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

My 96 year old grandmother said the exact same thing and she was told the same route it went in and she was utterly shocked!

Ok, so a consultant told you the intimate (highly unlikely and salacious) details as related by his patients.

That sounds believable! Not.

I had a landlady as a student, who was born in Pakistan. Knew nothing about sex and didn't know where babies came from until she actually gave birth to one. Her family hadn't told her because they didn't want to frighten her.

She thought it was a tremendous joke. I was horrified.

My grandad told my dad (his son in law) that when he married my grandma she had no idea about sex or reproduction, after he kissed her she said 'we'll have to get married now' as she thought that's how you got pregnant. It must have been so scary.
I've read somewhere that some tribes never made the connection between sex and pregnancy ...

@Puzzledandpissedoff women instead were put in mental hospitals

My grandmother didn't know how her first baby would get out and was too embarrassed to ask her mother.

Apparently, she went to see an elderly woman in the village. The reply, I am told, was "Michty, Lassie! It comes oot the same road it went in!"

This is the age the lady I was talking about would have been now.

When I was pregnant my MIL asked me if I knew where babies come out (I was 38!) as when she gave birth to her first child in the 1970s she was appalled to go into labour and realise the baby came out ‘down there’ 😬😬

This was Marie Stopes’ story! She wondered a year or two into marriage why she wasn’t pregnant yet, started research in the British library, & realised her marriage had never been consummated. Got it annulled and wrote Married Love so others wouldn’t suffer the same ignorance (roughly her words). If you believe this story, she had graduated from UCL a double first in Chemistry & Botany (first woman to do so) and lectured in science at Manchester Uni (first woman to do so) without knowing about sex.

’Dear Dr Stopes’ is a very touching & shocking collection of letters written to her seeking advice.

I am not that old (born early 70s) but my mum's mum was quite elderly when she had her and mum was one of the girls who thought she was dying when she got her period. Mum was determined to do better for me but got it so so wrong...

Rather than sitting me down aged 10 or 11 and explaining periods, she bought a "growing up" book from the Church of Scotland bookshop and left me to read it. Problem was that although it prepared me for and educated me about periods, it taught me that sex could only ever happen between a married man and his wife. People who were not married just could not have a baby, it was a physical impossibility. Everyone with children who I knew were married so I never questioned this "fact". (Or maybe they weren't married and I just assumed they were). Anyway, it wasn't until I was about 13 in biology classes in school that I realised there wasn't some magic switch which the minister turned on when you were legally married to let you have a baby.

Thanks, mum.

When my uncle got married (he's now 70), his wife and him bought a book to find out what to do. She became so alarmed that she locked herself in the bathroom on her wedding night!

My grandma once told me that, as a teenager, she walked in on her brother in the bathroom and was utterly shocked that he had pubic hair! She thought that only women had it and that it was for keeping the baby warm, a bit like a draft excluder! 😁

You know that there’s a whole genre of porn about exactly this?

I hadn't been told about periods, early 80s. I was very young. But you'd think already having one daughter who was an early starter might have prompted my mum to tell me 🤷🏻‍♀️
Thankfully my sister did because I was terrified.
I know my mums story and she definitely was aware of periods and sex by the time she needed to be told but instead chose to keep her kids ignorant.
Sad really.

I'm crying with laughter!

Mary Wesley wrote about this funnily and well.

I'm mid 40s, Great granny was born 1895 and married in 1910. Husband 1 died in 1920.
He doesn't seem to have served in the war either despite being the right age and not a reserved occupation. That's my next rabbit hole I think! Gran doesn't know much about husband 1 - don't think he was much mentioned when she was a wee one.

There are a few historical examples of young royals who weren’t producing heirs and needed things spelled out. Catherine de Medici was worryingly infertile for the first seven years of marriage to the French king Henry until they got advice on positions and then she had about ten babies. I think Marie Antoinette had some awkward letters from her mother too.

My ex had two friends, I really couldn’t stand them, especially him as he acted like a 12 year old boy. He’d use phrases like ‘are you on your blob?’ ‘Even if it’s shark week I still expect Head’. He really is an awful human being.

They had started going down the infertility route but fell pregnant pretty soon afterwards (after a couple of years of trying). He boasted that she fell pregnant the first time he came inside her. Apparently he was struggling to cum inside her but he obviously thought it was something to boast about once he did.

She is a primary school teacher, both would have had extensive sex Ed at school, absolutely no excuse. The fact he thought it was something to boast about 😂

There's a story but I can't remember who exactly but some European princess was raised in a convent by nuns and was married of to a king, but she had no idea what sex was and apprently became hysterical on her wedding night!
I guess in deeply religious households in times gone by, it was never discussed and if you were with your family the whole time I guess you wouldn't know especially when there was no TV or media like we have these days.

I read a really interesting book once where they said that, IIRC, pre-organised religion tribes didn't really understand the link between sex and childbirth, everyone just did it with everyone else and if a woman had a baby it was just a miracle/cause for celebration for the tribe as a whole. Makes sense TBH, if you don't know about dates it's hard to track time, babies all look the same anyway so who knows 🤷‍♀️

I believe my own grandmother had no idea how her first baby would be born but was lucky enough that a kind young doctor saw her through her labour.

I also remember being told about a very old lady who had married a veteran of WW1.
She considered herself fortunate that she'd got herself a husband after so many young men had been killed leaving so many women widowed or unable to find anyone.
Her husband had lost a leg in the war and they'd not had children as she didn't want a baby with only one leg.

I consider myself so lucky to be of the first generation who had some sex education, reliable contraception and good health care so. I got pregnant twice when I planned to, carried my babies to term and birthed them safely.

Consultants do talk about cases to colleagues, certainly won't mention names and often not patients currently in their care, but they do! They can also present cases as part of education. Entirely plausible!

My great gran clearly knew about sex. I say this because of the history we know of her.

Her first husband and her had a lodger (quite common). When her husband beat her up, she ran away (with the lodger). She took an underskirt and a knife and fork.

She was arrested for stealing these items from her husband and spent a month in jail. After that she had relationships with at least four other men (one of whom allegedly threw himself off a viaduct, while managing to tie his hands behind his back 🤔) she was always referred to as the wife of the men, though there is no record of marriage or divorce.

I quite like this history. Yes, great grandma must have done something wrong, but she also had some spirit.

and any way, it's all a long time ago. I quite like reminding my daughter we are four generations away from the poor house.

The timing of Catherine’s baby suggests that she conceived with Heathcliff returned, making him a potential father. It’s a very subtle detail but the timeline of the novel is too exact and very detailed to be accidental,

Well you and I are of an age where sex education was all over TV (I think Michelle Fowler in East Enders would have been one of the first times the likes of you & I saw it on TV), and I know in the first year of Junior school I saw a book in the school library that explained the nuts & bolts of it, though I expect said book was aimed more towards the last year Junior students.

Also, all through secondary school we had sex education, starting with puberty & the more biological side of the subject, moving through to relationships & STDs towards years 10 & 11, though of course not much to do with sexuality at that time, as it wasn't really allowed.

With all this in mind, I can understand why you might think it's not possible for anyone to have had no idea about sex, and I'm not sure I know how I know it was certainly a thing, but for some folks it really was.