Heart breaking photo of Dolly who was incarcerated for being pregnant.

[JenniferBooth]

This has made me cry and given me the fucking rage at the same time. What was going through peoples minds when they did this to her. Poor lady I hope she is at peace. How could they. Bastards. Psychopaths.

https://x.com/IanBeesleyphoto/status/1762216625518891090?s=20

They stopped locking women up for life after WW11 but instead sent pregnant girls and women away to church run mother and baby homes where there baby was taken away for adoption. This went on until the early 1970s. These were usually middle class church going families who did not want the shame of people knowing they had a wayward daughter. Girls had committed a mortal sin and were not fit to be mothers. The state saved money by not having to help these families.
Now, if you look at your elderly neighbour, she could be one of those women or your middle-aged colleague could be one of their children. It's still with us.

I saw this in the 1980's during my nursing training. I did a placement in a really big psychiatric institute that was still open just before care in the community started and everyone was let out.
There were several women in there, very elderly who had been incarcerated after having a baby very young. It was heart breaking. They had gradually become institutionalised and could never have left as they just gave up caring for themselves and many had had ECT or lobotomies.. Two of them had not spoken since they were young women, they just gave up talking.
There were also children of very famous people, I can't say who, Data protection forbids, who had been born with Downs or had mental illness and had just grown up there.
On the flip side there were some absolutely terrifying mentally ill people with paranoid schizophrenia and so on on the locked ward who were highly dangerous and they were all released into the wild of care in the community a few years later.

I was one of these children born to a single mother in the 1960's. Fortunately my grandparents were very supportive and allowed her to bring me home. There were benefits available for single parents back in 1962 but the societal pressure was huge and most people could not have fought against it.

Western marriage comes from pagan ancient Rome and then Christianity.
In early ancient Rome a father had manus over his children. He basically owned them. When a daughter married her husband then had manus over her. Ugh.
This changed and by the end of the Republic, early pagan Empire women married by coemptio or just usus. She could leave the marriage any time, after 3 days away it dissolved. Also women were citizens and legal persons under the law. Hugely important as women could make money, keep it and inherit it, sue in court. Lots of regular women and ex-slaves worked.
Christianity said marriage made the man and woman one flesh and literally under Christian Roman law when a woman married she lost legal personhood. Her husband owned all her property, she couldn't divorce him, anything she made or inherited was legally his and he later on could commit her to a mental asylum or even sell her. She was his chattel - property.
This was only changed in the 1860s.

Yes snap. I did so too as a student nurse in the early 1990's.
I can still remember their names.

I worked in a NH in the early 1980’s where there was a very elderly woman who allegedly was deaf mute. She would sit in an upright chair by the front door, never speaking, kept her clothes under her pillow at night and, when given a cup of tea she would rinse out the cup, turn it upside down on the saucer and return it to the kitchen.
In the five years I knew her she never acknowledged anyone around her.
Nellie had come from the workhouse which then became a long-stay hospital to the NH at 87, having been put there as a pregnant 14 year old. She died at 98 years old, no relatives, no visitors, no one to mourn her passing but the dedicated staff.
don’t think she was born deaf mute, I think her experiences were the reason. Heartbreaking.

And in that most terrible of places!

Can you imagine how terrified she must have been? Trapped with people who had severe mental illnessess, many of who would have been violent or deranged.

Institutions such as this are noisy, with screaming, weeping and shouting long into the night; they are places of often unpredictable outbreaks of violence; they were (and possibly still are somethings) places of severe discipline and lots of drugs prescribed to keep control. She must have been past herself with fear and distress.

And then she had her baby (probably no anaesthesia) and the little mite was taken from her straight away - but she wasn't released. Perhaps her family didn't want "the shame".

Meanwhile whoever got her pregnant (perhaps raped her, perhaps took advantage of her naivety - girls then were very "green"; perhaps even her father or brother or other close relative) probably got on with his life without giving her a second thought.

Women have always taken the blame for the sins of men. And nothing much has changed.

Poor, poor child. It is heartbreaking.

I am going to nominate this thread for classics.

Because these are stories and social history we must never ever forget.

Not just Not Forget - fight like demons to stop it ever happening again!

Women's rights are going backwards at the moment. We have daughters and grand-daughters, and children yet unborn to protect

This thread made me cry. There are a couple of documentaries on YouTube (not sure how to link) which I'll watch later.

This is why i never look down at young mums because no one knows their story.

Women's rights are going backwards at the moment.

Yes, a thousand times. We are seeing it in the changes in the abortion laws in the US, in the rise of Incels and Andrew Tate types, in the trans movement. Whenever women make progress there are elements of society that try to drag us kicking and screaming back to the kitchen sink. And yet there is bemusement as to why women are turning away from child-bearing e.g. South Korea is the most stunning recent example.

So many women are asking why they should make themselves hostages to fortune by willingly putting themselves in a dependent position. You only have to read the numerous posts on Mumsnet from women who have done just that and come on for advice about finding a way out.

Hear hear!

Fair point, and I'm sorry about your relative.

I have two cousins who came from one of those homes. One traced her parents a couple of years ago.

Her mother was Irish (which she expected) who had become pregnant, took her self to England for 'work' for a year and came home.

She married and had several children and did not tell anyone and passed away a couple of years ago. Some of the, now grown up, children welcomed my cousin, others want nothing to do with her.

She was pleasantly surprised to also find her father who is still alive and has been welcomed by that side of her new family.

So yes it is still here.

What a thread. Thank you for starting this @JenniferBooth . Incredibly sad, made me cry.

We must never forget how girls and women have been treated and fight to keep our rights. Never give those rights away.

Is heartbreaking 💔

This is so true. I take a grim satisfaction in seeing those falling birth rates. It's not just about expense, it's about quality of life and fairness for women.

It astounds me to see governments wringing their hands and turning themselves inside out seeking a solution when the answer is clear: ask women what they want. I see the falling birth rate as a silent rebellion by women that they will no longer be exploited and coerced.

In Poland the draconian abortion laws and tracking of pregnancies has not led to a higher birth rate and a forcing of women back into the home. The birth rate there has fallen as people presumably double down with contraception. Young women in Poland are angry.

Short of holding women down and forcibly inseminating them I'm not sure what governments can do.

Thankyou for all these replies. I havent been able to stop thinking about this.

@EcstaticMarmalade that was so lovely of you all Poor lady

Oh God i have this on the wall unit in my bedroom. I bought it years ago but have never read it.

Im grateful that i live in a time when i have been able to choose to be child free.
I knew by the time i was 21 that i didnt want to be a parent but didnt realise what a political choice it was until much later on.

That is a heartbreaking picture.

It seems impossible to understand how this could once have seemed reasonable to society.

I wonder if Dollys child ever knew the truth