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 mum wasn't told about periods and when she had her first one, she thought she'd cut the top of her leg, so she put a bandage around it. I remember her telling me about them but she was so vague that my dad ended up explaining it properly to me.

My mum went to University in the mid sixties, and had to share a room with a n ex Catholic schoolgirl. Who clearly had just discovered sex now out of the parental home. Mum says she spent much of the first term sleeping in the bath as the bedroom was , ahem, occupied, Linda dropped out by the end of term two.....

A bit less of an oppressive upbringing and that might not have happened.

I have obviously never queried my mum on her own shenanigans but she did meet my dad there and they are now married 53 years....

Oh wow I’d forgotten about that sketch. Brilliant.

Strangely enough, I was reading about her recently.

It was Maria Josepha Amalia of Saxony. Her mother died when she was a young child, she was raised in a nunnery, married at 16 and was utterly horrified on her wedding night. It took intervention from the Pope before she agreed to consummate the marriage.

Sex was something never discussed in the past and certainly not outside of marriage . Probably zero sex education. I read a few stories of couples who got married and never had children because they just didn't know how to.
Very sad x.

Omg if that's true

It’s a fascinating evolution. From innocence on both sides to where we are now. I have been quite open with my 2DC, both boys. Gradually, it has evolved from talk about private parts, anatomically correct names and appropriateness, of language in given situations ( it is ok to tell mum/ dad that your penis stings because you had damp pants, but not across the table at a family dinner 😊) onwards to how babies are made (for a long time both thought that sex was only for maki g babies, and that we did it x2 (to make them). Then we moved on to periods (why is there blood in the toilet ( result of my failed flush)/your pants (loading the washing) what are these for(tampons/towels)? Onwards to both realising that people have sex for reasons other than making babies (chance to talk about consent, sexual pleasure, contraception). One of the boys asked what rape was, chance to explain that (male or female) sex must be consensual, consequences of rape on both parties.
We have had many fun conversations (mum why is my penis so small I cold water, why do ladies not show their boobies, why do some men walk around with no shirt on , why do men do that and women don’t (q discussions about cultures, religions, social classes, self esteem, aspirations). It is endless but we take it in good spirits and hope that we have 2 well informed , open minded and considerate boys who have a great advantage over their peers of many years ago.

Absolutely not, back in those days. A woman telling her husband where to touch and where to put it, or showing any hint of sexual desire would be seen as 'fast'. Virginal innocence was extraordinarily valued - it was drummed into women that this was the only thing they brought to the table that had any value.

There are vestiges of this in the shocking reluctance of grown women nowadays to use correct anatomical terms - if they even know them - for their own genitalia. I'm thinking of terms like 'minnie', 'daisy', 'flower', and the like, and the ignorance around terms like vulva and vagina.

Probably had porn to thank for that 😉

Aww I love this!

A girl I went to high school with ended up pregnant at 15. Apparently her Mum went mental when she found out and asked her what she thought would happen if she was having sex. Her reply was "But we're not married! YOU said you have to be married to have babies!"

Yes and it was considered sluttish if a woman enjoyed sex, even within marriage. Men expected a ‘nice’ woman not to show desire .

@NotSoHotMess24

"Sorry though, do you mean they were married or were never married in the end?"

It looks like they were never married. Before she died mum went to her looking for some family paperwork, and grandma told her to come back in a few hours. Mum came back later to find she'd burned everything as "there were some things the children didn't need to know". (Her youngest child at the time was 68) We think it was to hide the fact the kids were all illegitimate. She obviously felt such shame about it, which, given the circumstances of their conception makes me rage! She had no power her whole life and when great great grandfather died everything went to his kids and she had nothing (wasn't married, inherited nothing.) She spent the next 25 years being passed between her sons and resented by her DILs (honestly she wasn't a cheery presence to have live with you.) So flipping sad.

Thanks for clarifying - so he never married her, so she had even fewer rights and protections 😟You are right, no wonder she was so sad. You would have hoped her sons would have spent some of their inheritance getting her a place of her own, but then I suppose they hardly had a good role model for how to treat women.

Most men were taught about sex, so usually at least one of them knew what sex was. But it was the fathers job traditionally to do this, and most boys also learned from other boys. The issues happened if you had a shy boy without many friends, and a father who was remote, absent or just not willing to explain this to his son.

One of my Irish relatives got pregnant at 14 and sent away to a convent to give birth. The baby was immediately taken away and adopted.

She went back home to her parents, where it wasn’t discussed at all, and they all carried on as if nothing had happened. 6 months later she fell pregnant again by the same boy as neither of them knew that’s how babies were made. It wasn’t explained to them at all the first time round and both were so naïve they hadn’t made the connection.

That baby was also taken away at birth.

She did eventually get to meet them both and had a lovely relationship with them as adults and her subsequent husband and dc accepted them completely.

Although it has to be said that men have names for their bits too...I also remember hearing a man saying he wanted his "penis" touched, and believe me, it had to be one of the biggest passion-killers I have ever known. 😫😂😫

... if I knew it would make your toes curl, I'd have taken more time.

If I knew you had more time, I'd have taken my tights off.

Bob Monkhouse I think.

My grandma, whilst pregnant with my dad in 1939, asked her dad how the baby comes out. He said the same way it went in you daft bugger. She was 1 of 13 and the only one to only have one child.

🙄Very cliched. There's no such thing as an eastern drawl btw.

I remember watching a show about orthodox Jewish community and there was a lady whose role it was to visit bride to be and explain mechanics.

An ancient nun I knew rescued a woman in her fifties or sixties from a mental hospital in the 1980's.
The lady got pregnant in her early teens probably without consent or understanding and was consigned to the local asylum, where her family abandoned her.
The nun went to visit a patient in what had by then become a mental hospital and met a cheerful woman, busy knitting who didn't seem to belong there.
The nuns took her in and despite being institutionalised - so unable to fend for herself outside - she lived happily with them for the last 15 or 20 years of her life.

Thanks for your invaluable contribution to the thread 🙄

@CountessWindyBottom At least my contribution was factual and not made-up drivel.

@CountessWindyBottom How on earth were you dragged up.

Sex without consent - fine
Incest - goes with the territory

Linguistic inaccuracy - wash your mouth out with soap 🙄

My grandparents were deeply religious, not the type to preach to others but went to mass several times a week, said prayers a few times a day, etc. I remember the shock as a teenager when I worked out my gran was already pregnant with my mum when they got married 😆