Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

The effect in increasing the infantile death-rate and the misery caused in physical and mental unfitness in the children who survive, are the result of our blind action. This is what we have to change. For it is such social waste that makes our cruel bastardy laws so absurd. After all, you cannot go on indefinitely encouraging the production of wastrels. It is the practical question of health and social well-being that we need to consider in reforming our laws.

The practical aspects of the question are serious. Illegitimacy has a far closer relation than is generally understood to the racial wastage which it helps to feed. Certainly it looms large as a factor in social disintegration—in the degeneration which leads to the streets and to the prison, and the ever-increasing hosts of the submerged. The Minority Report of the Royal Commissioners on the Poor Law 1909, for instance, estimates (no definite statistics having been kept!) that in the United Kingdom in each year are born over 15,000 children in the Poor Law institutions, and of these 30 per cent. are legitimate and 70 per cent. illegitimate. The yearly harvest of these shame-branded children appears almost incredibly great. Roughly estimating, in Great Britain (excluding Ireland) there are 50,000 illegitimate births in each year—that is to say, about one million of these children are born in this land in a single generation. Nor is this all. In England, unfortunately, still-born births are not required to be registered; were these recorded the illegitimate birth-rate would be much higher than the present statistics show. In those countries where the records are kept, the number of still-born illegitimate births is always higher than it is for children born under the protection of marriage.

And to this vast host of helpless children we, in this land, give almost no protection. In the English law they have no father. They are filii nullius—nobody’s children; without kin; they have no rights of inheritance. All through life they are branded. The child in England is not legitimised even on the subsequent marriage of its parents. In Scotland this injustice is not found. The illegitimate child becomes legitimate by the simple and natural process of its father marrying its mother. Can the cruelty of our English law have any positive value? It is difficult to think so. Aside from sentimentality, aside even from the value or worthlessness of punitive measures, here is a law that stands as a direct obstacle against right and responsible conduct.

And what is the result? The infant mortality rate, high as it is for the children of married parents, is doubled and more than doubled in the case of illegitimate children. Three times as many children born out of wedlock die before reaching adolescence, as compared with those children born under the protection of the law. Think just a little of the real significance of this alarmingly high infant death-rate; these tell-tale figures are the proof of our failure. Do they not speak of a waste of infant life which, if for practical reasons only, we cannot suffer to go on? This fact of England’s need for children should drive us on to action. Here, as in many other cases of indifference, we have failed to recognise that life—the one thing without which all else must perish—has been slipping from us by our carelessness, in a way that threatens the whole future and well-being of our race.

In many towns in England the illegitimate death-rate of infants under one year has increased, and still is increasing to an extent that ought to give alarm. In London the illegitimate infant death-rate is more than twice as high as the legitimate. The exact figures vary in different boroughs: thus in Poplar the number of legitimate infant deaths per thousand is 121.5 as against 281.24 illegitimate, whereas Wandsworth has 97 as the death-rate of legitimate children and 276 for illegitimate. In the city of Manchester, where the death-rate of legitimates is 169, that of illegitimates is 362. In one division (Clayton) it is 583, in another (Blackley) it is as high as 667. Bristol, again, has a legitimate death-rate of 124 per thousand and an illegitimate of 349; Leicester, 130 against 377; Cardiff, 124 against 349; while Cambridge, with a legitimate death-rate as low as 81 per thousand, has an illegitimate rate of 276.

The meaning of these figures is plain: the unmarried mother cannot give proper care to her child, as a rule she cannot feed it, and, deprived of its natural nourishment, it is more likely to die, and, if it lives, it will be less strong to meet life. This is proved by the vital statistics, which show that the illegitimate babies, unlike legitimate babies, are not stricken with death in the first week of infant life; they die more frequently in the second month than in the first, and more frequently in the third than in the second month. Illegitimates at birth are equal to legitimate children; indeed, from these statistics they would seem to be born stronger. It is evident that the high death-rate among them is caused only by defective nutrition and want of sufficient care. In other words, these children are killed needlessly by our neglect. For the sin of their deaths rests upon each and all of us, until we rise up and refuse to accept conditions that permit children to be born only to die.

And while you grasp the offence of these facts, do not be consoled by thinking that this open infantile slaughter is the only or indeed the greatest, evil that follows from our indifference. No statistics can do more than shadow the extent of the wrong; motherhood brought to despair—the child-murders that fortunately remain hidden, the secret abortions, the concealed births, the still-born children who might have been born alive. We have suffered these things. But it is the race that pays and rots; the penalty for our sins of neglect is paid by these innocent little ones.

Let me at this place insert a brief digression to point out one particular that it is very necessary for us to remember. There are many types among these unmarried mothers, as many as there are among married women; and some would be good mothers did we allow them the opportunity, others would not be good mothers under any circumstances, because they are weak in character and are incapable of maternal sacrifice. Now, the problem of the saving of the child is quite a separate one in these opposite cases: in the one instance everything ought to be done to keep the child with its mother, in the other the one safeguard is to keep the child wholly out of the mother’s power.

I will give the reader four cases from my own knowledge to make this fact clearer; they will, I believe, speak more forcibly than any mere statement of my own opinion.

The first case shows illegitimacy at its very lowest—motherhood made a crime. The facts were told to me by a doctor friend on whose word I can rely absolutely. A company of five or six men were gathered in some outbuildings of a country farm, among them was one who was half-witted. In an adjoining barn was a girl, also half-witted. The men joked one with another; a bet was made, and the half-witted man was sent to seek the girl. This he did, and as the result of this hideous act a child was born and lived. I do not know what became of it.