why did unmarried mothers of 20th century get put in asylums?

Answer 1

i think it was because to have children out of wedlock was really frowned upon and families had to "get rid" of these girls who shamed their families. There is a film called something like the magdalene laundry which is about this.

Answer 2

As a lowlife sinful ****: much as she would have been regarded in the early 19th century (read George Elliot's"Adam Bede."). The pressure to marry if the father were unmarried and of her own social class/ was enormous. Your genealogical research will be quite unusual if none of your kindred were born less than nine months after the wedding, aristocrats and the very wealthy possibly the only exceptions (too well guarded and chaperoned). Another escape, if the mother's own mother were young enough, and her husband also agreeable, would be for the older woman to bring the child up as her own. Sometimes even a more distant relative, or possibly a barren wife desperate for a child might do the same. Legal adoption was not however possible under English common law until the act of 1928, These observations are generalisations. Parental love could create exceptions. A great uncle of mine had a daughter whose naivety led to her being seduced by a cousin in the 1920s. She continued to live at home and her bastard was accepted not just by her loving parents but by all her extended family: I played with him as a child and had no idea of his situation until long after I grew up. And my great grandmother had a half brother, a prosperous businessman who in his eighties, in the early 20th century, seduced his housekeeper after his wife had died. She had twins, but the problem was solved by their being still born. I only learned of this from another relative, reminiscing about our family in her extreme old age.

Answer 3

In the 19th century, because a woman's worth was seen as bound up with her being chaste. She was of no worth to anyone reputable if people thought she wasn't pure. As well, they did not want her to 'corrupt' other good girls so she had to be put away somewhere. Asylums were convenient - where else would they go?

The Magdalen laundries had an idea that hard labour would also serve as penance for their 'sin', although i guess the idea that they would suffer physical hardship also appealed to some of their families - that they were being punished for disgracing the family.

Answer 4

While researching my family history I was shocked and enraged to find that one of my Grandfather's sisters spent the years from near the end of WW1 to the early 1950s in an asylum in Yorkshire for the "crime" of bearing a child out of wedlock. From what I can gather she was considered to be "backward" and was in domestic service when she became pregnant. The suspicion is, of course, that she was "taken advantage of" by someone in the household she worked for. The child was put up for adoption and I've not been able to find any trace of it. Eventually,in the 1950s, my relative was released and saw out the remainder of her days in a flat on her own.

As to why this happenned to her - my Great Grandfather was a religious obssesive with strict moral values. My Grandfather rebelled and never went back home after serving in the trenches in WW1. His sister did not have that option. Her plight, caused by a combination of religious, family and social bigotry, was seemingly not uncommon.

Answer 5

Given our countries history NOTHING surprises me...

Those women must be crazed or possessed to have children without a man. U know, a woman is nothing without a big, strong man!
Also a married man, could have his wife deemed crazy and thus admitted into an asylum from his WORD alone..

Answer 6

I saw a TV documentary about this big old country estate - whilst refurbishing it they found a secret wall. When they removed it, they found the skeletal remains of a young woman. They said she had been bricked in there alive by her father because she was pregnant!
I've never forgotten that partly cos I was a single parent at the time...
I guess the family feared shame, ridicule...
How absolutely terrible!!!!

Answer 7

They were considered to be morally defective and were incarcerated through much of the 20th century.
I met women during the 1980's who were labelled "moral defectives" in their teens and were still incarcerated in their 80's.

Answer 8

Because the Holy Joes had too much power and influence on people's lives.

Answer 9

do you mean the 19th century? Because they had no place in Victorian society so were hidden away in Asylums

Answer 10

Because back then men were in charge of everything!