministers, professionals, or gentlemen sued for affiliation. The paper, indeed, published more extensive coverage of men of higher status, as scandal attracted more readers. The main goal was to sell newspapers, but the stories had the added bonus of undercutting Welsh nonconformist and heavily Liberal chapels. Fortunately, although wealthy defendants got more detailed coverage, a large percentage of the cases appeared, which must have boosted readership in villages and towns in the area.Footnote 11
In fact, the Western Mail reported hearings from fifty-one different jurisdictions. Most of these were in South Wales, a coal-mining and farming area, for although the paper claimed to be the ‘voice of Wales’, its readership in North Wales was sparse. The newspaper came to prominence as South Wales industrialised. The Cardiff poor law union grew from 60,000 people in 1871 to 160,000 in 1901, mostly because of the demand for coal. Nonetheless, South Wales still had a large population living in the countryside or in small towns. Thus, although a disproportionate number of hearings were in town courts, with, for example, thirty cases in both Cardiff and Swansea, many of them stemmed from the less populated areas around urban centres, and overall sixty per cent came from small towns or country courts. Of all these cases, 197 were summonses for support, fourteen were appeals, and seventeen were hearings for arrears. In some cases, there are reports of both the original case and the appeal. Most coverage was limited, but the number of cases reported is high and reveals patterns of sexuality, class, and the role of the law in these disputes.
The poor law and affiliation proceedings are under studied areas for the late Victorian period, and this essay offers a way to examine both. Most local studies of poor relief and petty sessions stop in 1850, and broader histories of sexuality often do not make regional distinctions.Footnote 12 This essay, then, will help answer several questions. How did Welsh petty sessions work to encourage or discourage women from seeking support? Did Wales retain regional traditions of public shaming, or did these evolve with the use of the courts? How much did the Welsh resistance to the harsh provisions of the new poor law influence the cases? Did Welsh magistrates show a continued distaste for interference from London, or did they follow national trends? Was Wales generally typical or atypical in its treatment of illicit sexuality and gender roles between 1870 and 1900?
Statistics
The reported Welsh affiliation summonses show a slightly lower rate of success than the estimates of many historians. Of the 185 that had a definite verdict, 142 cases (76.7%), resulted in the magistrates making the order, while forty-three summonses failed (23.2%). These numbers are probably lower because the cases that made the newspapers tended to involve higher-class men who could afford legal representation. A further fourteen cases were appeals from the original ruling, and the courts upheld the orders ten times (71.4%) and quashed the order three times (21.4%). In one case, the newspaper did not report the outcome. Thus, if a man appealed, he had a one in five chance of having the order dismissed, but appeals were not common. Seventeen cases concerned the collection of arrears from men and in six others, the men had either already left town or threatened to do so at the summons. As with many other suits, winning in court was not the same thing as receiving money in hand.
Most of the women who brought these cases were poor, as were many of the men they summoned. Of the fifty-eight women with some occupation listed, thirty-one were servants and another twelve were farm servants. None worked in factories, and only three were in the lower-middle class: one assistant school mistress, a pub landlady, and a lodging-house keeper. Only thirty cases mentioned the age of the woman, but in eighteen of these she was a teenager, although newspapers would be more likely to mention the age of an applicant when it was shocking. The men were not as young or as poor, but most were not wealthy. Of the 135 cases where a man's occupation is listed, ninety-six of these were working class (71%). The most common occupations for men were colliers (sixteen) and farm labourers (seven), but all kinds of occupations were included, such as railway workers, tin plate workers, and craftsmen. There were, however, thirty-nine cases involving men who were lower middle (thirty-two), middle (five), or upper class (two), almost thirty per cent. They are over-represented in newspaper accounts, but this percentage could also indicate that women were more likely to seek support from better-off men. Men's ages appear in a mere fifteen cases, so are statistically unhelpful. Probably the majority of both sexes were in their twenties and thirties, with men slightly older.Footnote 13 Most plaintiffs and defendants were single. Only nine cases involved married women, most of whom had lived apart from their husbands for extended periods. In addition, eleven widows brought cases, and only three women admitted to cohabitation. Defendants were even less likely to be married or have been so. Married men figured in fifteen cases, cohabitees three, and widowers two.
Because of the restrictions of the bastardy acts, the amounts awarded were never great and once the magistrates made an order, they could not vary it. If a man became unemployed or disabled, the magistrates could not lower the order and if he became wealthy, they could not raise it. The maximum for most of the period under study was five shillings, but women did not often get that much. Magistrates reasoned that there was little point in awarding maintenance if the putative father was likely to default. Of the 142 cases that list awards, the most common award was two shillings and sixpence or half of the maximum (thirty per cent); the next most common was three shillings and sixpence a week (twenty-four per cent). This was followed by three shillings and five shillings, both at 15.4%. In other words, a woman was unlikely to receive five shillings a week in the Victorian period, and even the most generous award did not cover all the costs of keeping a child. Affiliation orders helped a woman to stay out of the workhouse or reimbursed the union but they were not enough to relieve her of her responsibility.
The bastardy acts at work
The bastardy laws were hedged in with a number of difficulties for women, as a cursory review of the 1872 law showed. In practice, this meant that many women did not attempt to get help for their children at all. Nevertheless, if they did decide to do so, the problems were more equally divided between men and women, which was why women won over three-quarters of the cases. Weak cases got weeded out before the hearing and magistrates wished to find fathers for children, and poor law guardians wanted lower poor rates. In short, magistrates were more concerned with determining the paternity of a given child than in blaming its mother for sexual nonconformity.
The typical affiliation hearing in late Victorian South Wales involved a bachelor and spinster disputing the paternity of a child born after some sort of liaison. However serious the relationship, the woman's pregnancy caused a crisis. At that point, the man had to decide if he would marry her. If he declined to do so, he would have to decide whether or not to accept paternity. Some men did and most of these instances did not go to court. Of the 226 hearings, men admitted paternity only ten times and these cases were primarily wrangles about the amount of the award. In 1871, William Williams, a milk seller, did not deny paternity of Mrs. Jayne's child, but insisted that she should not get a high order, since she was a widow and ‘ought to have known better’. The Newport magistrates, unimpressed with Williams's logic, ordered the usual two shillings and sixpence a week.Footnote 14 Sometimes the court simply formalised an amount that the man had already agreed to pay. John Holloway offered Annie Willis three shillings and sixpence a week if she would not go to court, but she took him to the Newport magistrates anyway. The court then ordered the same amount, but also required Holloway to pay three pounds in costs. Holloway protested this, but the Bench told him that if he wanted to avoid the publicity, he should have married her.Footnote 15
Women's chances of getting the order improved greatly if they could prove serious courtship or engagements. Russell Davies, in his study of Carmarthen affiliation suits, estimated that half the cases there involved broken marriage promises. The Western Mail accounts are often too brief to determine this; around half the cases (ninety-seven) have little detail. Of the others, women claimed a promise to marry in thirty of them, and serious courtship in twenty-three others, around forty per cent. A typical case was that of Rosina George, who summoned Thomas Davies at Neath. She had made all the arrangements for the marriage, only to be left at the altar.Footnote 16 Similarly, George Hawkins had courted Elizabeth Scotford, and she claimed they were engaged, backed up by her sister and her ‘grannie’. George, a collier, did not deny the courtship, but insisted that ‘he didn't believe in his own mind’ that the child was his. The magistrates, ‘having no such doubts, ordered him to pay a weekly contribution of 1s 6d.’.Footnote 17
Davies argues that ‘society demanded that the girl prove she was the innocent victim of a calculating seducer’ in order to get an award, but this was not always the case in my sample. In fifty-eight instances, or forty-five per cent of the cases with enough information, the evidence from both sides showed little intention to marry. At times, the man or woman was already married or marriage was not possible as a result of other factors such as affinity. In some cases the woman accused the man of assault while in others the woman and man simply had a brief affair. Notably, these relationships also gained awards, because any man who admitted having sexual relations with the woman was likely to have to pay. In the case of Henry Cooke, the plaintiff, Susan Agnew, was his servant, and she accused him of raping her. Cooke admitted the intercourse, but insisted it was consensual. The magistrates, uninterested in the criminal issue, ordered Cooke to pay five shillings a week until the child was sixteen.Footnote 18 The assumption that a man would ‘make things right’ for a women with whom he had sexual intercourse was strong. The men themselves felt responsible; in seventeen cases, the men had offered money or to ‘look after’ the women if they got pregnant. Ellen Sheen explained that William O'Reilly, a wholesale metal merchant, persuaded her to intercourse by saying ‘he would see to her support, and also to that of any child’ if she consented.Footnote 19
Many men used the defence that the woman had several lovers. Unfortunately for the defendants, this method failed as often as it succeeded. In 1869, Ann Jones summoned John Williams, and he accused her of being a prostitute: ‘he had had immoral intercourse with her more times than he could number; and that young fellows like himself had committed the same offence’. Two other men then testified to having used her services. Yet, the Cardiff magistrates made the order on Williams for two shillings and sixpence a week. If a man admitted to sex, even as one among many, he was putting his own head in the noose.Footnote 20 Similarly, in a case in 1880, the defendant accused the child's mother, who had been in prison, of being both a prostitute and a thief. Without recorded comment, the magistrates still made the order for two shillings a week.Footnote 21
How then did men fight back and win in forty-three cases? Relying solely on an accusation of promiscuity rarely worked; men needed to combine that accusation with other defences. The best plea was to argue for lack of corroboration which accounted for thirty of the dismissals (almost seventy per cent). The reforms in the bastardy acts had insisted that a woman's word was not sufficient, and this requirement proved an effective barrier. Servants in particular had few witnesses to courtship. Mary Ann Jones was a servant for a publican and she accused his stepson, John Day, of being the father of her child, but she had no witnesses. The Llandaff magistrates dismissed the summons.Footnote 22 Respectable men with resources had an especially good chance of winning against working-class women. Mary Williams summoned Captain Lionel Lindsay, the superintendent of police, just as he was being considered for the position of chief constable. Williams insisted that they had courted for six months, but Lindsay painted the case as a plot to ruin his reputation. Williams could produce no witnesses to the courtship, and Williams was able to establish alibis for the times they were supposedly together. Thus, the Merthyr Police Court dismissed the case.Footnote 23
For the same reason, cases involving rape charges could have low levels of success. Of the six of the cases which fit into this category, two were dismissed for want of corroboration. In other words, these cases had a sixty-six per cent chance of success as opposed to seventy-one per cent for women overall. In the cases that failed, the woman had no proof of courtship. Cecillia Davis, sixteen, accused Edwin Price of raping her when she went to clean his house, but she had no corroboration except for three members of his family saying he had admitted paternity. This was not enough for the Merthyr Bench.Footnote 24 In the cases where a woman succeeded she had usually agreed to court the man. Marriage, in fact, was one way a man could ‘make up’ for his wrongdoing. If she saw him several times, she was more likely to have witnesses. Elizabeth Edwards was Thomas Jones's servant and said he forced her to have sex with him a first time and then continued for several nights. In this case, a witness overheard Jones trying to persuade Edwards to blame another man. The Merthyr magistrates accepted this as corroboration and ordered Jones to pay five shillings a week.Footnote 25
Another way to defeat the affiliation summons was to combine accusations of promiscuity with dishonesty. In 1869, Sarah Ann Gurney summoned Philip Winney for maintenance. Winney's barrister pointed out that Gurney had, the year before, unsuccessfully accused her employer of rape. Gurney insisted that she had lied to protect Winney, but the magistrates replied that ‘after her admission that she had sworn falsely before they could not believe her now’.Footnote 26 Any deception on a woman's part reinforced the assumption, brought to prominence by those who argued for the reform of the bastardy laws in 1834, that women commonly lied about paternity to get support. Women who lied in court, then, rarely succeeded. In 1877, Alice Piercy, seventeen, testified that she had courted James Dickinson for five years when she summoned him as the father of her recent child. Alice had accused Dickinson of being the father of her four-year-old child as well, but she now admitted that the older child was her employer's. A woman who falsely charged paternity once might do so again, and the Swansea bench dismissed the case.Footnote 27
If a woman failed on her first effort at getting an order, she could summon a man again, as long as she had new evidence. Nine cases in the group were brought for a second time or more by the same woman against the same man. Despite complaints about women going from court to court until they found a compliant bench, this method worked only five times. Most of the cases where women eventually prevailed were those in which the first order had failed on technicalities. In a case in 1870, the plaintiff tried to withdraw the summons, since she did not have her witnesses present, but the magistrates would not allow the delay, so she lost. She reissued the summons a few days later and got the order.Footnote 28 Sometimes women also managed to convince the court that they had enough ‘fresh’ evidence to warrant an order. Margaret Lewis's first attempt failed in December 1874, but she came back in May 1875 with a witness to the courtship, and the Caerphilly police court gave her an order of three shillings a week.Footnote 29
If one excludes those with technical difficulties, however, most women issuing new summonses in different courts failed. Indeed, in a case in 1874, the Swansea Police Court magistrate, Mr. Fowler, made an order, only to rescind it when the defence pointed out that this was the third summons, the first two having been dismissed in Llandilo.Footnote 30 Magistrates insisted on substantive new evidence to reverse the decision. Cecilia Davies tried to convince the Merthyr Police Court that she had such in her case against Edwin Price. This evidence turned out to be testimony from three members of his family who had heard him admit paternity. Unconvinced, the Bench dismissed the summons again.Footnote 31 In 1886, Isoline Harris summoned Charles Jones four times in the Breconshire police court, and each time the magistrates dismissed her case for lack of corroboration.Footnote 32 Women could appeal these dismissals, but they had little luck in this endeavour either.Footnote 33
To men, women bringing the same case over and over verged on harassment or blackmail, something that obsessed those who feared revision of the bastardy laws. Most commentators assumed unscrupulous women victimised men who had money. The records do not disclose much evidence to support such conspiracy theories. Cases in which women are clearly lying are a minority, and wealthy defendants are few. However, negotiating with a woman who swore a man was the father of her child required great delicacy. This was another way that these cases had disadvantages for men. Many men feared publicity and thus paid women for their silence. Doing this was risky, since any financial support acted as corroboration. Jeremiah Cotter, a priest, gave Anna Codey fifteen pounds to go back to Ireland after she became pregnant. When she returned to Wales, he gave her one pound a week to keep her from becoming a prostitute. She claimed that this was maintenance for the child, but he argued that he was giving her charity. Fortunately for Cotter, the court believed him.Footnote 34 Other men were more compromised and thus less successful. Samuel Brewer, a collier, denied he was the father of Mary Jones's baby but admitted sending her a sovereign so she would keep quiet, telling her ‘he would rather pay any money than have his name exposed’. The bench made the order for three shillings a week.Footnote 35
One way to avoid the publicity and expense was to make private agreements. There were two methods by which a man could do this. He could pay a one-off lump sum or make an agreement for a weekly amount. Fathers preferred the lump sum because it was generally less expensive, the average offer being fifteen pounds. Women agreed because they liked having the cash in hand and not having to collect the money every week. Still, such arrangements had real disadvantages for both parties. Women found the money disappeared quickly, while men discovered that the law allowed women to summon them even if they had agreed not to do so, and that the agreement itself acted as corroborative evidence. Except in a case before the Merthyr Police Court in 1875, where the magistrates did not appear to know the law, private agreements did not stop women from also getting affiliation orders.Footnote 36
Poor law unions especially refused to accept lump sum agreements because when the money was gone, the child fell on the poor rates. In 1878, Ellen Emily Rees summoned James Morris, a solicitor, as the father of her child under the insistence of the Swansea Guardians. Morris had paid her twenty pounds before the baby was born and another ten pounds afterwards, but Rees soon ran out of money. The guardians then helped her bring the suit, which resulted in an order of five shillings a week. When Rees left the workhouse, she sued for herself and got the same amount.Footnote 37 Although women seem predatory in asking for money twice, the amounts men offered were insufficient to support a child for fourteen years and some men did not keep these agreements. Emily Wood accepted twenty pounds to withdraw her summons against Charles Irwen, but he paid her only five pounds. Wood had a remedy, however, since she could summon him, and Irwen was ordered to pay five shilings a week until the child was sixteen.Footnote 38
A less popular private agreement involved weekly or monthly sums. These agreements avoided the trial but were complicated to enforce. Many ended up in the courts when the agreements broke down for various reasons. Ephraim Williams paid three shillings a week to Jane Westcott for five years for their child, but stopped in November 1892 because he was then married with five children and could no longer afford the expense.Footnote 39 Men complained when women embarrassed them publicly after being offered a private settlement, but women had every reason to fear men defaulting. Mary Mackay accepted ten shillings a week from William Brown for their child, but he stopped paying in late 1883. She then deserted the baby, who subsequently went to the Pontypridd workhouse. The authorities there sued Brown and got three shillings and sixpence a week.Footnote 40
Indeed, the intertwining of the workhouse guardians and the magistrates was a regular feature of these cases after 1872, and this almost always benefited the woman. In ten cases, the newspaper explicitly states that the workhouse guardians were suing. The guardians succeeded in seven of the ten, a slightly lower percentage than the women themselves, but probably higher than these women would have managed on their own. The records of the Cardiff Union show that they were not shy about asking fathers for support. The minute books record a steady stream of contributions. In one 1876 meeting alone, the guardians ordered the Relieving Officer to pursue affiliation hearings for the children of Margaret Neale, Margaret Cronin, and Elvira John.Footnote 41 Often, these tactics worked. In December 1883, the guardians received four pounds in arrears and a promise of four shillings a week from Thomas Meed.Footnote 42 In April 1884, the guardians accepted one shilling and sixpence a week from John Stephens for his child with Elizabeth Dunn, while in December 1884, they got three shillings and sixpence a week from W. J. Garvey. If the men fell behind in payments, the guardians prosecuted them.Footnote 43
Cardiff guardians also intervened to act as brokers between mothers and fathers in affiliation cases in a way that went beyond the poor law regulations. The fact that women had to collect the money themselves from their ‘seducers’ every week was a heavily criticised part of the bastardy laws. In response, the Cardiff union guardians created their own version of collection officers in the 1890s. Their willingness to do so may have been an extension of South Wales's opposition to the new poor laws that stretched back to its beginnings. The Education Commission of 1847, in fact, blamed the rate of illegitimacy in Wales for its poverty in an effort to urge harsher treatment of unmarried mothers. Although the area was more compliant in the late Victorian period, Wales continued to give more out-relief than any other area in the United Kingdom. Since women with illegitimate children were especially penalised as morally ‘undeserving’ in most poor law unions, the Cardiff union's actions indicated that their guardians remained unenthusiastic about central government regulations, although they now sought sanction for their actions first.Footnote 44 For example, in 1897, the guardians asked the Local Government Board for permission to board out Annie Heaven's child to a Mrs. Price while Annie was in St. Margaret's House of Mercy. The putative father paid the guardians, who then sent Mrs. Price three shillings a week. The guardians explained that they did not want to move the child, who ‘looks clean and healthy’, and the arrangement cost them nothing. The Local Government Board sanctioned the arrangement, most likely because it resembled normal boarding-out procedure.Footnote 45
The Local Government Board was more dubious about the case of Emma Jane Sanger in 1898. The Cardiff union gave her ‘out-relief’ of one shilling and sixpence, but this sum came from the putative father who paid the guardians and they then distributed the money to her. The Local Government Board asserted that the paying of affiliation orders was unsuited to union interference, but the union did not bow to this argument. The clerk instead wrote again and explained that the ‘proposed arrangement obviates the necessity of the woman coming into contact with the man, and gives her the chance of redeeming her character, while it will involve no cost to the ratepayers, and will also have the advantage of keeping the child under the Guardians [sic] supervision’. Thus bombarded with reasonable arguments, the Local Government Board finally agreed.Footnote 46
From that point on, the Cardiff union kept up a trickle of cases in which they acted as mediators for affiliation orders. They wasted no time. In March 1899, they arranged for Florence Addis, eighteen, to get ‘relief’ from her former lover.Footnote 47 In 1901, similarly, the guardians asked permission in two more cases, including one in which the child's maternal aunt cared for the baby.Footnote 48 The desire to keep the woman away from a bad influence was the main justification. In April 1901, the guardians got permission to take the three shillings from the father of Lily Martell's child and redistribute it because ‘the putative father is 66 years of age and made untrue charges against the girl. . . the Guardians do not think it advisable that they should be brought together again’.Footnote 49 By these interventions, the guardians helped to enforce payments, as well as keeping both mothers and children out of the workhouse.
The women involved presumably appreciated the help as bastardy orders had high default records. Seventeen cases specifically mention that the defendants had fallen behind on their payments or had never paid, while men either left or threatened to abscond in six more. A woman could go to court to demand that the man pay the arrears, but this entailed more costs. In addition, the sentences when found guilty of defaulting were not long. Of eleven cases of defaulters whose sentence is listed, five served one month, two served two months and four served three months. Once the man came out, the arrears began to accrue again. The man could be rearrested, but this did not get the woman any financial help. Many women may well have given up after fruitless rounds of defaults and imprisonments.
Some men realised that a short spell in gaol negated the debt and so let the arrears pile up as long as possible. If they waited, they paid less; women took what was offered rather than get nothing. And the police understood that they could refrain from arrest entirely if the man paid the money written on the warrant when apprehended. In those cases, the putative father need only hand over the cash to avoid any gaol time. The problem with this was, as one poor law guardian complained to the Local Government Board, that ‘the Magistrate is deprived of the power to avail the complainant any compensation for her expenses and loss of time owing to the fact that the man. . . is not brought before the Court’.Footnote 50 Delays to allow the man to find the money also ran the risk of his absconding.
As these cases indicate, getting the affiliation order was only the beginning of the process of gaining support. At times, court cases were pyrrhic victories that resulted in men leaving the area. In addition, a man could join the army or navy. Although after 1873, women could serve summonses through a man's commanding officer, the amounts she got were smaller than the regular sums. Only after the First World War did women get the right to sue for the difference after the man left the service.Footnote 51 The minority of women who were determined enough to sue, however, did have advantages in the hearings. If they could make plausible cases, they had a good chance of winning. The intervention of local guardians was to their benefit, and they could sue even if they had made private agreements. Women faced obstacles in bringing the suit and collecting the money, but men had more disadvantages in the hearings themselves.
Sexuality and relationships
As work on breach of promise suits shows, illegitimacy resulting from failed courtships was common, especially as community pressure lost its effectiveness to enforce sexual norms. The newspaper reports show little influence of the communal shaming rituals that had previously regulated sexuality in rural areas, indicating that they were rarely used after 1860. Thus, long, informal courtships and economic difficulties encouraged broken courtships and illegitimacy.Footnote 52 The end of relationships came from unfaithfulness, parental objections to marriages, and long delays. Affiliation suits, however, differed from breach of promise cases, since they did not require proof of an engagement, so the standard of evidence was lower. Plaintiffs needed only to prove the likelihood of sexual contact. In addition, the entire process centred on sexuality, since the support of an illegitimate child was at stake. All of these women, and men, were ‘fallen’ by Victorian standards, and the women had to talk openly about sex in order to win. In rape or criminal seduction cases, a woman who could describe ‘improper intimacy’ had little chance of success, but, again, this was not the case with affiliation suits.Footnote 53 Magistrates did not automatically disbelieve a ‘fallen’ woman, mostly because they were equally, if not more, disdainful of sexually-active men, as several cases below show.Footnote 54
Magistrates also recognised the social factors in South Wales that contributed to illicit sexuality. Wales had a much higher proportion of female farm servants than England, which led to more social contact during and after work on isolated farms. The poverty of many houses, with people of both sexes sleeping in the same small room, made for easy access. This factor hurt plaintiffs, since corroboration was difficult in these instances. In 1879, a farm servant sued the son of her employer. During the course of the trial, the evidence disclosed that she had to sleep in the same room as the farmer's four sons. This fact hurt her case, as she had no corroboration; the brothers refused to testify against their sibling.Footnote 55 However, some servants overcame the obstacles. Mary Ann Meredith worked for publican George Nichols for four years before suing him for affiliation in Littledean Petty Sessions. She managed to get the order because Nichols imprudently admitted the sexual intercourse.Footnote 56
The most notorious group involved in affiliation cases were farm servants, since they were associated with high rates of illegitimacy. Late Victorian Wales as a whole had a lower than average illegitimacy rate than England. Wales had between 3.4 and 4 per 1000 live births in this period, while England averaged between 4 and 5, but rural counties had much higher rates. For instance, at the turn of the century, Cardiganshire had 5.64.Footnote 57 The Western Mail's coverage was critical of the immorality of these farms, and the magistrates shared the disdain. This did not, however, mean that female farm servants never succeeded. Twelve women were farm servants, and nine of their cases were against fellow farm servants. Six of these resulted in an order being made. Interestingly, these cases revealed the continuance of traditional rituals like ‘bundling’. In 1885, George Williams courted Mary Oliver by visiting her at night and sleeping with her, although they did not have sex for several weeks. Oliver admitted that she had also had overnight visits from another man. Unfazed, the Carmarthen magistrates made the order.Footnote 58 A month later the same justices heard the case of David Jenkins and Hannah Thomas. Jenkins had paid late visits to Thomas’ farm, staying most of the night. The bench once again made the order, in this case for two shillings and sixpence a week.Footnote 59 Bundling had a long history in Wales and did not always, or even usually, result in illegitimacy. When it did, the magistrates did not punish the women for taking part in the practice.Footnote 60
In other words, the magistrates blamed both parties for the sexual immorality. The issue in hearings was not the marriageability of the woman but the likelihood that a particular man was the father of her child. In Cardiff in 1888, Elizabeth Miles testified that she and her friend Jane Williams met William Morrell and a male friend at the railway station, went for drinks together, and then went back to her employer's farm to spend the night, Miles with Morrell and Williams with the other man. Her mother offered as corroborative evidence the fact that Morrell tried to settle the matter out of court. When questioned about her daughter's conduct, Mrs. Miles insisted ‘it was the custom of this country’.Footnote 61 Such remarks reinforced upper-class views of farm servants’ promiscuity, but the women got the orders all the same. To counter this, a man had to mount a strong defence. An 1884 case involved a farmer's son visiting his lover from 11 o'clock at night to 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning once or twice a week over some months. Ann Lloyd testified that she got pregnant from these nights spent together. In refutation, John Evans offered so many other possible fathers that the Carmarthen bench was too divided to order the payments.Footnote 62
Female farm servants’ sexual contact was not always voluntary. The sexual vulnerability of female farm servants, well highlighted by both Davies and Jill Barber, comes through the records. Magistrates showed little understanding of the vast power differentials between young servants and their employers. Ellen Arundell was fifteen when she sued David Deere for support. She claimed that their intimacy dated back two years when they had both gone to work on the same farm. A barely adolescent girl had little protection from an experienced man, but this did not feature in the case.Footnote 63 Magistrates instead focused on living arrangements as the root of the problem. In 1873, Mary Davies failed to get an order against her uncle/employer because of the ‘shameful immorality’ on his farm. Davies's other uncle claimed to have had sex with all but two of the female servants his brother hired.Footnote 64 In another instance, the Brynmawr Petty Sessions made an order for Mary Evans's child with Thomas Powell, but they ‘condemn[ed] the disgraceful mingling of farm servants of both sexes prevailing in Breconshire’.Footnote 65
Higher illegitimacy levels in rural counties were partly due to the vulnerability of women on isolated farms, but servants anywhere had difficulty resisting advances. Most of the eighteen cases with teenagers involved servants and older men. The combined gender, class, and age superiority made women especially vulnerable. Alice Piercy, who lost her 1877 case because she had lied about the paternity of her first child, was an example, having become a mother at thirteen. If the father of her first child was her employer, their differences in status and age left her badly disadvantaged.Footnote 66 Women countered these obstacles by using the language of passivity, saying men ‘took advantage of’ or ‘had their way with’ them, thereby highlighting Victorian assumptions of male sexual aggression.
In affiliation hearings, however, women had trouble conforming to this pattern, since they admitted to more intimacies than those in seduction or breach of promise suits. Although some women claimed only a few encounters, many others testified that sexual intimacy continued for ‘some months’ until they fell pregnant. Ann Rees told the court that ‘acts of improper intimacy were of frequent occurrence’ with Hugh Williams in 1870.Footnote 67 Catherine Jones said that she and Richard Martin had sex twice a week for several months. She could not have hoped that he would marry her, as he was already married.Footnote 68 This matches the findings of Davies, who concluded that couples must have been using birth control given the number of encounters. The more sex the couple had, the more likely the man was to be the father, which helped the women's cases. Nevertheless, women had to balance this consideration against appearing promiscuous. A woman who had an affair without a promise of marriage was suspect. Sarah Morgan testified the she and David Daniel, a doctor, had sex many times. She had no witnesses and did not claim a promise of marriage so it is unsurprising that she lost.Footnote 69 In the nine cases where women detailed the most sexual encounters, they got the order in six, a lower percentage than overall, although still in the woman's favour.
In part, the number of sexual encounters reported in the newspapers was a reflection of men's attempts to paint women as promiscuous. Men often argued that someone else was the father and in eleven cases the men called the women prostitutes. In Cardiff in 1869, nineteen year old Ann Jones summoned John Williams. She had evidence of their relationship, so he painted her as ‘neither more nor less than a prostitute’, but the tactic failed, due to the admitted sexual intimacy. The justices made the order, although they ‘commented strongly on the immorality which this case had disclosed’.Footnote 70 Most crucially, many defendants found that magistrates disapproved of their ‘loose’ conduct. In 1882, Thomas Pugh, a solicitor, was summoned by Margaret Davies, a girl of eighteen. Davies claimed they had a relationship that stretched back three years to when she was fifteen. Pugh, in contrast, argued that Davies was a sex worker. In addition, she had served time for drunkenness and lived with a woman who had four illegitimate children. Pugh made a vigorous defence, but his open admission of visiting a teenage prostitute undercut his case. The magistrates in Swansea ordered him to pay five shillings a week, a decision upheld on appeal. Pugh had admitted sexual intercourse with the woman, and that was enough for the courts.Footnote 71
A defendant sometimes pointed to the fact that a woman had had more than one illegitimate child, but this alone rarely succeeded. Only twelve women had more than one illegitimate child in the group, and eight of them got the order from the magistrates. In five, the women's children had different fathers, and they still won. Four of the eight successful women had only two illegitimate children. Magistrates might disapprove of two ‘falls’, but not to the point of disbelieving the plaintiff. Two cases had three illegitimate children and two had four. In three of these, the couples were long-time cohabiters so that the men were equally responsible and perhaps even more responsible if they had refused to marry their lovers. The only other woman with multiple children was Jane Davies, who accused her minister, Reverend Jenkin Rees, of being the father of her third child in 1895. She had two witnesses to the courtship, but Rees insisted he was simply her landlord. The Aberayron bench eventually found against Rees, but asked him only to pay one shilling and sixpence, since this was a third fall by the mother.Footnote 72
Only four cases of women who had more than one illegitimate child resulted in losses, and in all of them the women's children had different fathers. Two of the cases involved two illegitimate children, one had three, and one had six. Women had trouble mainly if the defendants could paint them as promiscuous and deceptive. In 1879, Sarah Gibbs summoned the son of her employer to the Swansea Borough Police Court. She said they had courted, but he denied any relationship and his father pointed out that not only was this her third illegitimate child, but she had told him that the father of her latest child was at sea. The bench, then, declined to give the order.Footnote 73 In 1884, Mary Ann Davies claimed her second illegitimate child was the product of the man who fathered her first in 1880. Her only corroborating witness was a woman with three illegitimate children herself who had given evidence in several affiliation proceedings. The Ystrad Police Court dismissed the case.Footnote 74 In both these instances, the woman's sexual past helped to defeat her summons, but she also had limited corroboration and Davies’ case was undermined by the sexual irregularity of her witness.
Interestingly, being the father of more than one illegitimate child meant that the man, too, became suspect. Five of the defendants were putative fathers of more than one child, and all five lost their cases. At times, the men had been in long-term cohabiting relationships. In 1879, David Jones was summoned by Sarah Davies, a widow, on the instigation of the workhouse. They had lived together for seven years and had four children before he deserted her. The Abergavenny Police Court ordered him to pay two shillings for each child.Footnote 75 But the magistrates also fined men for long-term affairs. In the 1892 case of Harris v. Davies, the defendant, a surgeon, admitted paternity of the two children he had with his servant. The Swansea Police Court ordered him to pay five shillings a week for each child.Footnote 76
In general, then, the magistrates penalised both men and women for any perceived ‘promiscuity’. A woman with multiple children, especially with different fathers, either lost or got lower awards for each child. A man with multiple children had to pay for each of them. The fact that a man might be paying for several children did not persuade the bench to lessen the award in any of the cases with men in this position. In 1889, Evan Lewis, a collier, was summoned by a woman who named him the father of her twins. The Swansea Police court ordered him to pay three shillings for each child. Lewis pled for a reduction, since he had ‘another pair of twins to be sworn on me in the course of a few days, and the price you fix is rather high for a quantity’. The bench laughed at his joke but told him that he did not have grounds for a reduced amount. Lewis, a collier, was highly unlikely to be able to afford twelve shillings a week.Footnote 77
Magistrates disapproved of these liaisons, but did not assume the women were entirely responsible. Indeed, of the eleven cases where the man primarily relied on branding the women as prostitutes, nine of the summonses succeeded and only two failed. Accusing a woman of promiscuity was a double-edged sword, since the only way the man would know for certain was if he had taken advantage of her willingness. The magistrates were not moral police, nor were they giving damages for reputations. They were, instead, finding someone to support the child. Thus, the women's behaviour was less of a factor than in many other types of sexual litigation. On the other hand, the local courts offered little help to those who had clearly been sexually harassed or assaulted, even if the plaintiff was still a child. The demands of finding support, then, both helped and hurt unmarried mothers.
Attitudes towards unmarried sexuality
Historians have noted that affiliation cases got large audiences. The public humiliation, for both parties, was part of the punishment.Footnote 78 Women often hesitated to bring the cases precisely because they did not want to parade their ‘shame’ before their neighbours. Dorothy Thain's humiliation at hearing her child branded a ‘bastard’ by the courts was not unique. However, at times, women and men sought vindication through these suits, and certain cases got emotional responses. Interestingly, magistrates and the public reacted more to perceived bad male behaviour than to women's wrongdoing. This does not mean that women did not suffer scorn or embarrassment, but theirs tended to be day-to-day, small humiliations. Men, on the other hand, often found the hearing itself to be a shaming ritual.
Men attracted scorn if they did not follow through on promises of marriage. Magistrates expressed open disdain for male jilters as ‘unmanly’. Rosina George summoned John Connors after he left her at the altar in 1880. At first the Swansea magistrate urged them to marry, but Rosina explained that he had jilted her twice. Mr. Phillips demanded of Connors, ‘Why did not you marry the girl like a man, instead of playing false and disappointing her[?]’ He then comforted Rosina, saying, ‘A man who broke his promise like that could not be worth having’. He ordered Connors to pay three shillings and sixpence a week and costs.Footnote 79 Francis Gleed, a salesman, courted Annie Isaacs for two years in Cardiff, and they were engaged. When she got pregnant, he persuaded her to tell her parents they were already married, and he lived with his ‘in-laws’ for six months. Soon after he became a father, he absconded. The magistrates fumed, ‘The way in which defendant had deceived the parents of the girl and his cruel treatment of the girl herself deserved the most severe punishment’. They made the order for four shillings a week, the highest they thought he could afford, and the only practical way they could express their disapproval.Footnote 80
Cases with the most public shaming involved pastors, choir masters, or deacons. The Western Mail exposed all such hypocrisy, particularly as these suits damaged the reputation of nonconformist Wales. Possibly, the public ridicule replaced older Welsh customs of ceffyl pren, used against wife beaters or promiscuous women for centuries, a part of the decline in public disorder in Wales after 1860.Footnote 81 In 1871, fifty-one year old Thomas Morgan courted the twenty-six year old daughter of a neighbour who owned the adjoining farm. He was a deacon, and he visited her after Sunday school. One weekend when her parents were away, the two had sex, and the intimacies continued for some weeks. Morgan argued that she had a sweetheart of a more appropriate age, but he gave up when she vigorously denied it. He had to pay two shillings and sixpence a week, as well as enduring sneers from the press about his religious ‘instruction’.Footnote 82 Extensive press coverage came with large headlines to catch readers’ attention. A case about bastardy arrears in 1874 had the title, ‘The Welsh Local Preacher and His Victim’, and detailed the ‘sanctimonious air’ of the defendant, who ‘was often seen in her company with an open Bible before him on the table’.Footnote 83 In 1915, Caradoc Evans's short stories punctured ‘holy’ reputations in a similar way, although ironically later Western Mail reviewers criticised him for his frankness about religious hypocrisy.Footnote 84
Although villages probably sometimes closed ranks against a scandalous woman, the local communities reported in the newspapers often agreed with the magistrates. In 1870, a Wesleyan minister was summoned by a nineteen year old whose mother he had ‘spiritually advised’. This case was hotly contested, as Hugh Williams denied ever having betrayed his office. After hours of testimony, the Merthyr bench ordered him to pay two shillings and sixpence a week. The crowd, less unsure than the bench, ‘hooted’ Williams as he left the courtroom.Footnote 85 In the same year, Richard Weaver, a ‘revivalist preacher’, faced a Miss Lea over her claim that he was the father of her child. She won the case, and the newspaper reported that ‘Popular feeling runs very high against the defendant in the immediate neighbourhood. . . he having been burnt in effigy on several occasions during the last few weeks’. After the second hearing, he was ‘loudly hissed’ by the crowd. Neighbours took sides in these disputes. Although women found the process embarrassing, community support could mitigate their humiliation while increasing the man's discomfort.Footnote 86
Another type of case that attracted particular scorn was that of a better off man accused of ‘seducing’ a working class woman. Such cases played on the melodramatic theme of the aristocratic seducer of poor young girls. Ironically, this response was more effective against men who were only slightly better off than the women, as the only two cases with gentlemen defendants were won by the men. James Evans, a clerk, contested Mary Ann Watkins's case in 1876, but lost when the Brynmawr magistrates awarded her three shillings a week. According to the newspaper, ‘The decision was received with applause in the crowded court’.Footnote 87 In 1883, the Cardiff magistrates heard the case of a workhouse girl suing a master butcher. She claimed he seduced her on a trip to Newport. The magistrate was in agreement with the audience when he called Owen, who was married, ‘a loose character’, and awarded Evans five shillings a week for sixteen years, ‘remarking that this was one of those cases which was altogether heartless’.Footnote 88
Other cases involved those who were new to the area. South Wales experienced a great in-migration in the late Victorian period, and the locals were hostile to those who were recent arrivals, or, worse, who were only passing through. In 1876, a servant in a hotel summoned a contractor who lodged there. Her evidence was frankly weak, but the magistrates gave her three shillings a week, and the ‘decision was received with applause by a crowded court, and cheers were given by a large concourse of people assembled outside’. A contractor who had been brought in for a short job had no business ‘ruining’ a local girl.Footnote 89 A case that combined many of these factors was that of Mary Jane Mathias in 1871. Mathias was only eighteen when she summoned George Robert Lifton, a shipwright's apprentice, as the father of her child. Mathias claimed Lifton gave her drugs to seduce her, and she continued to see him in the hopes he would marry her. Instead, he dropped her when she became pregnant. Mathias was very young, claimed force for the first fall, and argued that they had a courtship. In addition, Lifton compounded his treachery by portraying Mathias as a prostitute at the trial. When the Pembroke magistrates gave her an order of two shillings and sixpence a week, the ‘result was received with applause’ from the partisan crowd.Footnote 90
As these examples indicate, the magistrates and the wider community often agreed on what behaviour was most unacceptable, and the recipients of public shaming tended to be men, who had more power and sexual freedom. Samuel Brewer's remark that he ‘would rather pay any money than have his name exposed’ was not unusual. Affiliation cases publicised the misconduct of both sexes and it is therefore little wonder that some men fled rather than face their days in court. In contrast, magistrates and audiences were sympathetic to the women, as they were in such unenviable positions. Women might not always get the summons issued, but they rarely faced ‘hooting’ or ‘hissing’. Instead, women felt shame when they became pregnant and, moreover, once they had an illegitimate child, they had to live with the embarrassment daily. They did not complain of rituals of humiliation, but of cold-shouldering and derision. Beatrice Williams, for example, explained why she sued for a second time in 1905 in Mountain Ash, having failed at the Llandaff police court. She had moved, she said, because she ‘was shown up and was a laughing-stock’ in Llandaff, claiming that ‘All the people used to sneer at me’. The Mountain Ash justices ordered the defendant to pay five shillings weekly on the evidence that he had offered money to settle the matter, a result that might have brought some small vindication to Williams.Footnote 91
Conclusion
Bastardy hearings in Victorian Wales disclosed frankness about sexuality from both men and women. Although hedged with difficulties, the summonses gave women the opportunity to gain compensation, and they won the majority of cases. Magistrates were less concerned with punishing erring women than in determining the probable paternity of the child, and the poor law guardians had every reason to help inmates track down putative fathers. Men faced disadvantages if the evidence revealed any kind of courtship or if they had offered money to the women, showing the strength of the assumption that a man would ‘stand by’ a woman he had ‘seduced’. In contrast, women had the most problems when their relationships contained gender, class and age imbalances. Poverty made for small houses and isolated farms and encouraged girls to go to work as servants in their early teens, and these same conditions made ‘corroborative evidence’ difficult to find. Magistrates did not always appear to comprehend the power differential between a poor teenage girl and a wealthier adult employer, since they largely ignored claims of sexual pressure and assault. Still, a woman did not have to have a pure sexual history to win, and men also lost some credibility as a result of ‘libertine’ behaviour. In short, attitudes towards sexual laxness varied. The highest condemnation went to deception, both of men and women, but a case with frequent sexual encounters without courtship might still get an order.
Although the Welsh cases are not entirely inconsistent with English norms, they do have some distinctive features. The larger data base of cases I have assembled to study illegitimacy in the late nineteenth century includes cases from all over England, especially from Manchester and London. A comparison with this larger group of cases shows that Wales was not unusual in its courtroom dynamics, although more generous in its decisions. Women won 72.7% of the time when English cases are included, compared to 77% of Wales alone. In addition, in the larger group, men's appeals succeeded a third of the time rather than a fifth. A woman had a better chance of winning, and of having her victory confirmed, in Wales. This perhaps reflected more local tolerance of premarital sexuality and bundling, or possibly Welsh resistance to the bastardy laws.Footnote 92 Welsh awards were, however, slightly lower, probably due to the low pay of colliers and farm workers. The English cases still had two shillings and sixpence as the most popular award (sixty-one times or 30.5%), but the next highest was five shillings (forty-six times or twenty-three per cent), an amount that accounted for only fifteen per cent of Welsh cases. This fits in with evidence from breach of promise cases, where awards from Welsh juries were somewhat smaller than English ones (an average/median of £118/£75 in Wales versus £411/£100 in England), and Wales had a slightly higher percentage of such cases involving ‘seduction’ of the plaintiff (twenty-eight per cent versus twenty-five per cent).Footnote 93 These lower awards, however, were partly mitigated by the activism of unions like Swansea and Cardiff. Indeed, although most unions helped women get support after 1872, few were as active as Cardiff in helping mothers collect it.
Overall, affiliation hearings were not an effective way to gain support for illegitimate children. Only a minority of women brought the cases and even when they won, they received small amounts and might not be able to collect even that much. By the 1920s, Lady Astor was not alone in arguing that the bastardy laws must change, if only to preserve infant life. Surveying a large group of affiliation proceedings gives substance to their criticisms. Although women had many advantages in the hearings themselves, the general position of unmarried mothers was abysmal. Lawmakers feared that if they gave illegitimate children support, they encouraged immorality. Instead of removing the stigma, then, local governments instead punished a minority of ‘bad apples’, the men who did not marry their partners or provide for their children. As long as paternity remained uncertain, male authorities feared women's lying accusations more than men's refusal to support their children. Allowing the majority of summonses to succeed served to mitigate the worst parts of the system, which remained largely unreformed until the twentieth century.
