Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

Something I've just noticed, which I naively didn't know,
in my family history anyway,
All the marriages were less than 9 months before the first child was born.
So basically they all got pregnant and so had NO choice BUT to get married, on the woman's part any way.
How awkward asking the father in law for his permission, when he must just know why
Is this generally how life was?

I thought people back then were prudish and religious

It might be one of the reasons why so many Catholics married in the C of E in the 19th century (post 1837). More convenient to go to a church knowing than the same man won't be doing the future baptism. I think my great, great grandparents left Ireland because a baby was on the way. They never married in Ireland or England. It must have been easier in the towns and cities to get married quietly but more difficult in villages where everyone knows your business.


Blue

Yes I agree, I think many of us have a few "premature" babies, and sometimes a marriage just can't be found.

I think that things were sometimes different in farming communities. A man and his wife had to have a large family to help with all the work. With a large home-grown workforce, they could expand the farm. So what a problem there would be if the couple turned out to be infertile together. So once fertility was assured (baby on the way) they tied the knot, knowing there would be more children to come. Less of this in Victorian times, when the emphasis was on "morality", but Georgian farmers of the 1700s and early 1800s were more practical.
Barbara

These two articles may throw some light on this subject.

https://www.phil.muni.cz/angl/thepes/thepes_02_02.pdf

http://people.loyno.edu/~history/journa ... haller.htm

There has always been a distinction in attitudes across the social classes and the Poor Laws developed by the middle classes to control and support the lower classes oftenreflected the moral attitudes of the time within the over-riding context of cost to the Parish.

Alex