Mind-boggling story of my great-granny

[SafeMouse]

I've been looking into my family tree a little bit, and my great granny. My gran (her daughter) is still alive, sharp as a tack and a wonderful character. I saw her Monday evening with my findings.... welll.....

I think I knew great granny had been married twice but that was about it. She'd actually got married at 15 (!) And was married for 9 years before first husband died. 14 months later she married my great grandad. She had no children from her first marriage, and 5 from second (Inc my gran her only girl).

So, I bring this up with gran and she says, all nonchalant 😆 'well she didn't know how' . Apparently she was very 'proper' (higher working class, devoutly religious Victorian family) and never consummated her marriage because she had no idea what sex was. Neither did husband 1 by the sounds of it. She desperately loved and wanted children and didn't know why she wasn't getting pregnant and far too embarrassed to ask anyone.

Husband 1 shuffled off his mortal coil, then I'm guessing she had quite a startling wedding night with husband 2.

My gran knows this as just before her marriage great granny sat her down to have what sounds like a very painful conversation about how babies are made 😆

I just can't stop thinking about the poor woman now. 9 years! What did they do? Had DH1 not tragically died young would she have been a virgin all her life? Would someone (a doctor?) At some point explained sex to her? It's very mind-boggling

Wee bump :)

Aw, weird times back then. My grandparents were raised in a very tight religion and they were also farmers. Grandpa admitted after a time that he was waiting for Grandma to go into heat.

Oh that's sad and also quite funny!! It's something that's never portrayed in period dramas where they're all pent up lust in bodices

That made me laugh, it's definitely ignored in the story telling!

I sometimes wonder about things like that when reading e.g. Wuthering Heights. Lots of pent up passion … but no actual doing anything with it.

@SafeMouse Have you watched Bridgerton....?
"When he..... inserts himself"
"Inserts himself. Where?"
Best scene ever 😂

if you share a bed & fancy each other surely instincts take over? No bidy explains to animals how to do it??

Though I personally know a couple who went to doctors to investigate their infertility after 8 years of marriage the woman wore her tights in bed (eurgh) & he couldn’t get it in

Husband 1 shuffled off his mortal coil, then I'm guessing she had quite a startling wedding night with husband 2.

this sentence made me laugh 😆 poor husband one never knowing what sex was like

Go into heat!! 😆

Tbf this sort of ignorance still exists, I've seen anecdotes on TV of doctors who have couples coming to them because they can get pregnant, deeply religious upbringing, neither knowing what sex is. Few & far between, i think and the US of course, but I'm sure it happens elsewhere in the world too.

You what now????

Historically, people didn't often marry because they fancied each other. It was a practical & economic arrangement...The even in the 60s & 70s people married because they wanted to sleep together. My parents married young because it was the only way my very normal grandparents would accept them living together and that was the 80s!

When we went for fertility treatment nearly 40 years ago first thing we had to do was describe how we had sex, to check we were doing it right, as apparently lots of people were not! A mixture of not making entry at all, or entering the wrong place!

I knew someone who worked at a family planning clinic, and they said that the first thing they had to check when someone came to ask about fertility issues, was that they were doing it right.
Apparently tummy button sex was not an uncommon cause of "infertility".

This was in the UK and not that long ago.

I have that in my family but according to older relatives long gone it was an arranged not forced marriage so you liked the look of each other

My friends Gran went off to the US in 1920s to earn enough money to marry her fiancé. She was in her way home when he was killed in an accident so she married his brother 6 weeks later!!

One of my grandmothers didn't know she was pregnant until her neighbour explained it to her; didn't know how the baby had got in, nor how it would get out; and didn't know she was in labour until her neighbour - who had been keeping an eye on her - told her that her tummy ache was something rather more significant than she had realised.

Dgm made sure that her DIL did know!

I have that on the other side of the family! Husband killed in WW1 so after the war she marries brother. Children a plenty there though (brothers/sisters who were also cousins)
My romantic heart wants to think it was shared grief lol

Awww, bless her! You'd think he'd feel the urge wouldn't you? I wonder if there were women who had baby after baby not knowing how they were made? Probably you'd put 2 and 2 together, but who knows. We're lucky to live at a time with both sex education and birth control, so very lucky.

My mother told me that a woman on the street kept getting pregnant (this was in the 60s). My mother only had one child at the time (my brother) and this woman was asking her how she didn't have any other children. My mother explained contraception to her and she was stunned. She said that she thought she kept getting pregnant because she was having it in the wrong hole and my mother must have managed to solve this by locating the right hole which didn't cause pregnancy 🤦🏻‍♀️ the mind boggles.

I have sometimes wondered how stone age people worked it out...
...and Adam and Eve, they seem to have glossed over that bit in the Bible other than the just referring to 'begatting'

Oh no how sad! Your poor gran

True, but the like of look of each other / like each other can mean different things can't it? Some of my male friends make wonderful husbands and i hope I find someone like them, but I don't fancy them at all - no matter how well we get on as friends!

I love old family stories. My great grandad caused huge scandal in the late 1800s by impregnating and marrying a Romany gypsy girl.

@SafeMouse I am thinking about your great granny summoning her courage to tell her daughter about the birds & the bees so she didn't have to go through the same thing and it's really moving

That reminds me of Gran (same gran) asking about my 'monthlys' when I was teenager as no one had ever mentioned it to her so when she started her period she thought she was dying.

I am 51 and my mother is now 75. She was a nurse since the age of 17. She told me once about a woman who came into hospital for whatever reason- and she had the most appalling bruising and swelling on her abdomen. Turns out that she and her husband thought because babies grew ' in the stomach' that they were made by the husband trying to insert his penis through her belly button. This was circa the late 70s I think.

Yes, it's easy to look back now with modern sensiblities but it must have been an excruciating conversation to have to make sure gran didn't go through the same.
Although without showing disrespect to my wonderful 94 year old gran judging by the glint in her eye and other stories, I don't think she needed to be told 😂