From the author of Bluestockings comes this moving social history of illegitimacy and the tremendous moral force of stigma in 20th century Britain.
Unmarried mothers were incarcerated in lunatic asylums; loving birth fathers, unprotected in law, saw their illegitimate children taken into care upon the mother’s death.
“In most cases,” Robinson concludes, “secrecy is at the heart of everything”, and conspiracies of silence embedded in social norms resound in her sympathetic chronicles.
The parents of an unmarried mother were powerful guardians of her honour, often determining the child’s fate; the terrible legacy of illegitimate child migration, in which thousands were transported to Australia and Canada, is still unfolding.
Most difficult for many is the fact that social norms have subsequently shifted so rapidly: “If nobody thinks it important now, why did I suffer so much then?”
Only by witnessing such suffering, perhaps, have we had the conviction to say “never again”.
