From: sbishop@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,soc.men,alt.dads-rights
Subject: Re: Biological Reasons fo
Date: 21 Nov 92 08:14:43 EST
Organization:  Wright State University 

In article <1992Nov20.210034.25011@fys.ruu.nl>, johnston@fys.ruu.nl (Helen Johnston) writes:
> In article <1992Nov20.191141.11640@rotag.mi.org> kevin@rotag.mi.org (Kevin Darcy) writes:
>>
>>#1 is incorrect. Under the Common Law, an illegitimate child was considered
>>"nobody's child", and had no rights to inheritance or support.
>>
> While the lack of right to inheritance was pretty generally true
> (though not always; witness Elizabeth I of England getting to the
> throne despite having been officially bastardized by Act of
> Parliament!), the second is certainly not true.  Paternal support of
> children born out of wedlock has a very long history. Quoting from J.R.
> Gillis, ``For better, For worse: British marriages, 1600 to the
> present'':

One other point that is being missed here, women also did not have the
right to inherit.  The Common Law rule of being 'nobody's child' meant
that they weren't the FATHER'S heir.  Since women had no rights either
and couldn't inherit, there was nothing the child could inherit from
the mother.  I just finished reading _Lady of the Forest_ which is a 
novel of the Robin Hood legend told from the Lady Marian perspective.
One thing that is heavily covered was that a woman had NO rights at all
in that day.  Her body did not even belong to herself.  It belonged to
her father who could give it/sell it/dispose of it to any husband he chose
for her.  If she was an orphan and had lands then she was a ward of the
King and he could dispose of her.  

> 
> ``... Often men entered into agreements to maintain their children in
> the manner that Evan Jones did in 1778. He agreed to pay Elizabeth
> Williams of Ceiriog four shillings each week until she was delivered and
> then five shillings a month thereafter. If the child lived, then he
> would pay three pounds and ten shillings each subsequent year...
> Cardiganshire officials operated in a similar manner, the men paying the
> women through them.'' [p. 128]
> 
> ``Much later another Welshman remembered the customary way of dealing
> with a man who did not own up to his duties:
> 	A few neighbours came together, took the child from the young
> 	girl and took it down to the reputed father to bring up ---
> 	and to show they meant business they had brought their guns
> 	with them. If he did not want to bring up the child himself
> 	--- and that was usually the case --- the girl could make a
> 	better bargain for taking it back than she could otherwise
> 	have done.'' [p. 131]
> 
> It was not until 1834 with the passage of the New Poor Law that
> ``...Unwed mothers were stripped of their right to outrelief, even that
> provided by the putative father under an affiliation order from the
> magistrates... In order to obtain ordinary assistance, she now had no
> choice but the workhouse, a provision which was introduced with
> deterrence in mind... [I]n the north, there was a sense that things had
> been better in `grandfather's days':
> 	If a young man went a-courting a damsel meek and mild
> 	And if she from misfortune should hap to have a child
> 	By going to a magistrate, a recompense to seek,
> 	They'd make the man marry her, or pay a crown a week.
> 
> 	But now by the New Poor Law he nothing has to pay
> 	Nor would he, even if he got twenty children every day.''
> [pp. 139-140]
> 
> I believe the book "A Midwife's Tale" by someone whose name escapes me,
> about a woman who was a midwife in New England around the time of the
> American Revolution, also has several examples of child support being
> given in America, but I don't have the book with me to check.
> -- 
> Helen Johnston       | Astronomye is an harde thynge and yvel forto knowe.
> johnston@fys.ruu.nl  |      -- William Langland, Piers the Plowman

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