PREGNANCY
At the beginning of the nineteenth century women might typically have borne up to 12 children, although not all would have survived the first weeks or months of life. Amongst the English middle classes, women who married in their mid-twenties could expect to spend around 15 years either pregnant or nurturing young children.23 Seventeen years of Queen Victoria's life were taken up by nine pregnancies and confinements.
Across Europe, though, the average size of family was between 5 and 6.5 children for most of the century. Much of a woman's adult life would be spent mothering, but by 1900 most births were in the first years of marriage, leaving a woman freer of children by the time she reached 40. There were, however, significant variations around this mean influenced by social class and work opportunities. In London around 1850, one-third of couples had 8 children or more, with the larger families tending to cluster amongst the poorer classes. But by 1900 in England and Wales the average number of children had fallen to 4, accompanying a gradual fertility decline along with many other Protestant EuropeanTable 4.1 Birth rates per 1000 population in selected European countries, 1800-1920
Source: Compiled from data in B.R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750—1970 (London, 1975), pp.114-30.
states, whilst in France (in contrast with other Catholic countries) fertility rates had declined significantly earlier owing to the general adoption of methods of birth control in the nineteenth century as Table 4.1 illustrates.24 In Russia, on the other hand, rates remained significantly higher than anywhere else in Europe right through the century, not really falling until the 1930s.
Knowledge of how a woman became pregnant improved during the century.
In 1800, medical knowledge of the reproductive process was still hazy. Ovulation was not understood, nor was the relationship between this and menstruation and conception. Nowadays there is a presumption that most people have a clear understanding of the biological processes around conception, and chemical pregnancy tests provide early confirmation of pregnancy. But before 1914 such knowledge and certainty were absent. Women knew they were pregnant by the sensation associated with quickening — the movement of the foetus in the womb — and of course there were external signs, some visible to observers and some only to the woman herself (such as swelling of the belly, hardening of the nipples and swelling of veins) which all indicated the possibility, but not the certainty, of pregnancy. ‘She was larger in the body than usual but I did not know the cause', attested a neighbour of a Scottish woman, Margaret Johnston, accused of concealment of pregnancy as late as 1893. ‘It did not occur to me that she was in child... She was not so big as I am when I am in child.' Another neighbour who observed Margaret's swelling belly agreed that ‘any other thing might have caused the swelling'.25 The cessation of menstruation was regarded as an unreliable sign which could have other explanations, although combined with other indicators some were confident in their own judgement. In 1862, Laura Scott's landlady was clear in her own mind about Laura's condition:I thought for the first time Laura came to my house... that she was with child. I noticed that she was not regular in her courses and she complained of being affected with headache and ‘sleepiness' and she had an excessive desire for a particular kind of food. She was black about the eyes. She several times vomited in the mornings, particularly during the first three weeks.26
Ignorance about pregnancy and childbirth was surprisingly widespread amongst the working classes. Girls did not commonly learn the facts of life from their mothers.
As one mother of five remarked, her own mother, ‘a dear pious soul, thought ignorance was innocence'.27 ‘I might say', wrote another, ‘that I was very ignorant when I was married; my mother did not consider it at all proper to talk about such things.'28 Before the advent of higher standards of living and modern medical advances, pregnancy for women of all social classes could be a time of worry and discomfort, and not infrequently real sickness and ill-health. ‘The first feeling of a young mother (to be)... is one of fear for herself', wrote one working-class mother of three who described the months of pregnancy as a time of trial.29 It was widely believed that the mother's mental disturbance could affect the baby and in the worst cases induce a miscarriage. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, although in a healthy physical state on the occasion of her second pregnancy in 1783, complained of what she called ‘the feels' which prevented her from sleeping and caused her to break down in tears. Her mother, fearing she would lose the baby on account of her poor emotional state — she had already had several miscarriages — advised her to rest and to take laudanum. ‘If you feel any violent [attacks] or agitation... be assured that whatever may happen this time, your health is much improved in the main, that if you can contrive by any means this winter, to keep your mind and body in a calm and quiet state, I have no doubt of your soon obtaining all you wish... do not make yourself unhappy.'30 Most women of the rural and urban labouring classes had no choice but to continue working as normal through their pregnancies. As late as 1917 it was said that the women of Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Islands, ‘follow their ordinary occupation until pains of labour compel them to give in'.31 Indeed, women who were accustomed to outdoor work were believed to experience easier labours than those who lived an indoor life although the strain of physical work also resulted in miscarriage and premature births. Amongst the urban poor, the necessity for a woman to continue working through pregnancy convinced reformers of the need for maternity pay. A British working-class mother said in 1915:I am the mother of three children. When the youngest was coming my husband was out of employment, so I had to go out to work myself, standing all day washing and ironing. This caused me much suffering from varicose veins, also caused the child to wedge in some way, which nearly cost both our lives. The doctor said it was the standing and the weight of the child. I have not been able to carry a child the full time since then... Once we can make men and women understand that a woman requires rest when bearing children, we shall not have so many of our sisters suffering and dying through operations, or, on the other hand, dragging out a miserable existence.32
The lack of money for extra food, items for the baby and doctors' bills meant that suffering was widespread amongst the poor. In 1915 the Women's Co-operative Guild in England invited women to write to them with their experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. The majority of the 400 respondents were wives of manual workers and they told tales of poverty, illness and pain, of miscarriages, stillbirths and abortion. ‘I can speak from experience', wrote one woman who gave birth to four children but experienced ten miscarriages. ‘For fifteen years I was in a very poor state of health owing to continual pregnancy. As soon as I came over one trouble, it was all started over again.'33 ‘I do not think I was very different in my pregnancies to others', wrote another who experienced four live births, three stillbirths and one miscarriage. ‘I always prepared myself to die... and when bothered by several other children, and not knowing how to make ends meet, death in some cases would be welcome.'34 Yet, the discourse of the natural joy of pregnancy and childbirth idealised by male writers such as Rousseau was still to be found in these women's experiences.
‘Motherhood stirred the depths of my nature', wrote a mother of five. ‘The rapture of a babe in arms drawing nourishment from me crowned me with glory and sanctity and honour.'35 But the realities of poverty and ill-health meant that this romantic vision was a reality only for the lucky and wealthy few. Having given birth to a girl, ‘Little G', Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, broke with aristocratic etiquette and breast-fed her baby, slept with the baby beside her, and was later rewarded by being described as a good mother by her daughter. ‘One cannot know till one has separated from you how different you are from everyone else, how superior to all mothers, even good ones.'36Women who wished to control their fertility did have access to a range of artificial birth control measures such as douches, pessaries, sponges and condoms, as well as the more common natural methods of coitus interruptus (withdrawal) and extended breast-feeding. Deliberate family limitation, that is the use of contraceptive measures, as well as abstinence, withdrawal and limiting intercourse to the so-called safe period, required male cooperation. In France, the birth rate had begun to decline after the Revolution as a result of the use of birth control well before the distribution of contraceptive technology in the second half of the century, and this trend continued amongst the French industrial working classes. In London around 1900 it was said that the richest ‘systematically and largely practised' contraception whereas amongst the poorest contraception was practically non-existent.37 But broad trends tell us little about individual experiences. By 1900, women were beginning to question the constant cycle of pregnancy and childbirth that left them worn out. Some actively reduced family size, either with or without their husband's consent. Others began to call for men to take more responsibility for such matters; conception was generally seen to be women's ‘fault'.
‘No amount of State help can help the suffering of mothers until men are taught many things in regard to the right use of the organs for reproduction and until he realises that the wife's body belongs to herself', wrote a mother of three in 1915. ‘So it's men who need to be educated most. The sacred office of parenthood has not yet dawned on the majority.'38Once a pregnancy was confirmed, abortion was the only option left to a woman determined not to have a child. ‘Can we wonder that so many women take drugs, hoping to get rid of the expected child, when they know so little of their own bodies, and have to work so hard to keep or help to keep the children they have already got', remarked a mother of two.39 Women had always taken drastic measures in an attempt to abort a foetus: they jumped from heights, swallowed concoctions, took very hot or very cold baths, lifted heavy weights and inserted sharp objects. Amongst rural women a wide variety of abortifacients were used to terminate a pregnancy; herbs such as pennyroyal and savin were commonly prescribed by wise-women, and roots and powders could be acquired from quack doctors and peddlars.40 Urban women were more likely to use quinine or lead — drugs more readily available from pharmacists. ‘I have resorted to drugs, trying to prevent or bring about a slip', wrote a working-class mother of eight desperate not to have any more children.41 Abortion was a criminal offence in most countries, yet women seem increasingly to have resorted to poison and physical intervention to terminate a pregnancy in preference to abandonment or infanticide of a newly-born child.
By the end of the century, urban women and those of the wealthier classes were having fewer children; fertility rates were slower to decline in rural and less industrial parts of Europe. Overall, though, there was a general decline in the fertility of European women as they sought to take some control over both the number and the spacing of conceptions. In 1900, pregnancy and childbirth were still fearful times, not only on account of ignorance but also in the knowledge that this ‘natural’ condition brought with it illness, pain and anxiety. The next step was to deliver a healthy child.