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

If you watch American TV/soaps you find that pretty much every woman only ever has sex with their bra and panties on, and the gentlemen also generally keep their underwear on especially if you stick to shows rated 15 or tamer. Yet pregnancies still happen that way - sometimes unplanned!

Does any woman ever say panties? I thought that was for male soft porn mags in the past? It’s pants or knickers.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0d3f8jl/episodes/downloads

Very good podcast from the BBC diving into the "serial killer" Bible John. Three victims, two out of three were on their period at the time. Whether this is relevant was not known, you could argue that as all menstruating women are on their period approximately 25% of the time, that this is just coincidence. Podcast worth a listen - age old story of how the police victim blamed, criticised the characters of women who were out dancing and not at home with their children, and didn't follow up all lines of enquiry.

The "Bible John" nickname came from the fact that a friend of one of the victims described who she had been dancing with and talked about someone who had a good knowledge of bible passages, and said his name was John.

I'm bumping this as I enjoyed reading it and hope for most posts.