unmarried Mothers in 19th cent Ireland.

boomchicawawa

I was looking up the census recently and stumbled upon the fact that my great gran(born circa 1870) was an unmarried mother of 3 children (last one born 1900). I could be wrong but would this not have been very frowned upon in Catholic Ireland in those days. She had them over a 14 year period and all were living at home with her and her father and older brothers !!!! Has anyone studied this period in relation to unwed mothers who can shead light on this. I'm presuming incest as I can see no other reason how her father would have tolerated 3 'mistakes'.

looksee

Well of course it would have been frowned on, but it depends on a lot of circumstances. Maybe she was on an out of the way farm with not much in the way of neighbours. Or in tenement type accommodation where everyone was too busy trying to survive to worry about an unmarried mother. The whole business of illegitimate children was way more important to the middle classes than it was to anyone else, the people who would worry 'what will people think'.

Also people at that time were gifted in keeping things in the family, if they didn't want you to know their business they could be very secretive. That was something that lasted up to the 70s or thereabouts to some extent.

And just because it was frowned on doesn't mean it didn't happen.

boomchicawawa

Tks for that...good to have another perspective on it. She lived in a semi rural area near the edge of Dublin. When I was looking for my grans baptism cert in the local church, I checked all the baptisms for the 14 year period and there were only two in this time where the father was listed as 'unknown' which adds to my feeling that it was not a usual occurance. Neither my gran nor her siblings were baptised in their local church which may or may not be significant as a lot of children were baptised from the hospital bed to a local church and my gran was born in the Coombe. There is no one left in the family who can shed light on her story but I'd love know the backround. My mother maintains that the internet is disturbing a lot of family skeletons around the country :P