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Vulnerable and unsteady: life histories and changes of residence of unwed mothers in Lyon at the end of the nineteenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

GUY BRUNET  and
JEAN-LUC PINOL
GUY BRUNET
Affiliation:
Both of the Faculty of Geography, History, History of Art and Tourism, University of Lyon, and of the Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes, CNRS UMR 5190.
JEAN-LUC PINOL
Affiliation:
Both of the Faculty of Geography, History, History of Art and Tourism, University of Lyon, and of the Laboratoire de Recherche Historique Rhône-Alpes, CNRS UMR 5190.
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Abstract

This article is a study of single mothers in Lyon in the nineteenth century, including what happened to them after they gave birth to an illegitimate child. Unmarried mothers have been the subject of much previous research on different countries but such studies often begin with the last days of the pregnancy and stop a few days after the delivery. Our aim is to look at the life course of single mothers before pregnancy and after delivery. In Lyon, at the time the second French city in terms of population, we studied 2,000 unwed mothers, some of them multiparous, noting their extensive geographical mobility and the frequency of their moves within the city.

Vulnérables et instables: histoires de vie et changements de résidence des mères non mariées à lyon, à la fin du 19e siècle

Cet article propose une étude des filles mères ayant vécu à Lyon au XIXe siècle, et examine le déroulement de leur vie après la naissance d'un enfant illégitime. De nombreuses recherches ont été réalisées sur les filles mères, dans différents pays, mais la plupart s'intéressent à la très brève période qui commence à la fin de la grossesse et se termine avec l'accouchement. Notre objectif est d'étudier le déroulement de la vie de ces femmes célibataires, avant la grossesse et après l'accouchement. A Lyon, seconde ville de France par sa population à cette époque, nous étudions deux mille filles-mères, dont certaines sont multipares, soulignant leur importante mobilité géographique et leurs fréquents déménagements à l'intérieur de la ville.

Verletzlich und unstetig: lebenslauf und wohnsitzwechsel unverheirateter mütter in lyon am ende des 19. jahrhunderts

In diesem Beitrag geht es um ledige Mütter in Lyon im 19. Jahrhundert und um die Frage, was mit ihnen geschah, nachdem sie ein uneheliches Kind zur Welt gebracht hatten. Bisher hat sich die Forschung vielfach mit ledigen Müttern in unterschiedlichen Ländern befasst, aber die meisten Studien beginnen mit dem Ende der Schwangerschaft und enden unmittelbar nach der Niederkunft. Dagegen haben wir es uns zum Ziel gesetzt, den Lebenslauf lediger Mütter vor der Schwangerschaft und nach der Entbindung zu betrachten. Wir haben in Lyon – im Untersuchungszeitraum der Bevölkerung nach die zweitgrößte Stadt in Frankreich – zweitausend unverheiratete Mütter untersucht, darunter auch Mehrgebärende, wobei ihre weiträumige geographische Mobilität und die Häufigkeit ihres Wohnsitzwechsels innerhalb der Stadt besonders auffällig ist.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 263 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Kertzer, D. I., Sigle, W. and White, M., ‘Abandoned children and their transition to adulthood in 19th century Italy’, Journal of Family History, 25 (2000), 326–40Google Scholar; Abreu, L., ‘Un destin exceptionnel: les enfants abandonnés au travail (Evora, 1650–1837)’, Annales de Démographie Historique (2005), 2, 165–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar); J. P. Bardet and G. Brunet eds., Nom et destin des sans famille (Paris, 2007).

2 Reid, A., Davies, R., Garrett, E. and Blaikie, A., ‘Vulnerability among illegitimate children in nineteenth-century Scotland’, Annales de Démographie Historique (2006), 1, 89–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scheetz-Nguyen, J. A., ‘Calculus of respectability: defining the world of foundlings asylums and the London Foundling Hospital’, Annales de Démographie Historique (2007), 2, 13–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 J. Miller, Abandoned: foundlings in nineteenth-century New York City (New York, 2008).

4 R. G. Fuchs, Poor and pregnant in Paris: strategies for survival in the nineteenth century (Piscataway, NJ, 1992); S. Beauvalet-Boutouyrie, Naître à l'hôpital au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1999).

5 D. I. Kertzer, Sacrificed for honor: Italian infant abandonment and the politics of reproductive control (Boston, 1983).

6 Unwed mothers were often considered as dangerous for society, liable to seduce respectable men and a cause of disorder. During the stay of unwed mothers in the maternity hospital, attempts were made to give them correct habits: wake up early, wash the dormitory, work to regular schedules, attend the religious services.

7 Studies of lone mothers in Sweden, showing that most of them get married later on, are very interesting but, at that time (the nineteenth century), the Swedish context was very different from the French one. See Brandström, A., ‘Life-histories of single parents and illegitimate infants in nineteenth-century Sweden’, The History of the Family 21, 2 (1996), 205–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Brandström, A., ‘Illegitimacy and lone-parenthood in XIXth century Sweden’, Annales de Démographie Historique (1998), 2, 95–113Google Scholar.

8 S. King, ‘The bastardy prone sub-society again: bastards and their fathers and mothers in Lancashire, Wiltshire and Somerset, 1800–1840’, in A. Levene, T. Nutt and S. Williams eds., Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700–1920 (Basingstoke, 2005), 66–85.

9 I. Jablonka, Ni père ni mère: histoire des enfants de l'Assistance publique (1874–1939) (Paris, 2006).

10 Fuchs, R. G. and Page-Moch, L., ‘Pregnant, single and far from home: migrant women in XIXth century Paris’, American Historical Review 95, 4 (1990), 1007–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Blaikie, E. Garrett and R. Davis, ‘Migration, living strategies and illegitimate childbearing: a comparison of two Scottish settings, 1871–1881’, in Levene, Nutt and Williams eds., Illegitimacy in Britain, 141–67; Schumacher, R., Ryczkowska, G. and Perroux, O., ‘Unwed mothers in the city: illegitimate fertility in 19th century Geneva’, The History of the Family 12, 3 (2007), 189–2002CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 It was after much discussion that the Hospices Civils of Lyon finally accepted that the departmental service for children in care that was set up at the beginning of the Third Republic was competent to take children into care and assume the guardianship of them. The Charité was a private institution and the administrators, who were important bourgeois of the city of Lyon, wanted to keep control of the education – including the religious education – of abandoned children. For several years, they refused to cooperate with the public administration. See G. Brunet, Aux marges de la famille et de la société: filles-mères et enfants assistés à Lyon au XIXe siècle (Paris, 2008).

12 City Archives of Lyon, bundle 5Q32–5Q124. Records survive for most years and cover the period from 1844 to 1934. The ‘Registres de renseignements recueillis à l'admission des femmes enceintes’, covering 1857–1892, bundles 5Q128 to 5Q156, were used as well.

13 Every tenth record was selected, beginning in 1871.

14 Of all births in France, 7–8 per cent were illegitimate between 1871 and 1890 but in the large cities as many as 15 per cent of all births were illegitimate. See A. Fine, ‘Enfants et normes familiales’, in J. Dupâquier ed., Histoire des populations françaises (Paris, 1988), vol. 3, 436–57.

15 We do not know details about the quantity and quality of the food given to unwed mothers during their stay at the Charité, but several reports underline that food was plentiful (see for instance Compte moral et administratif des Hospices Civils de Lyon, City Archives of Lyon, bundles IL12, 1862 (p. 378) and IL13, 1864 (p. 93). In the Parisian maternity hospital for unwed mothers, the midday meal included 200 grams of meat and 180 grams of vegetables; the evening meal included 130 grams of meat. Each woman also received 720 grams of bread, 60 centilitres of soup and 25 centilitres of wine every day. Plentiful food during the stay at the Charité was expected to compensate for the ordinarily poor diet of these women, and to allow them to breast-feed their newborn babies.

16 The maternal mortality fell from 5.1 per cent in 1877 to 1.5 per cent in 1878, as a result of hygienic measures such as isolation of ill women, hand-washing by the nurses and the disinfection of sheets.

17 Beauvalet-Boutouyrie, Naître à l'hôpital au XIXe siècle.

18 Schumacher, Ryczkowska and Perroux, ‘Unwed mothers’.

19 Among unwed mothers who delivered in Geneva between 1847 and 1872, 22.7 per cent had been born in the canton; see Schumacher, Ryczkowska and Perroux, ‘Unwed mothers’.

20 Fewer than 5 per cent of unwed mothers who delivered in Paris in 1880 were from out of town; see Fuchs and Page-Moch, ‘Pregnant, single and far from home’, 1013.

21 This modest assistance was often used to pay the wages of a wet-nurse. Unwed mothers had to resume working very quickly in order to support themselves, and could not take care of their children every day.

22 Due to lack of resources and time, not every case could be investigated, but the fact that the declarations concerning the father's identity were amended demonstrates that some checks were made.

23 Lyon was divided at the time into six districts, termed ‘First’, ‘Second’, ‘Third’ and so on. Three others were created in the first part of the twentieth century, with the ‘Third’ divided into ‘Seventh’ and ‘Eighth’ and the ‘Ninth’ created from the ‘Fifth’ (see note to Table 6).

24 It needs to be remembered that the numbers here constitute a one-in-ten sample of the women who delivered their children at the Charité. This study covers an eleven-year period, the absolute numbers corresponding more or less to the yearly numbers multiplied by ten.

25 Female domestic servants are noted in different studies as having represented a large proportion of single mothers. What happened to them after pregnancy is rarely reported. See for instance M. C. Vickström, ‘Female domestic servants in Sundsvall’, in A. Fauve-Chamoux ed., Domestic service and the formation of European identity (Bern, 2004), 87–112.

26 Guide indicateur de la ville de Lyon et du département du Rhône, XIXe année, 1879 (Lyon, 1879).

27 We do not know the actual cost of such ‘care and discretion’. Most of the unwed mothers could probably afford the services of a midwife, but they probably could not pay accommodation charges (food, bed).

28 Nearly all the addresses declared by unwed mothers and checked by the Hospices Civils were correct.

29 Pinol, J. L., ‘La mobilité dans la ville, révélateur des sociétés urbaines’, Annales de Démographie Historique (1999), 1, 7–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 J. L. Pinol, Les mobilités de la grande ville (Paris, 1991).

31 M. N. Hatt-Diener, Strasbourg et les Strasbourgeois: à la croisée des chemins (Strasbourg, 2004).

32 J. L. Pinol, Espace social et espace politique: Lyon à l'époque du Front Populaire (Lyon, 1980).