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

I’m very similar- 2 grandparents were only children. One born in the 1920s and another in the 1930s.

I have always assumed they were rhesus negative mothers married to rhesus positive men.

@VeronicaBeccabunga I'm late 50s and when I grew up the only porn available in our country village was the "mucky" magazines on the top shelf of the newsagent, covered in a plain wrap so as not to offend and everybody knew who bought them. We had sex Ed lessons at school, which mainly discussed the pollination of flowers and the lads were sent out whilst the girls were told briefly about periods. We'd never heard of anal sex, strangling women during sex and God knows what else they show online today. I'm not saying they were more innocent times, they weren't, we had the likes of Saville driving past in a Black cab every year, taking disadvantaged (victims) children to Blackpool and we all stood and waved at him! It never crossed our minds he was a sick pervert. One good thing today is that I think young people are more aware of predators and their right to say no, no one is allowed to touch them etc. Apart from being told never to get into a car with a man who asked if you wanted to go and see some puppies, that was about it for sexual safety guidelines in those days. Unless you had very open, modern parents, the rest was just down to trusting your instincts and pure luck.

"Sex began in 1963
Which was rather late for me . . ."
said Philip Larkin and in many respects that's correct. Sex was unmentionable in 'respectable' homes. The belief was if it was never mentioned it would never happen. 'Down there' was, hopefully, as unexplored as Africa or the Amazon, remote, untouchable, out of reach, nothing below the waist, please. There really was a cultural revolution in the 1960s and sexual liberation was part of it. Ignorance about bodily functions was the norm, widespread and encouraged. "Protecting innocence" as it was misnamed, still proclaimed today by assorted institutions, leaving the "innocent" as unknowing prey. Knowledge is power. Let's have more of it.

Couldnt disagree more with the viewpoint tell them everything. Sex education now is all about getting girls to accept things that are bad for them.

Innocence was protection in a world where men were still expected to protect women and children and not exploit them. What was wrong was ignoring children when they raised concerns.

Which bit of the Sex Education curriculum would that be?

I can go one worse than that. When lots of the big asylums were closing in the 70s a woman was discovered in a local asylum, she had been there for about 30 or 40 years since she was a teenager. Why was she there? Well apparently she suffered form epilepsy and her father was worried that she might have a fit while out of the house but in a quiet place and a passing man might rape her while she was having the fit and it might result in a pregnancy. So to protect her (ha) he had her committed. I remember seeing her being interviewed when she was released and she talked about how she helped on the ward and was basically an unpaid member of staff. I've never forgotten that woman.

Actually this seems like it was a pretty good outcome for all (provided your grandmother was financially and socially ok after the marriage).

The alternative is that he coerced or forced himself onto a woman who didn't want to have sex with him, that she submitted when she didn't want to. Which would have been rape.

"Poor bugger" maybe but kudos to your grandmother for having the courage & self respect to say "no".

Really quite depressing the assumption on this thread that any man who didn't force himself onto his wife must have been gay or asexual. Respectful men existed in the past, too.

@KikiShaLeeBopDeBopBop She eventually gave it a go, 7 years into the marriage, immediately became pregnant with twins. Early labour, horse and carriage across London from Primrose Hill to Woolwich, one twin dead, the other my mother. Unsurprisingly, this effectively finished their marriage.

Innocence is not protection it can be the absolute reverse and a tool for manipulation by predators.

Some people have secondary infertility, so a subsequent baby doesn’t happen.

This is sad :(

The nasty side of that was that a pregnant rape victim was presumed to have orgasmed and therefore to have consented.

DH who is now 72 found out at his mother's funeral in 2002 that she had been married before she married his father. None of the children knew. His aunt explained that she had been married to a man who was gay and after 2 years had the marriage annulled which was quite a hard thing to do back then.

She then had him (the oldest of 4) at the age of 40 and finished with his younger brother at almost 50.

None of them had ANY idea.

DH is a bit of a hoarder and recently we found a book of his mothers where she had carefully written her name in in the name of her first husband.

I'm reminded by some of the stories here of the rather feisty wife of a senior diplomat. Lady J and Sir M (both born around 1910) had no children, but were keen to spoil great-neices and great-nephews on their visits back to Blighty.
After they had returned to the UK for good, a great-niece was getting a lift from Newcastle Uni to her home somewhere on the South coast and asked if she and the driver could stay overnight in to break the journey.
Not a problem said Lady J, who duly made arrangements.
I'm fairly sure that the couple weren't in a relationship when they arrived, but her Ladyship put them into a double-bed because 'that's how you young people do things these days'.

When I was doing my nurse training, there was a woman in the mental hospital who'd been there since she was a teenager after having an illegitimate child. She was a much older woman at that point (early 90s) and they believed that she wouldn't cope in the outside world, so she remained in the hospital. She'll have likely gone into a care home when the hospital was eventually closed down.

I only really found out how to have sex by reading the leaflet on the Tampax box that belonged to my mother and it had a little illustration of what things were there. Before then I didn't realise there was a hole beneath the urethra. I then did more research by reading a home medical and health encyclopedia and figured out the logistics. No sex education at school beyond stamens on plants.

My grandmother fell pregnant at 19 and married quickly in the early 50s. She thought you got pregnant from kissing.

I do think the Victorian era has a lot to answer for!

I worked in a nursing home, one of the residents was a deaf/mute lady who’d come from the long stay hospital that had previously been a workhouse. She was in her 90’s had had an illegitimate child when 14 years old and been sent to the workhouse.
reason she was deaf dumb was simply because of the horrific things she’d experienced. So sad. She was totally institutionalised, had a very fixed routine and only ever sat in one particular chair.

Yes, women really can’t win, can we?

Such sad stories on this thread.

Yes, I laughed out loud at that - great phrase, OP.

Louis XVI had to be advised by his brother in law the Emperor Joseph II that penetration and immediate withdrawal was not likely to lead to pregnancy. He had to explain to him that more was required. So neither Louis nor Marie Antoinette had a clue, evidently. Although they did manage to get a bit further than OP’s great granny in marriage 1.

The first husband was definitely infertile.

My aunt was pregnant shortly after getting married but told my mum (her sil) that she had no idea how the baby would get out.

It wasn't uncommon in the Middle East that if a man died his brother would become responsible for the widow and usually married her. I don't know if it still happens. I recall my father pointing to his brother and saying to my mum, 'Suliman is your husband if I die.'. It was a way of ensuring the wife's safety and upkeep.

I remember asking my mum where babies came from (I wasn’t that old, maybe 8ish) and she told me that you prayed to Mary and she sent you one (we are Catholic). I was scared saying prayers after that in case Mary thought I was asking for a baby! 🤣

Do you remember after 9/11 when firefighters who survived were given the family of a firefighter who'd died to take care of and make sure they managed all the financial admin etc? A few of the surviving firefighters ended up divorcing their wives and marrying the widows.

We were struggling to get pregnant and my dad’s wife told me she was praying to Mary for us to have a baby. We were not close (in fact we actively disliked each other), but she did give me a statue of the Virgin Mary shortly before she died, and reminded me to keep praying to her.

we have a child now