The Sun.
London, England, 1833-04-12 00:00:00

THE BASTARDY LAWS.

The abuses which take place under the present
Jaws respecting bastardy are so enormous that
one would wonder they are suffered to exist, did
not the experience of every day show us that no
evil is attempted to be remedied till it has be•
come intolerable. We shall give some extracts
from the evidence collected by the Poor Law
Commissioners upon this subject, in the hope
that our rulers may thilik, with us, that the
period is arrived when the laws must be amended,
unless we would see all chastity ranked by the
poorer classes as a vice instead of a virtue. The
following extracts are taken from Mr. Cowell's
report. We beg particular attention to the last
paragraph, although, indeed, the whole is deserv-
ing of particular attention :
" The theory of a law—the text of law is nothing.
The practice of the law is the real law. It is according
to the practice that men shape their actions, and accord-
ing to nothing else. _ _

" The practice of the English law respecting bastardy
is shortly this
" Whenever a woman is pregnant of a bastard child
which the overseer apprehends may become chargeable on
the parish, or whenever a woman applies for relief for her
bastard after having given birth to it, the overseer has
power to compel her to declare on oath the father, and
then to compel him to piy the parish ►,he amount of
whatever order of maintenance the magistrate may mike
upon him. The sole object of this legislation is to save
expense to the parish. The effect of it is, as might have
been foreseen, to promote bastardy; to make want of
chastity on the woman's part the shoitest road to obtaining
either a husband or a competent maintenance ; and to en-
courage extortion and perjury. It would he impossible
for the heart of man or demon to devise a more effective
instrument for extinguishing every noble feeling in the
female heart—for blighting the sweetest domestic effec
tion•, and for degrading the males and females of that por-
tion of the community connected with the receipt of parish
relief,—than this truly diabolical institution.

" In the first pine, I appeal to the experience of all
overseers in rural districts, whether the instances of mar-
riages taking place among the labouring classes, without
previous pregnancy, are not so very rare as to constitute
no exception to the general assertion, that ' pregnancy
precedes marriage.'

" In the second place, I ask, whether marriages are not,
in most instances, brought about by the threat which the
woman holds out to the man of swearing the child to him
if he does not marry her ; and whether the power afforded
to the man of suggesting to the woman that she may
place him in this predicament is not the infallible topic of
seduction and persuasion which he employs in the rare in-
stances which require persuasion ?
In the third place, I appeal to every assistant-over-
seer who has been any time in office, whether he has not,
in his own experience, known of several instances of per-
jury and extortion on the part of women in his own parish,
and heard of many more.
" I proceed to give miscellaneous instances.
" DOWNHAII "MARKET, NORFOLK.

"Order on the father, 25., out depends upon the circum-
SiaMCCS. The overseers stated as follows :

" A woman refused to declare the father of the child
of which she was pregnant. They threatened her wilt
imprisonment if she persevered in her contumacy, where-
upon she declared she would swear the child to one of
them. This she proceeded to do. She appeared before
the magistrate, and had the name of the overseer actu slly
inserted in the order, but when the oath was tendered to
her, relented,"

T‘ SWAFTHAM, NORFOLK.

" A woman in a neighbouring parish had five illegiti.
mate children, for which she was allowed 10s. per week,
end 6s. for herself. Finding herself pregnant for the sixth
time, she employed a man to go round to various persons
with whin she might or might not have had con-
nection, to acquaint each of them separatelv'with the fact
of her pregnancy, and of her intention of swearing the
child to him unless he consented to send her a sum of
money, when she would engage to swear it to some one
else. Her demands for this hush-morn y ranged as high as
101. in some instances. The first man to whom her am-
bassador applied, gave him IW. The ambassador re-
turned, and represented to his employer that the man bad
laughed at her threat, but had sent her half-a-crown, out
of which be thought she ought to give him Is. 641 for his
trouble. To this she consented ;so he benefited 91. 195.,
0, A 'to tt Matt .7—Th'ti-resisied, and or; his ap-
peal succeeded in getting the order on him quashed. Ti,e
case was tried at Swaffuam, where the above circumstances
came to light in Court.
" This woman was never punished. She gave birth to
her child, was allowed 2s. for it by the p Irish, and is now
in the receipt of 18s. per we k, the produce of successful
bastardy ad vent urea.
" My informant in this and the following instance was
Mr. Sewell, clerk to the magistrates at Swaffnam.
" A woman of Swaffham was reproached by t,:e magis-
trate, Mr. Young, with the burdens she had brought upon
the parish, upon the occ,sion of her appearing before him
to present the parish with her seventh bastard. She re-
plied, ' I ant not going to lie disappointed in my company
with men to save the parish.' Ilis woman now receives
14s. a week for her seven bastards, being 2s. a head for
ouch. Mr. Sewell informed me that had she been a widow
with anven legitimate children, she would not have re-
ceived so much by 4s. or ss. a week, according to their
scale of allowance to widows. A bashed child is then
about 25 per cent. more valuable to a parent than a legi
tin ate one. The premium upon want of chastity, per-
jury, and extortion, is here very obvious; and Mr. Sewell
informed me that it is considered a good speculation to
marry a woman who can bring a fortune of oae or two
bastards to her husband. Mr. Sewell had never known in
the course of his experience but two women punished for
having illegitimate children. The profligacy in this neigh-
bourhood is very great.

" ROYSTON

" Informant, Mr. Doekwra7order, 2s.—varies ac-
cording to the circumstances of the father.
" Many gilds have got as much as 201. or 301. from
different young men not to swear children to them ; has
heard young men jeering one another in this way--` Ah,
you had to come down with a 51. note, or otherwise she
would have sworn it to you.' Some girls pretend to be
pregnant when they are not so, to extort money.
" A girl, to extort money, swore a child to the clergy-
man's son, of which he proved himself not to be the father.
" One woman, named Smith, has three children hy
three different fathers. She has never been punished, and
the parish allows her 6s. per week. Women are very
rarely punished; has only known one or two instances in
his memory of the parish. Bastardy very common.

HOLBEACH, LINCOLNSHIRE.

" Informants, the overseer and master of the workhouse.
"Many illegitimate children; ten or twelve every year;
bastards increasing; order frail ls. to 2s. 6d. and above,
depends on Me circunt,tan':es of the father.
" An unmarried girl, upon leaving the workhouse after
her fourth confinement, said to the master, Well, if I have
the good luck to have another child, I shall draw a g,,0:1
sum from the parish, and with what I can earn mys,lf,
shall be better off than any married •voman in the p tris,,,'
and the master added, that she had met with the good luck
she hoped for, as she told him, a short time before I was
at Holheach, that she, was five months gone with child.
" I asked him what she had for each child ?--He an-
swered 21. ; and that women in that neighbourhood could
easily earn ss. a week all the year through. Thus she will
bare 15s. a week.

BASPORD, NOTTINGHAM.
" Populat'on, 6325, the centre of the stocking manu-
factory.

" rtnant, William Caddick, has been permanent
overseer for 20 years.

" Order on (Alter, 2s.,—depends on circumstances of
father. If overseer says the father is rich, and apply for
a larger order, magistrates never refuse; always give the
mothers all that the parish receives from the fathers ;
thinks this makes women fix on rich fathers ; knows
many instances of perjury—someiimes can prove them.
" It is proverbial among girls and women, that they
would rather their children were all bastards—bas often
heard girls and women say that. There must be some-
thing wrong in the magistrates ordering a woman 21. for
a bastar I, when, if a poor family applies for relief, they
direct tne overseer to make up the earnings on the scale of
js. 3d. for each child ; so that the poor man's chddreta
are worse off, we consider, than the bastards. A girl with
three bastards will live better than a man working coarse
stockings ; she will get 6s. fur her bastards, and earn 2s.
or 3s. besides—he will only be able to earn, alter clearing
his expenses
(viz• rent of frame, needles, seaming, &e,)
6s. per week. A widow with a legitimate child is never
al owed more than 1 fid., sometimes less, and sometimes
nothing—depends upon her earnings; but a woman with
bastards is sure of 2r. a week for each ; yea, even if she
were earning 20e. a week. During twenty years he has

,

beerk in office, magistrates would never punish a woman
for having a bastard, though he has frequently appli d for
it. Bastardy is very much increasing in Basford ; be-
lieves that one-third ofall the number applying to the pa-
rish, old and young, are bastards."

" BINGHAM.
" Bastardy flourished in this parish in the usual way up
to the year 18113. The practice was the same here as else-
where, and the effects of course the same.
"In 1818, Mr. Lowe introduced a change marked by
the wisdom which characterises his other proceedings.

" For the seven years ending 1818, the average annual
number of bastard births in Bingham was six ; and the
average annual number of marriages was thirteen and
two-thirds. For the seven years ending 1824, the ave-
rage annual number of bastard births was under two, and
that of marriages ten.
"Dean, the overseer's acitount is as follows:—Twelve
years ago we introduced this custom ; when a woman
came saying she was with child, she was taken before the
magistrate in the usual way; the sessions made the order
on the father in the usual way. Then we told her she
must get the money from the father herself, as we should
never trouble him ; and that if she became chargeabie to
us, we should send her to the house of correction, and
all women are invariably so sent. Before this we used
to have five or six bastards born every year, now we have
under two. These are still sworn and affiliated in the
usual way ; there is no change i❑ that respect ; but if the
mother applies for relief, we enforce the law, and send her
to prison. So the mothers now never think of applying
to the parish, but arrange with the fathers as well as
thy can, and maintain the children as well as they can.
There are no bastards on the parish books now but one;
and this is a particular case, where the mother was ill-
treated by the father. For nearly the first three years
after the first example was made, there was not one bas-
tard birth in the parish, except in the case of a woman
who was an idiot; neither has there been any instance
whatever, for the last twelve years, of any woman ever
having a second bastard child. Before this change then.
were inany,—one woman had five; but at that time this
parish paid as others do now; 2s. for every bastard, whe-
ther the money was obtained from the father or not.

" This method of dealing with bastardy sweeps away
the motive to perjury—the power of extorting money—
deprives the woman of the hope of getting a husband, or
large weekly a Instances by incontinency, and the man of
the most powerful topic for effecting seduction ; and turns
the moral sense of the poor into the right channel.
" All laws regarding bastardy, which contemplate the
slightest punishment on the man, have the inherent defect.
of encouraging what they aim at repressing. Such laws
must give the woman power, either directly or indirectly,
over the man ; he will use that fact as a motive to induce
her to yield ; and she will yield because she knows she
shall be able to effect his punishment if he deceives her.
" The man may in all cases he as guilty as the woman ;
and it may seem hard or unjust to punish her, the weaker
and more helpless of the two, and suffer him to go un-
punished; but the object of penal law is to repress crime,
and not to punish it. Punishment is a means to an end ;
the end is the prevention of crime; and a punishment
which operates to encourage instead of to prevent crime
(as is the case in bastardy when the father is punished),
frustrates the very object which alone can justify one hu-
man being in inflicting pain on another.
It may safely be affirmed, that the virtue of female
chastity does not exist among the lower orders of England,
except to a certain extent among domestic female servants
who know that they hold their situations by that tenure,
and are more prudent in consequence. Among the residue
all evidence goes to prove that it is a nonentity. A daugh-
ter grows up; she learns what her soother was ; she sees
what her sisters and neighbours are; finds that nobody
thinks the worse of them, and that nothing is expected of
herself, and that there is a. short road to marriage or a
maintenance. The English law has abolitehed female
chastity, self respect, proper pride, and all the char:ties of
domestic life, derived from and connected with its exist-
ence. It has destroyed, likewise, the beneficial influence
which this virtue in women reflects on the character of
plea. If it is considered desirable to restore it the way is
easy, and sure, and short. It is only necess try to enact
that it shall be unlawful for parishes to give relief to a mo-
ther for a bastard, without sending her to prison for three
or six months, and to deprive parishes of all claim on the
father. By acting on a somewhat similar principle, Mr.
%Vhately, of Cookhatn, Berks, has reduced the annual
bastardy births of his parish from fifteen to one."

FASHIONABLE INTELLIGENCE.

ARRIVALS.

Viscount Acheson, MP., in Connaught-place, from Bramp-
ton-place, Huntingdonshire; the Hon. Champion Dymoke, in
Chandos-street, Cavendish-square, from his seat in Hants; the
Earl and Countess of Kenmare, at Crawley's Hotel, Albemarle:
street. fv3Pl frm.;;;;,.
Lord Heresbury, at Coulson's Hotel, Lower Brook street, from
his seat in Wilts; Captain Garth, MN., at the St. George's
Hotel, Albemarle-street, from his seat Haines Hill, Berks; W.
Garnier, Esq., at the Hyde-park Hotel, from his seat in Hants;
Sir B. and Lady Wrey, at Brighton, from their seat Tavistock,
Devonshire; Major Champagne, from Brighton ; Hon. G.
Craven, in Green street, from Melton Mowbray; Hon. H. B.
Simpson, in Carlton Gardens, from his seat Bilton Hall, Devon.
port; R. Hook, Esq., from Leamington, Warwickshire; Mr.
and Mrs. Dengintield, at Symmons's Hotel, St. James's-street,
from their seat Slough ; W. Smythe, Esq., at ditto, from Ire-
land; J. B. Stene, Esq., and Tuffnel, Esq., at Ellis's Hotel,
St. Jaines's.street, from Chipping Ongar, Essex; the Hon. C.
Steuart, at Fenton's Hotel, St. James's-street, from Ireland;
J. C. Boode, Esq., at ditto, from Wilts.

DEPARTURES.
Countess de Grey, from St. James's-square, for her seat,
Putney Heath; Charles K. Tynte, M.P., for Brighton; Lord
and Lady Rivers, from Grosvenor-place, for their seat, Eltham
Lodge, Kent; Sir T. Ferguson, Bart., for Lord Dacre's seat, the
Hoo, near Welwyn, Herts ; Colonel and Major Turner, from
the Albion Hotel, Cockspur-street, for Brussels; C. Smith, Esq.,
from ditto, for Liverpool ; G. Mackay, Esq., T. Clarke, Esq.,
and A. Irving, Esq., from ditto, for ditto; Captain and Mrs.
Morton, from Raggett's Hotel, Dover-street, for Brighton; Mr.
and Mrs. J. Moore, from Grosvenor-street, for their seat in
Essex; Captain Locke, from the British Hotel, Jerinyn-street,
for Brighton; W. Sitwell, Esq., from ditto, for Oxford; Mr.
and Mrs. Staveley, from the Brunswick Hotel, Jermyn-street,
for Cashiobury Park; Mr. and Mrs. Potter, from ditto, for
Malvern ; Mr. and Miss Morgan, from ditto, for Scotland ;
Mr., Mrs., and Miss ButtenshaW, from ditto, for Essex; Vis-
count and Viscountess Beresford, from Cavendish-square, for
St. Leonard's-on-Sea; Sir Edward, Lady, and Misses Kerrison,
from Great Stanhope-street, for Oakley Park, near Eye;
H. T. Hope, Esq., M.P., from Duchess-street, for Glou-
cester; Lord Villiers, from Berkeley.square, for Newmarket;
Sir Richard Bulkeley, Bart., from Portland-place, for New..
market; the Earl and Countess of Wilton, from Melton, for
ditto; the Earl of Orford, from Wolleston, for ditto; the Earl
of Uxbridge, from Bruton-street, for ditto; Colonel and Mrs.
Anson, from Curzon-street, for ditto ; Lord John Fitzroy, from
Chapel street, Grosvenor-square, for ditto; Lord Yarborough,
from Arlington-street, for Brocklesby ; Colonel Chaplin, from
Welbeck-street, for Newmarket; the Countess of Jersey, from
Berkeley-square, for Brighton; Major-General Sir E. Blakeney
and Colonel Cuyler, from Albemarle-street, for Dublin ; Mr.
Secretary Stanley, from Carlton Gardens, for Knowsley.

- -
SHIPS' STORES.—The following letters have
been received by Mr. W. WALKER, whierfinger, of Hull :
" Harley-street, Cavendish.square, March 26.
" Dear Sir,—You will be pleased to find that our exertions
have not been thrown away in endeavouring to obtain for the
outports the same advantages as are given to London in respect
to the shipment of tea. It is but due to Mr. Poulett Thomson,
the Vice-President of the Board of Trade, to state that he was
the first to admit the hardships which the former regulation
had imposed on the shipowners and seamen not resident in
London, and the first of the men in office to do them justice.
Believe me, yours, very truly,
" WILLIAM HUTT,
" To Mr. W. Walker, 37, High-street, Hull."

"Treasury, March 26.
" Mr. Spring Rice presents his compliments to Mr. Hutt,
and has to acquaint him that directions have been given to
permit the removal of tea in bond, without payment of the
duty, to any of the outports for shipment as stores, under such
regulations as the commissioners of customs may consider
expedient for the security of the revenue."

•
The Earl of COURTOUN'S youngest daugh-
ter, Lady JANE STOPFORD, was married, at St. George's
church, yesterday morning, to ABEL JOHN Ram, Et.q., of
Clormtin. His Lordship celebrated the event by a
splendid :thjeune to a select circle at his residence in
Connaught-squire. The happy pair set off after the
breakfast to spend the honeymoon at the Duke of
BUCCLEUCH'S vi.la, at Richmond.

-----
I MARRIAGE IN HIGH LlFE.—Yesterday, at
St. George's, Hanover-square, by the Hon. and Right
Reverend the Lord Bishop of LICHFIELD and COVENTRY,
THOMAS CHARLTON WHITMORE, Esq., M.P., eldest son
of THOMAS WHITMORE, El., of Apley Park, Shropshire,
to the Lady Loutsw ANNE DOUGLAS, eldest daugriter of
the Marquis of QUEENSBERRY. After the ceremony, an
elegant dejeune was given by the Marchioness of QUEENS•
BERRY, at which wer(present the Dowager Marebioness
of LOTHIAN, the Ladies KERR, the Earl and Countess of
BANDON, and Lady HARRIET BERNARD, Viscount and
Viscountess BERNARD, Sir E. and Lady SCOTT, the 11.,n.
Miss BRODRICK, Mr. and Mrs. DOUGLAS, lIIr. R. KEITH
DOUGLAS the Rev. J. W. and Lady GAGE, Mr., Mrs.,
and the Missel WHITMORE, Mr. and Mrs. MURRAY, Lord
MARE KERR, &e. The bride was given away by her
father, the Marquis of QUEENSBERRY; and the brides-
Inailiswaend re
theth Misses WHITMORE.eLatiies
DOUGLAS, Lady HARRIET BER-
NARD,