CUESTIONES GENERALES

202 _{Megan Doolittle, ‘Fatherhood, Religious Belief and the Protection of Children in}

Nineteenth-Century English Families’, in Trev L. Broughton and Helen Rogers (eds), Gender

and Fatherhood in the Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 32.

203 _{For the concept of 'emotional refuge' see William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A}

Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 128-9.

204 _{Boswell in Holland, pp. 173-4. He had previously told the woman that he was mourning a}

payments only and maternal authority supported by the parish. I suggest that when the poor law was not involved the emphasis on mothers as primary carers and decision-makers was reversed. Fathers were much more likely to take on primary responsibility for a child's welfare, albeit often at a distance, and children were seldom expected to cohabit with their birth mothers. This occurred from the middling sort upwards; Erasmus Darwin's daughters remained with him when their mother, a nursemaid, married and moved 25 miles away.205 This arrangement more

closely echoed the gendered division of authority in legitimate parenthood, where 'the father is supposed to be absolute lord'.206 _{Although fathers had no legal claim to}

illegitimate offspring, among the professions, gentry and peerage many men claimed a right of authority and ownership that generally went unchallenged. I will demonstrate that mothers free from poverty and occupational constraints were not necessarily more able to cohabit with and nurture their children themselves. Propertied motherhood had its own distinct difficulties, namely in the differing value of female chastity, the importance of marriage to female status and subsistence, and a different balance of economic and cultural power within higher-status extra- marital relationships.

Social motherhood carried greater risk to reputation for middling or elite mothers. This partly reflects a double standard that held female chastity of higher value than male because 'all property depends upon it'.207 _{Sexual honour was undoubtedly}

important to lower-class women and some men but the economic and social value of marital status and motherhood to elite women was far greater.208 A woman whose

chastity was suspect risked exposing her children to disinheritance; spurious heirs

205 _{The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Desmond King-Hele (Cambridge, 2007), p. 140.}

Augustus Montgomery and Georgina Walpole similarly were left under the care of either their father or their father's representative, and their mothers Kitty Hunter and Mary Sheen married and moved away.

206 _{Anon., 'The Genuine Sentiments of an English Country Gentleman, upon the Present Plan}

of the Foundling Hospital', in Jonas Hanway, A candid historical account of the Hospital for the

reception of exposed and deserted young children (London, 1759), p. 12.

207 _{James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. David Womersley (London, 2008), p. 508. For}

context on the double standard see Keith Thomas, 'The Double Standard', Journal of the

History of Ideas 20 (1959), pp. 195-216.

208 _{The classic reappraisal of the double standard is Capp, 'The Double Standard Revisited'.}

Most historians now agree that sexual reputation mattered to men, but that it was likely more significant for women: Foyster, Manhood, pp. 77-87; Turner, Fashioning Adultery, pp. 61-4; Bailey, Unquiet Lives, pp. 10, 140-67.

were legally contested throughout the period.209 _{The doubtful chastity of Georgiana,}

Duchess of Devonshire, and her husband's mistress Lady Elizabeth Foster led to rumours decades later that Georgiana's son the 6th Duke was illegitimate.210 Elite

women were more likely to have adulterine children than poorer parents for whom illegitimacy resulted from courtship sex, a custom not common among the wealthy.211 Motherhood was proof of adultery and risked divorce, a penalty that did

not apply to men and which could rarely be utilised at lower social levels.212 Divorce

carried considerable economic and social penalties. As Turner argues, a woman 'stood to lose everything - her maintenance, portion and access to her [legitimate] children'.213 _{The social penalty of adultery also became more acute over the century.}

Growing press intrusion and public demand for prurient details quickly made criminal conversation cases notorious.214 It is unsurprising that women such as

Georgiana Cavendish and Harriet Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough kept pregnancies secret, gave birth abroad, and chose to relinquish their illegitimate children to their lovers' authority rather than risk a scandal.215

Illicit sex was also increasingly perceived to render women unfit mothers. As Perry argues, after 1740 mothers were supposed to physically devote themselves to maternity, and sexual urges were 'interpreted as perverse'.216 Illegitimate maternity

was a catch 22; it proclaimed sexuality in its most dangerous form outside marriage, yet to abandon or physically distance oneself from a child was to be a bad mother. As Barclay argues, there was a widespread belief that 'a life of sexual immorality

209 _{Julie Shaffer, 'Bastardy and Divorce Trials, 1780-1809', in Rebecca Probert (ed.), Cohabitation}

and Non-Marital Births in England and Wales, 1600-2012 (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 80-99.

210 _{Amanda Foreman, The Duchess. Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire (London, 2008), p. 400.} 211 _{Bigamous or adulterine bastardy comprised only 4.5 percent of filiation cases in Essex}

before 1834, Nutt, 'Paradox and Problems', p. 115. I only have one case of pre-marital conception by an elite woman in this thesis, and it would be impossible to quantify in the absence of poor law or accurate parish register evidence.

212 _{For the social background of litigants for separation or adultery see Turner, Fashioning}

Adultery, p. 147; Bailey, Unquiet Lives, pp. 49, 54-55.

213 _{Turner, Fashioning Adultery, pp. 151, 153, 156; Bailey, Unquiet Lives, p. 151.}

214 _{Donna T. Andrew, Aristocratic Vice: The Attack on Duelling, Suicide, Adultery and Gambling in}

Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, 2013), pp. 147-156.

215 _{Judith Lewis, In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760-1860 (New}

Brunswick, 1986), pp. 28, 39-40; Foreman, The Duchess, pp. 67, 69, 266, 355-6.

216 _{Perry, 'Colonizing the Breast', p. 230. Perry's argument is supported by: Retford, Art of}

Domestic Life, p. 97; Marilyn Francus, Monstrous Motherhood: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Ideology of Domesticity (Baltimore, 2012), pp. 63-5.

"hardened" the seduced woman'. 217 _{Some fathers used this belief to justify removing}

their children from maternal influence. William Temple condemned Boswell's married mistress Mrs Dodds as 'the unnatural mother of three [legitimate] children... a woman that has deserted three poor infants'. But, when she gave birth to Boswell's illegitimate daughter in 1767, Temple supported Boswell's decision to 'immediately take the child from her', negating Mrs Dodds' maternal rights despite earlier castigating her for desertion.218

It was also feared that unmarried mothers would embark on other non-marital relationships, thus exposing their children to contact with men who were not their fathers. In the 1790s, actress Dorothy Jordan and gentleman Richard Ford at first cordially shared parental responsibility for their two illegitimate daughters. When Dorothy began an extra-marital relationship with William, Duke of Clarence, however, Richard began to undercut her maternal rights. He stated that it was his 'wish that she should, whenever she pleases, see and be with them', but crucially 'provided her visits are not attended by any circumstances which may be improper to them'.219 He insisted that Dorothy could not see the girls in the home she shared

with William because of the danger that they would 'receive impressions not to be hereafter eradicated'.220 Mothers who did not fit the ideal of sexual passivity were

perceived as dangerous to their children's moral and physical welfare in a way that biological fathers were not.

The relative authority of mothers and fathers was also affected by the differing balance of economic and socio-cultural power within kept-mistress or socially- unequal relationships. Elite fathers with children born to lower-status mothers tended to assert their authority as guardians, although this was legally incorrect, because they had greater economic and social leverage. In his 1785 will Sir Thomas Pye nominated his siblings as guardians of his illegitimate children Caroline, Nancy and Polly, even though they were under the legal authority of their mother and

217 Katie Barclay, 'Marginal Households and their Emotions: The "kept mistress" in

Enlightenment Edinburgh', in Susan Broomhall (ed.), Spaces for Feeling: Emotions and

Sociabilities in Britain, 1650-1850 (Oxford, 2015), p. 102.

218 _{Boswell in Search of a Wife, pp. 51, 113, William Temple to James Boswell, 20 March 1767;}

William Temple to James Boswell, 22 November 1767.

219 Correspondence of Mrs Jordan, p. 12, Richard Ford to Dorothy Jordan, [October 1791]. 220 _{Ibid., p. 14, Hester Bland to Dorothy Jordan, [1791-2].}

technically her estranged husband. Their mother was Pye's nominal housekeeper and almost entirely financially dependent upon him.221 Depending on paternal

attitudes, kept mistresses' rights to motherhood were usually negated before their sexual duties and a need for secrecy. Tague argues that wives could assert their authority as mothers to demand a lying-in period, extra servants or abstinence from sex, backed by strong communal custom.222 Kept mistresses lacked this communal

support. To maintain secrecy, Sally Bradford gave birth to her first two illegitimate children by her employer Sylas Neville over 100 miles away from her home. She left them with a nurse to resume her position as Sylas' sexual partner, either at his instigation or because of her fears that Sylas would tire of her in her absence.223 _They

quickly resumed their sexual relationship; after returning from her first birth in March 1775 she became pregnant again within two months. This not only prevented Sally from exercising physical motherhood, but also endangered their children's welfare. Her first two children died in infancy, perhaps due to lack of breastfeeding, or their nurses' 'negligence and want of care'.224 Sally was only able to look after her

third child, Sarah, because Sylas was abroad for several years.

The importance of relative economic and social status, and of gendered notions of authority, is evident in the custody dispute between Dorothy Jordan and Richard Ford. At the time of their separation, Dorothy was financially independent and protected by her new relationship with William, Duke of Clarence. As she did not need Richard, she could resist his attempts to retain authority over their children. Richard resented this curtailment of his paternal and masculine rights. He cancelled an annuity she had given them and lost his temper when she cut short a visit with

221 _{TNA: PROB 11/1136/416: will of Sir Thomas Pye. Lord Orford similarly left the}

guardianship of his illegitimate daughter Georgina Walpole to genteel trustees, not her mother, who had been a maidservant. These trustees chose Georgina's school, and she had to ask their permission to visit her mother and to marry. See NRO: HMN 4/46/3/1, Mary Sparrow to Briggs Fountaine, 20 December 1795; HMN 4/46/2/3, Briggs Fountaine to Anthony Hamond, 22 April 1800; HMN 4/46/2/5, Georgina Walpole to Anthony Hamond, 30 August 1800.

222 _{Ingrid Tague, 'Aristocratic Women and Ideas of Family in the Early Eighteenth Century',}

in Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster (eds), The Family in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 198-203. These customs were also observed in the seventeenth century, see Crawford, ‘The Construction and Experience of Maternity', p. 28.

223 _{Diary of Sylas Neville, p. 214, 15 February 1775.}

224 _{Ibid., p. 217. For the connection between lack of breastfeeding and infant mortality see}

him.225 _{He was backed by Dorothy's sister Hester, who felt that it was in the}

children's best interests not to 'deprive them of a parent who so tenderly loves them' and who could lend them 'countenance and support'.226 Hester, moreover, felt that

her sister should bow to customary (rather than legal) masculine authority and avoid a scandal: '[f]rom his education he knows what your right is; he also knows how very much you must be embarrassed and indelicately circumstanced in urging that right.'227 Clearly genteel women seldom asserted their legal rights due to cultural

pressure. Eventually, Dorothy stood her ground and Richard became estranged from his daughters.228 _{Dorothy was unusual in having an independent income, and as an}

actress who was already an outsider she was perhaps less sensitive to social norms. Dorothy was also protected by William; when they separated 20 years later she was unable to retain custody of their children because the power balance had shifted, reflecting his superior status, her waning career and mounting debts._.229 _Nonetheless,

this example suggests that if mothers had been practically able to support their children themselves they may not have agreed to separation.

Maternal separation was not always involuntary but could be a calculated decision to improve their children's status. In unequal relationships, in particular, some mothers allowed almost complete separation in order to inculcate a beneficial father- child relationship. Maria Burton, the mother of two daughters by the naval architect Samuel Bentham, had intended to 'part with my dear child' so she could 'be brought up under the eyes of her Father [as]... a means to insure his protection of her'.230

Separation was articulated using the imagery of emotional distress and maternal sacrifice, which Bailey has identified as a powerful self-identity for married women.231 _{Dorothy Jordan stated on her separation from William, Duke of Clarence,}

225 _{Correspondence of Mrs Jordan, p. 17, Hester Bland to Dorothy Jordan [n.d.]. Hester relates}

that Dorothy's decision 'to send for his favourite child, the very day after he came from France, and that for a week, and by a mere verbal message, was too much for his temper, perhaps too hasty, to bear'.

226 _{Ibid., pp. 14-16, Hester Bland to Dorothy Jordan [late 1791 or early 1792].} 227 _{Ibid., pp. 15-16, Hester Bland to Dorothy Jordan [n.d.].}

228 _{Claire Tomalin, Mrs Jordan’s Profession: The Actress and the Prince (New York, 1995), p. 132.} 229 _{Correspondence of Mrs Jordan, pp. 229-30, William Adam to Dorothy Jordan [24 January}

1812].

230 _{Private archive: Koe MSS, Maria Burton to John Herbert Koe [April 1816], cited in}

Catherine Pease-Watkin, ‘Jeremy and Samuel Bentham – The Private and the Public’, Journal

of Bentham Studies 5 (2002), p. 16.

that '[t]he idea of only partially parting with [her children] would be death to me if I was not so strongly impress'd with the certainty of its being for their future advantage'.232

Mothers also encouraged higher-status fathers to take on more of a normative paternal role of complete authority over a child's material and emotional welfare as a means of asserting the moral and emotional legitimacy of their relationship and reconciling their illicit position with the ideal of maternal passivity. Grocer's daughter Anna Maria Bennett adopted the normative rhetoric of patriarchal household authority to describe her children's relationship to their higher-status father, Sir Thomas Pye. After their separation she asserted, 'far be it from me to wish to divest you of the authority both Gratitude and duty ought to [e]nsure from Polly and Nancy'.233 _{Although Pye had no legal rights, Bennett acted as if he did. This may}

have been a strategy to remind Pye of his paternity, particularly as they had separated amidst accusations of her infidelity.234 His acknowledgement was essential

to her children's future prospects and their adoption of their father's higher social status. She noted in 1780 when her children were still young that 'the girls are still Bro[ough]t up as mine but if we Live with you we must all Ra[i]se in our Notions', referring to the potential elevation of their status if they were publicly acknowledged as the children of a gentleman.235 It is unlikely that Bennett would ever have agreed

to give up her children entirely but her immediate economic survival depended on presenting herself and her children as Pye's dependents, as close to the normative characterisation of wife and children as possible. Similarly, Dorothy Jordan deferred to William's authority, asking his permission to take their children to the theatre or visit their son at school, even though she was financially independent and he had no legal rights.236 _{This was an extension into motherhood of the rhetoric of 'domestic}

232 _{Correspondence of Mrs Jordan, p. 235, Dorothy Jordan to George Fitzclarence, [18 June 1812].} 233 _{CWAC: 36/74, Anna Maria Bennett to Sir Thomas Pye, [1785]. Similar language is used by}

Dorothy Jordan to describe her children's relationship with their father, HHL: DJ 410, Dorothy Jordan to William, Duke of Clarence, [22 Nov 1810]; DJ 422, Dorothy Jordan to William, Duke of Clarence, 7 Dec 1810.

234 _{LSU: LLMVC/31/box 7, Anna Maria Bennett to Sir Thomas Pye [March 1785]. For more}

on Bennett's use of strategy, but as a lover not a mother, see Holloway, '"You know I am all on fire"', pp. 336-7.

235 _{CWAC: 36/62, Anna Maria Bennett to Sir Thomas Pye, [1780-1].}

236 _{HHL: DJ 101, Dorothy Jordan to William, Duke of Clarence, [December 1804]; DJ 102,}

Dorothy Jordan to William, Duke of Clarence, [1804]; DJ 123, Dorothy Jordan to William, Duke of Clarence, 3 Sept [1806]; DJ 153, Dorothy Jordan to William, Duke of Clarence, [1806].

normality' observed by Barclay; mistresses characterised their lovers as 'absent husbands' in order to escape 'the anxiety and pain of an illegitimate relationship'.237

Perhaps in characterising these men as fathers, women were able to recast themselves as good mothers.

As with poor mothers, propertied women often expressed deep emotional attachment towards their children and valued their maternal status. Shame was generally only articulated during pregnancy, and was related to their sexual activity rather than focused towards the child.238 _{When pregnant with her youngest child,}

Anna Maria Bennett complained, '[e]very body observes how Lusty I grow in the waist I feel so awkward and ashamed of Every ones observation... I believe the Reason is Every Pregnant woman wants a male support'.239 This echoes Barclay's

finding that kept mistresses were often subject to a shaming surveillance and could find it more difficult to rent houses or socialise without a male presence.240 However,

shame at pregnancy rarely extended to resentment of the child; Bennett was an extremely fond mother. The circumstances of conception could even make mothers more attached. Dorothy Jordan referred to her first illegitimate child, Fanny, as '[a] dear and amiable little girl made doubly dear to me by mutual misfortune.'241

Motherhood was also valued as a distinct state. Dorothy adopted the normative rhetoric of natural affection and an idealised domestic motherhood. She referred to mother-child relationships as 'the first and most sacred type of human nature' and felt that if she was not continually anxious for their welfare 'I should not deserve the name of Mother', reflecting the normative ideal that 'to be anxious was... a trait of good parenting'.242 Although we only have evidence from women who remained in

contact with their children, these examples do suggest that unmarried maternity

In document PLAN ESTRATÉGICO DE LA COMARCA DE LA SIBERIA (página 119-124)