It was a fate worse than death. AN UNMARRIED MOTHER IN VICTORIAN SOCIETY. To desperate young women a friendly nurse seemed the perfect solution.
1839 The slums of Bristol
It is an age of prosperity and optimism, but for many, life is little more than a never ending misery.
Thrift, hard work, religious and moral piety is established as true Victorian values.
In this society women are not supposed to have sexual impulses and young unmarried ladies are expected to remain in a state of simpering virginity.
Sex outside of marriage is a deadly sin and those who violate this rule are fallen women; their children born in sin and marked for life.
For Victoria’s Desperate Mothers the choices are Workhouse, Prostitution, or ADOPTION.
The Victorian ballad – singer described the ‘friendly nurse’ as a “bad woman” _ but that was an obvious understatement. She was utterly vile. No one really knows how many children she cruelly murdered for money.
Although nothing can be said in mitigation of her awful crimes, it must be remembered that she herself was a fearful product of the times. The society that pilloried the unmarried mother and did little or nothing for the unwanted child, also had blood on its hands.
Once, she was a child.
Then the world began to mould her.
Then she became a monster.