Cohabitation and non-marital births in England and Wales, 1600-2012 / edited by Rebecca Probert.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Probert, Rebecca, editor.

Palgrave (Firm)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Unmarried couples--England--History--Congresses.

Unmarried couples.

Unmarried couples--Wales--History--Congresses.

Illegitimate children--Legal status, laws, etc--England--History--Congresses.

Illegitimate children.

Illegitimate children--Legal status, laws, etc--Wales--History--Congresses.

Illegitimate children--Legal status, laws, etc.

History.

Wales.

England.

Genre:

Conference papers and proceedings.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 253 pages.)

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

System Details:

text file

Summary:

Today in the UK almost half of all children are born outside marriage, with cohabiting relationships accounting for the majority of such births. But what was the situation in earlier centuries? Bringing together leading historians, demographers and lawyers, this interdisciplinary collection examines the changing context of non-marital child-bearing in England and Wales since 1600. Drawing on private Acts of Parliament, ecclesiastical court records, reported cases, sessions files, coronial records, poor law records, petitions to the London Foundling Hospital, the registers of the London Bridewell, the records of charitable institutions, surveys and modern demographic data, it not only shows the relative rarity of cohabitation in earlier periods but also discovers the nature of individual relationships. It also explores how differences in the extent of both non-marital child-bearing and cohabitation emerge depending on definition, source material, interpretation, and location, building up a more nuanced picture of past practices. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Bridewell, bawdy courts and bastardy in early seventeenth-century London / Eleanor Fox Fox, Eleanor, Martin Ingram Ingram, Martin 10

2 Cohabitation in context in early seventeenth-century London / Martin Ingram Ingram, Martin 33

3 'All he wanted was to kill her that he might marry the Girl': Broken marriages and cohabitation in the long eighteenth century / Joanne Bailey Bailey, Joanne 51

4 'They lived together as man and wife': Plebeian cohabitation, illegitimacy, and broken relationships in London, 1700-1840 / Samantha Williams Williams, Samantha 65

5 Bastardy and divorce trials, 1780-1809 / Julie Shaffer Shaffer, Julie 80

6 Cohabiting couples in the nineteenth-century coronial records of the Midlands Circuit / Elizabeth Hurren Hurren, Elizabeth, Steven King King, Steven 100

7 The kindness of strangers revisited: Fostering, adoption and illegitimacy in England, 1860-1930 / Ginger Frost Frost, Ginger 125

8 The context of illegitimacy from the 1920s to the 1960s / Rebecca Probett Probett, Rebecca 145

9 Cohabitation and births outside marriage after 1970: A rapidly evolving phenomenon / John Haskey Haskey, John 158

10 Cohabitation and marriage in Britain since the 1970s / Éva Beaujouan Beaujouan, Éva, Máire Ní Bhrolcháin Bhrolcháin, Máire Ní 192.

Notes:

Papers from a workshop held in 2012 at the Law School of the University of Warwick.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Electronic reproduction. Basingstoke, England Available via World Wide Web.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

113739627X

9781137396273

Publisher Number:

99959321178

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.